SoundCloud Pro Ultimate Guide

SoundCloud Amplify: The Most Affordable Way to Test Your Music’s Potential SoundCloud’s Amplify feature is one of the most powerful and overlooked promotional tools in streaming. It’s built directly into the upload process and delivers your music to real SoundCloud users, 100 to 1,000 listeners per song, depending on engagement. That might not sound like much at first, but it changes everything for artists trying to figure out which song to release, how to spend limited ad dollars, and whether a track has real commercial potential. Why Amplify Matters Right now, artists pay for music distribution to get their songs on Spotify, Apple, and other DSPs, but that doesn’t get their music heard. At best, distributors offer social media marketing tips that assume you already have an audience. They tell you what you “should” post and how often you “should” post when the problem for most artists is that there’s no one seeing the things they post. The alternative is paying for ads, but ads don’t live inside a streaming ecosystem. You might spend $500 on Facebook or Instagram ads to earn 100 U.S. listeners. Taking a tour across Reddit and the various music business “academies,” the common advice is for artists to spend anywhere from $1 - $10 per day on Facebook ads. That means artists are spending at least $360 a year on Facebook ads to earn less than 100 US listeners. SoundCloud’s Pro plan costs $100 a year. You can Amplify up to 30 tracks per day. That’s 30 daily opportunities to get music in front of 100 SoundCloud listeners. If I release one song a week, it would be like being gifted a $2,000 monthly ad budget. The Single Dilemma In consultations with artists, there’s often friction around choosing the right song to release. Most have large catalogs of unreleased music and limited budgets. Without data, the decision usually comes down to opinions — friends, collaborators, or personal taste. With social media ads, you pay to be seen, not necessarily to be heard. Visibility doesn’t guarantee engagement. Amplify changes that. You can upload every song under consideration, enable Amplify, and let SoundCloud’s listeners decide. If a song only reaches 100 listeners because nobody replays it or interacts, you didn’t waste $500 finding that out. If another track gets pushed to 1,000 listeners with high engagement, that’s the one worth putting real marketing behind. My Amplify Campaign Results I tested Amplify using four previously released songs: The Sorrow, Lost With Dreams, The Day, and Good Job. The Sorrow Day 1: 1,352 streams | 18 Likes Day 2: 1,604 streams | 14 Likes Lost With Dreams Day 1: 153 streams | 1 Like Day 2: 2,527 streams | 29 Likes The Sorrow and Lost With Dreams had been my strongest tracks before. The Sorrow gained organic traction; Lost With Dreams was playlisted by SoundCloud’s head of marketing and reposted by a co-founder. The other two songs had minimal engagement when first uploaded: The Day 163 streams | 0 Likes Good Job 194 streams | 2 Likes The results made it clear — Amplify performance depends on the song itself. SoundCloud doesn’t force-feed low-performing music to users. If people don’t like what they hear, the campaign naturally stops reaching new listeners. How the Algorithm Works Amplify distributes each track to a limited number of listeners, then expands based on engagement. Likes, completions, and replays extend your reach. High skip rates or low interaction cut it short. SoundCloud won’t risk alienating users by flooding their feeds with songs they don’t enjoy. The result is a merit-based ecosystem — your reach reflects listener response, not just budget size. Long-Term Impact You get one month of Amplify free with unlimited tracks. A lot of artists use that to promote everything, then cancel before the renewal hits. That’s short-sighted. SoundCloud’s Fan-Powered Royalties make Amplify worth keeping. You can earn more from a few loyal SoundCloud listeners than from thousands of casual Spotify streams. My Amplify campaigns created a steady stream of plays from a small but consistent listener base — and that small audience has earned me more in a single month than I made in years on Spotify. Only SoundCloud Pro users can participate in Fan-Powered Royalties, and Amplify is one of the fastest ways to start building the kind of audience that system rewards. Conclusion Amplify isn’t just a discovery tool; it’s a feedback engine. It tells you which songs connect with listeners before you spend serious money. For independent artists, that insight is worth far more than its $100 price tag. SoundCloud Pro Fan Powered  Most streaming platforms pool their revenue and divide it by total plays. That system rewards whoever gets the most streams, not necessarily who has the most dedicated listeners. SoundCloud’s Fan-Powered Royalties (FPR) flips that logic. It ties every dollar back to individual user behavior, letting smaller artists earn real money from loyal fans instead of competing against superstars for fractions of pennies. How Fan-Powered Royalties Work SoundCloud separates two types of revenue: 1. Major Label & Distributor Streams – Paid through traditional, platform-wide splits. 