I’ve been trying to find some new ways to get people to listen to my music; that is a big part of why I write it, after all.
I frequently get asked “How do I get more plays?” or “How do I get noticed by labels/people?” or “How do I get fans?”.
Get It Out There
The simple answer is, get your music out there, everywhere. But, time is money as they say, so it’s important to find places where you’ll actually get heard. YouTube is an awesome place to upload music, and I’ve been slacking on this lately, because people like to embed YT videos on their Facebook page, and with YouTube Repeat you can listen to your favorite song over and over, which I like to do sometimes.
But, even with SEO (search engine optimization – keywords, good description, etc…) it’s hard to get noticed in a sea of millions of other music videos. So, to get quality listeners (potential fans) you may have to dig a bit deeper. This is where a place like reddit really comes in handy.
reddit for electronic music
reddit is an aggregate of information, broken up into niche subreddits which people “follow”.
So, let’s say you produce progressive house and have a sweet track you want people to hear. You can post it on SoundCloud or YouTube first (you should be doing this anyway), and then submit it to the Progressive House subreddit. This is where you’ll likely find people who are interested in hearing what you’ve got. If they like what they hear, they will “upvote” it, making it easier for other subscribers of this subreddit to find your music.
Consistency is Key
If you are consistently putting out stuff people like, you will gain more followers (just like IRL!). This is a great tool to use to find people who may have not heard your music yet, and a cool way to connect directly to people who listen to the type of music you write.
To save you some time, because navigating Reddit can be tricky at first, I’ve found a resource which posts all of the music subreddits in one place, allowing you to go there directly.
Electronic Music Subreddits
I’ve taken the liberty of checking out which ones are the most active (over 1,000 subscribers at this time):
/r/DnB (13k subs)
/r/DubStep (50k subs)
/r/electrohouse (12k subs)
/r/ElectronicMusic (35k subs – haven’t had much luck posting here)
/r/Trance (14k subs)
/r/electronicdancemusic (~1k subs – seems pretty active)
/r/proghouse (~2k subs – active and friendly)
These are just a few highlights. To be honest, I think you may have better luck getting heard and interacting on the smaller subreddits, unless you’re posting a big name remix to one of the bigger subreddits.
Of course, it all depends on your style and how you connect with your listeners. Reddit can be a fun place to share your stuff, and meet some interesting people. So, with this new tool in hand, go forth and get play.
