5 seconds to success – how to maximize the hit potential of your new track
Do you know what the most important part of your brand-new track is?
The drop, the bridge, the finale? Wrong!
The correct answer: the first 5 seconds!
Every day thousands of artists upload their newly produced tracks to SoundCloud® and Hypeddit to achieve success and boost their fan base. After days in the studio and hard work of composing, producing and mastering, it’s finally time for your hit-contender to be released to the public and promoted to music fans around the world.
But did you know that one of the key ingredients to success for your new track is the actual preview you upload to SoundCloud?
Unfortunately what we see way too often is this:
An amazing track with all the makings of a hit falls short of its success potential because the artist simply uploads the full track without giving consideration to the listening habits of fans online:
According to Benny Blanco (Grammy-nominated hit writer for Rihanna, Maroon 5 and others), “everything needs to be catchy because a listener is either going to stay with the song or lose interest in the first five seconds.”
Keep this in mind when you upload your next song and consider the following to maximize your success:
Tip #1: It doesn’t matter how your song starts – it matters how your preview starts!
Consider how Beatport serves its fans track previews: they don’t play the beginning – they play 90 seconds from the middle of the song. The first 5 seconds of each preview throw the music fan right into the track. That is exactly what listeners want! If Beatport sells more tracks with this strategy, then you will get more downloads/comments/reposts/followers/likes in the same way!
Tip #2: Don’t waste a single second on silence
If you decide to do a fade-in at the beginning of your preview (something Beatport does not do by the way), then don’t make it longer than 1 second. You only have 5 seconds to win over your fans – don’t waste more than 20% on partial silence.
Bottom line: when you upload your next track to SoundCloud, invest the extra time to select a great cut of your track for the preview – it will make a huge difference! Play the first 5 seconds of your preview and ask yourself: does it stick? Would fans want to keep listening?
And if you already uploaded your new release without an optimized preview, a great function in SoundCloud is the ability to replace the audio file for a SoundCloud track you already created (under Edit track). You can simply go back and optimize some of the previews on your recent tracks.
Follow this trick and you will see a huge difference in how your tracks perform online.
What other tips and tricks do you use to maximize your success? Please feel free to share them with us.
