Jakubi, Melbourne’s pop/funk/ hip-hop five-piece band landed a US tour recently. The secret behind their success? Soundcloud. A website that was started in July 2013, Soundcloud now has 40 million registered users and 200 million listeners. It lets you create an account and gives you access to music-lovers the world over. You could be a singer, a DJ, an instrumentalist or a rap artist; as long as you have talent to display, your covers and even original compositions are welcomed on Soundcloud.
The oldest website to promote the trend of independent artists being heard was Reverbnation. A lot like Soundcloud, Reverbnation concentrates on the marketing aspect of music. It brings artists gigs and EP albums. Bandcamp, another social media website where you can log in as a fan or an artist, puts your album up and even allots you an artist page to build your fan base.
Here’s what musicians have to say about this online music culture:
Frank’s Got The Funk
The Chennai-based band has a Soundcloud, a Reverbnation, a YouTube account and a successful Facebook page. The three band members Bjorn Surrao, Sajith Satya, and Shashank Vijay launched their debut EP The Next Level in 2011, their single Corvus in July 2012 and in August 2013 the band came out with its second single Land of the dreamer . “Soundcloud helped us put out our music on a web platform so that we could reach out to listeners all around the world. All our music is on our Soundcloud page which is linked to our social network sites. We share our music mostly via Facebook, Soundcloud, YouTube, and by word-of-mouth,” says Sajith.
Hassaan Faridi
This 20-year-old singer from Karachi, Pakistan is a Soundcloud sensation and his fan following extends to Twitter and Facebook as well. A little more than a year ago he did a cover on a friend’s request and uploaded it on Soundcloud. Little did he know that this would be the beginning of his independent music career. “Soundcloud is the best platform for an individual or a band to start sharing music. The audience judges you purely based on your talent. Covers on websites such as YouTube sometimes lead the audience to judge you on the basis of your looks alone. Plus its options of syncing across social networks leads to a well-targeted and larger audience.
Reverbnation on the other hand is a little more complicated with its layout and embed-able widgets but it isn’t as popular as Soundcloud yet,” he says. With his first studio cover coming out in August, Hassaan is excited.
Priyankar Kole
Meet the Reverbnation star from Bangalore who experiments with different music styles. “Reverbnation gives you a chance to sponsor charities that work for good causes such as fighting poverty around the world, providing financial assistance to musicians facing illness or disability, and keeping a sick child alive. In the end, I feel good because I’m making music to help people,” the 21-year-old says. Reverbnation’s chart position feature has helped Kole keep track of his local, national and global ranking. “Reverbnation provides a stage for young artists to play in festivals, open for big bands, submit nominations for music awards etc.
Being part of it helped my music get circulated, which in turn helped me build a larger platform for my music in the country as well as abroad.”
Watch out for on Soundcloud
- Bea Go
- MigzHaleco
- angelo_mikha
- ShreySinghal