2. Pro Artist Streams – Paid through fan-powered accounting. If you’re a Pro artist, every listener’s subscription or ad revenue is divided only among the artists that the listener actually streamed. Example: If I pay $10 a month for SoundCloud Go and play 100 songs—50 of which are yours—you earn 50 percent of my contribution, or $5. If I’m on the free plan and my activity generated $2 in ad revenue, you’d get $1 of that. You’re no longer fighting for a share of some giant global pot. You’re paid according to your personal connection with each fan. Why It Matters In a typical pro-rata system, every stream competes with every other stream on the platform. One viral hit can drag down the value of everyone else’s plays. Under SoundCloud’s model, one listener streaming you ten times this week is more valuable than ten strangers hearing you once. It rewards fan intensity, not total volume. The Math in Practice Let’s say Spotify generated $1,000 this month. You earned 100 streams, and another artist earned 1 million. Your 100 plays equal 0.01 percent of all streams. You’d take home $0.10. On SoundCloud, if I’m one of your fans and half my listening time is spent on your music, you’d get half of what I paid the platform, regardless of how many times Drake or Taylor Swift were streamed overall. If I’m paying $10 for go and I streamed two songs, one of which was yours, you earn $5 for 1 stream. Your listeners’ loyalty directly shapes your payout. The O.P.P. Problem Spotify’s structure creates what I call an O.P.P. economy—Other People’s Profit. Your fans’ subscription fees and ad views contribute to a global pool that primarily rewards whoever already dominates the charts. Even if your supporters listen daily, most of their money goes elsewhere. SoundCloud removes that siphon. Your fans fund you. The Catch Fan-Powered Royalties rely on direct fan engagement. If most of your streams come from algorithmic or editorial playlists, you won’t earn much. Passive discovery doesn’t translate into payouts unless those listeners stick around. This model rewards real communities - artists with audiences that choose them intentionally. Comparing the Two Models System Basis of Payment Who Benefits Downside Spotify (Pro-Rata) Platform-wide popularity Major artists & playlist acts Dilutes fan value SoundCloud (Fan-Powered) Individual fan activity Independent artists with loyal listeners Requires true engagement Long-Term Impact Fan-Powered Royalties make SoundCloud the only major platform where cultivating a small, loyal fanbase can outperform chasing playlists. A few hundred fans who stream you repeatedly can generate more income than thousands of passive Spotify plays. For independent artists, that’s a fundamental shift - from popularity-driven income to relationship-driven income. Conclusion SoundCloud’s Fan-Powered Royalties reward what actually matters: genuine listening. If your goal is to build a community instead of chasing algorithms, it’s one of the fairest streaming systems available. SoundCloud Pro Distribution SoundCloud isn’t just a streaming platform anymore. It’s a full distribution hub. With a SoundCloud Pro account, artists can release music to all major DSPs—including Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, and Tidal—without using a third-party distributor. The result is a simpler workflow, fewer accounts to manage, and direct access to all the data in one place. Unlimited Distribution There are no per-release or annual submission fees. You can upload as many songs as you want and send them to DSPs for no additional cost beyond your yearly Pro plan. Revenue from other platforms still belongs entirely to you. SoundCloud doesn’t take a cut. That makes it one of the most affordable distribution options available, especially for artists who release music frequently. Advantages Over Third-Party Distributors Most distributors—TuneCore, DistroKid, CD Baby—charge annual fees per artist or per release. On SoundCloud, distribution is built into your existing subscription, and it ties directly to the same analytics that track your plays, followers, and Fan-Powered Royalties. You can manage your releases, audience stats, and royalties all from the same dashboard. It’s a subtle but important difference. Every upload can now serve multiple roles: SoundCloud content, streaming distribution, and fan an