How Do I Hit 100k Plays?

By Martin Gutierrez, in collaboration with Antidote Audio

100,000​
. A lot of people ask me on Facebook “Yo fam, how did you get so many plays on
Whipped Cream”? Or just “What did you use to get 100k on your track dude?”. Well I thought
I’d put this guideline or procedure to tell you guys about how I got to there in a month on my
track “Whipped Cream”, also considering this was uploaded on my profile, which had 6,000
followers at the time. I thought I’d address this topic together with my friends at ​
Antidote
Audio​
.

(p.s: stay ‘till the end for some goodies)

Pre-Release
If you’re reading this, you are probably a producer who’s trying to push your music out there on
Soundcloud. This promotion/marketing for a track has to begin from the moment you get the
final mastered wav file up on a Soundcloud private link. An example of what I did with
“Whipped Cream” was that I sent it to a few close producer friends who I could trust not to leak
the link, and asked for their opinion on it. Let’s say a friend with 10k on Soundcloud replies
“This is great!” or “Love this!”, then your reply shouldn’t be “thanks!”. You should ask them to
pledge their support on the track, so when it’s released, you can assure a 10k repost (ex: “since
you liked it, do you think you can hit me with a repost when it’s out?”). For bigger artists, if they
enjoy the track, you can offer them a spot in your download gate for 24 hours, and have them
repost, it’s a great hook for their support. This can be done either manually or using T
​he Artist
Union’s​
pre-release function. Let’s say you’ve done this with 20 friends who have anywhere
from 5-15k on Soundcloud, you can rack up a 1​
00,000 follower reach​
in just a few messages!

This is a great​
way to push your track out there, even ​
​ before your audience has heard it.
First week of release
This part of the release, for me, is the most important part promotion-wise. The reason for this
is because of download gates, and the initial push of your track for social proof. The social
proof part of it is simple, if you see a track that has 20,000 plays in 5 days, are you more likely
to listen to that, or a track with 20 plays in 5 days, regardless of the: artist, artwork, title, etc? If
your track starts with an ​
initial boost​
, as we talked about in the last section, the plays will start
coming in like a snowball, just gaining more and more.

Download gates:
Most people, if not everyone these days, is looking for more followers, so when you get offered
a spot on a download gate, it’s very tough to turn that down. With this mentality, we can use
the approach discussed in the last section about pitching your track to bigger artists. This
should be done with artists you didn’t try and pitch to in the pre-release, and should also be
done when you’ve gathered some social proof, because a big artist will overlook a track with
600 plays in a week. The way to approach these big guys would be sending a message along
the lines of:

Hey​
“​ I wanted to know if you would support my recent release on​
(name),​ (insert label or
which has gathered​
channel here) ​ (x amount of plays in x amount of days).​
It’s actively getting
downloads and I can offer you a spot on the download gate for the time you have the track
reposted. Let me know if you’re interested, Martin.​
”

Worst case scenario they don’t read the message, and you can move on to the next.
This technique can also work well with some promotion channels, because even more than
artists they are looking for followers, so definitely reach out to them as well, using the same
mentality. There are many places to host these download gates, a few viable options are
ToneDen​
,​
Supportify​
,​
TuneBula​
, or ​
Hive​ free​
. You can almost always host these gates for ​ , so
make good use of them!
Doing this strategy with 10 artists at 10k and 2 promo channels at 25k together with the
hypothetical 100k reach from the pre-release, is already a total of a ​
250,000 follower reach in
the first few days of release…
​​Not bad?
​

Post-release
If you’ve done both the pre-release and first days of release correctly, and your track is
produced well, you shouldn’t have to worry about your post-release too much, although there
are some ways to keep your track moving. The easiest and most efficient way is through
download gates, and using the same pitch as the last section, where you offer someone a spot
on your download gate for a day or a few days, in return for a repost. Another way to rack up a
some extra plays is through ​
repost trading​
where both sides are benefiting. You can see down
below a screenshot of the download gate for one of my tracks, and it’s evident that you must
and ​
write a comment before downloading (and consequently follow me ​ a channel who
reposted the track to 80k followers on Soundcloud, like the track, and repost as well), which
causes more social proof to appear. When you see a track with comments all across the
waveform, it acts as another trigger to press the play button. Lastly, once your track has quite
some social proof and you feel comfortable, it’s a good idea to send out a wave of emails to
different YouTube and Soundcloud tastemakers, as they can help push your music too. It’s
good to wait a little after release to send these, as channels will also take social proof into
account.
While sending emails, it is ​
vital t​
o be on top of your email game, whether this be collecting
emails for sending out music or promoting your project’s brand, you can really maximize your
email (gmail in specific) experience with a handy tool called ​
Sales by Hubspot​
. You can
download the gmail extension off of the ​
Chrome Web Store.​Long story short, you can use
Hubspot Sales​
to track your sent emails, you get a notification (they even have a mobile app)
for when someone opens your email. You can also see where in the world the person opened
your email, what time they did, and even if they opened the link inside.
These days it’s very easy to overlook an email, especially if you’re a big artist. A great way to
pitch to them could be over different socials, such as Snapchat. Snapchat is a quick and easy
platform as most artists end up checking them out, and replying if your video is intriguing.
When pitching over Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and some other major platforms on the other
hand, (even Soundcloud DM) ​
wording is very important.
When you hit up someone, you must know what they have been posting and talking about,
think what would capture their attention if you were in their shoes, receiving your message. If
you provide value, not just a soundcloud link, your message can go much further.

Thanks for reading, let me know how your promo is going:

Facebook: ​
https://www.facebook.com/martingutierrezmusic
Snapchat: ​
mtin7
Soundcloud: ​
https://soundcloud.com/martingutierrezmusic
Twitter: ​
https://twitter.com/martingutimusic
Email: ​
contact.martingutierrez@gmail.com

​
Enjoy some goodies by me below​
⬇

300 promo/blog emails:

https://goo.gl/UuAptD

Stems & Samples for Whipped Cream:

https://www.theartistunion.com/tracks/2F094765