If you’re just setting out into promoting your music, it can be difficult to work out where to start. Finding networks and groups of people with similar interests is a natural way to discuss your work with others and promote what you’re doing. Not only that, it opens up the opportunity to get feedback from peers in your field.
In this article I want to introduce you to a service called RepostExchange. This is a great place to start building your audience. It requires you to have a Soundcloud page and to connect your Soundcloud account to their service.
I want to make clear that this article is formed of entirely my own opinions and is not paid or sponsored content. I’ve been using the service, I personally like how it works and wanted to share this with others.
I have provided referral links throughout this article, so if you are a content creator on Soundcloud and you sign up using one of my links – I get credits (a virtual currency used on the site) to promote my music using their service.
It doesn’t cost you anything to use the link, it just lets them know that it was me that showed you their service so they know to credit me if you are an eligible referral. If you want to sign up but don’t want to use my referral link, you can copy the link and remove everything after “.com” before navigating to the site.
What is RepostExchange?
RepostExchange is a site that consists of a network of Soundcloud users. As you might imagine, it primarily promotes your Soundcloud page, however there is an option to fill out your profile with other social links. This allows other members of the site to find you on their preferred platform, so don’t miss out on this opportunity to promote your other pages!
Credits
Credits are your currency on RepostExchange. You can earn them by reposting tracks and you can spend them on getting your tracks reposted by other members of the site.
The credit cost for each repost is directly correlated with the reposting users legitimate follower count. RepostExchange ensures fairness by having functionality that allows them to check if your followers are legitimate.
The way to calculate the cost of a repost is:
cost = legitimate follower count / 100 round down cost to 0dp if cost = 0 then cost = 1
A working example of this model:
- You request a repost from another user who has 570 followers, it costs you 5 credits.
- You have 40 followers and repost another users track, you receive 1 credit for your repost.
- You request a repost from another user who has 65,500 followers, but only 24,400 are legitimate followers, it costs you 244 credits.
- You have gained 260 legitimate followers since using the service, giving you a total of 300 and you repost another users track, you now earn 3 credits for your repost.
You can also get credits through other means; you can purchase them or keep an eye out for the Mystery Box codes in your email inbox and the codes in the podcast giving you either free credits or a discount on purchasing credits.
If you’re spending the money on credits anyway, the smart thing to do is wait for one of these codes to come along – you can save yourself a fair bit of money, especially on the larger credit packs! You can viably use RepostExchange for free, purchases are fully optional.
Campaigns
Campaigns are simple. You select the track you want to promote, a credit budget for the campaign, any additional features or restrictions you may choose to apply and start your campaign.
From there it is put on the Campaigns page and any other members of the site can listen to your track and choose to repost it, deducting their repost cost from the campaign budget.
Direct Requests
Direct requests are members sending their track directly to other members to request a repost. You can spend your credits to make requests to other members, or you can earn credits by accepting direct requests from other members.
Since the feature to add a short note to your direct requests was added, a small number of people have utilised it. This is where you can add a personal touch, and start building relationships with other members.
If you can do it all for free, why pay?
There are monthly plans that give free campaign boosts and add extra functionality. By default, you will be on the Free Forever plan upon signing up.
While you can achieve positive results with zero expenditure, if you want to make the most out of the features, maximise your reach and run effective campaigns, you might want to consider a Pro plan that suits your usage of the service.
If you find yourself running campaigns with large budgets frequently, consider purchasing a credit pack that comes with a free month of a Pro plan.
Free Forever plan members are also charged an inactivity fee of 10% credit balance for each week without reposting a single track. Paid subscriptions do not incur this fee.
Two new tiers of Pro plans and a bigger credit pack have been recently added. These plans are targeted to promoters and labels – music industry professionals that would use a service like this at scale.
Insights on correlation between RepostExchange activity and Soundcloud KPIs
Data has not been meticulously tracked before 2020, however from being active on the service most days, I saw an initial follower increase by over 700% within 3 months, daily plays became a reality and I’ve had some great music sent directly to me!
Since the new year, I’ve been tracking more closely so that I can explain the impact my RepostExchange activity has had on key Soundcloud metrics. I’ve also attempted to take deliberate actions and measure their impact.
A couple of things I noticed that you’ll want to take into account while using the service:
- When you stop being active on RepostExchange, your follower count may slowly drop. This is because you are not gaining new followers through direct requests being sent to you. You could also see a drop in daily plays as you aren’t sending your tracks directly to people on this platform for them to listen to.
- You will show higher in the recommended channels to submit a direct request to immediately after accepting a request or reposting a campaign track, this seems to be an activity-driven algorithm which limits the number of requests you receive based on how many reposts you have done that day. 10 seems to be the maximum reposts the platform allows before cutting off the influx of requests.
Summary
I like RepostExchange and the service it provides. It’s a great tool if you’re just starting out and their compensation model is scalable.
I believe it can continue to be a beneficial service for the music community wherever they are in their journey, for as long as Soundcloud remains a significant presence in the industry.
The other potential limitation is it’s user base. If people stop being active, the service will lose effectiveness.
On the other hand, if the active user base keeps growing, that means you can reach more people! So if you are going to join, I would encourage you to be an active part of the community. It benefits us all!