Marketing a cloud of sound

Having seen and followed the direction of SoundCloud since it began in 2007 and reading about its current direction in recent news posts, I felt compelled to share a document I wrote after completing five 45 min job interviews (all in a row!) at the SoundCloud office back in 2014.

There were some interesting insights I gleaned into the company and I wrote this document to the Chief Marketing Officer at the time (who was the last interview I had) some days after my interview, in the hopes that it might illustrate my thinking processes to better position me to get the job. Unfortunately I didn’t get the job.

I’ve been a listener since the beginning, a paid SoundCloud Pro member since 2012, and now have been a paid member of the (unsatisfactory) Go+ subscription since this year. I’m a musician and have used SoundCloud to publish and market my tunes. For marketing purposes SoundCloud has a great platform, although for actually making money back on my creations, nothing so far has beaten Bandcamp (in terms of digital streaming services, I still don’t think anyone has come close to the now defunct Rdio).

I personally feel the future of SoundCloud’s success relies on how it can position itself as a digital distribution platform for independent creators to generate revenue either per play, per sale, or whatever (ticket sales, anyone?) for those artists. There’s a great opportunity to continue to disrupt the digital streaming/music model, and so far SoundCloud have done themselves a disservice by continuing to follow the herd.

If you want more of my thoughts on the digital music industry, check out these other articles I’ve written:

• Singing a Digital Tune: Part 1 — The culture and business of music online, for fun and profit
• Rdio, my old and faithful friend, it’s sad to say goodbye…
• Streaming the tides of music: Reviewing the Tidal music streaming service

About this document

I was inspired by a number of meetings I had at SoundCloud during my job interview process for the Creative Technologist role in the Brand Communications/Marketing department to write this document. In it I detail and experiment with my own theories and ideas of brand positioning and marketing and funnel my personal experiences using the SoundCloud platform as a listener, organiser, promoter and creator into the mix.

I attempt to define the points where I see the brand and product merge and how they could be effectively managed and communicated to an audience, be it internal or external, and how it can inspire and affect future business, communications and design decisions (my personal belief is that branding/marketing is a holistic ecology of concepts and actions executed through all levels of the organisation). With SoundCloud still classing itself as a startup, I consider it an exciting time full of experimentation and change, one in which it still has a lot of flexibility to play.

With all that said, I have no idea what SoundCloud’s existing strategies are, nor do I have any insider knowledge aside from what I gleaned throughout my interviews. I wouldn’t consider this document to be extensive nor in-depth, but I hope that it can adequately communicate my personal mindset and methodology toward strategic branding and communications with regards to product design and branding.

I encourage feedback as it’s fun to swap and refine ideas. I appreciate any and all critique for the purposes of expanding knowledge and understanding.

What SoundCloud is…

SoundCloud is an audio hosting platform with features that allow audio playback, exploration of publicly hosted audio, creation/capture/storage of audio, and social networking.

• SoundCloud operates as an audio player, allowing listeners to discover new music and follow their favourite audio creators
• Users can leave timed comments on the audio’s “waveform”, as well as create playlists and share/show their love for their favourite tracks
• SoundCloud allows audio creators to share and promote their sounds, receive feedback (likes, reposts and timed comments), follow other users’ activities and contribute to communities (groups).
• Often used as a platform to promote music, SoundCloud hosts many remixes and mixtapes and is actively used by both amateur and professional musicians alike. Non-music audio features heavily (field recordings, podcasts, interviews, etc.)
• The SoundCloud API allows outside entities access to SoundCloud’s audio servers. This allows website and app developers (to name a few) the ability to use the giant repository of audio to create new user experiences.

Primary features

• Free audio hosting
• Pro accounts (supports hosting more audio plus other features like analytics)
• Playback via website and dedicated apps (iOS, Android)
• Social networking (following users, groups, private messaging)
• Feedback (likes, reposts, commenting)
• Sharing/embedding audio (widgets)
• API access
• Large repository of uploaded audio

Communications avenues and strategies

Because SoundCloud is an online service, almost all consumer and business touch-points are via online technology, e.g. the Internet and portable device apps. The SoundCloud website is the primary source for SoundCloud-directed communications, which mostly consist of promoting SoundCloud as a product (both the service and the apps) and promoting content partners’ audio hosted on SoundCloud.

As SoundCloud operates primarily as a hosting platform, digital entities like audio player widgets allow for branded experiences to reside on multiple websites all over the Internet.

Enlisting content partners add value to SoundCloud’s brand. By partnering with established and reputable creators, events and other professional entities (music labels, publications, radio and TV channels, educational institutions, etc.) opportunities are opened/encouraged to strengthen awareness of and engagement with SoundCloud’s brand and product.

Challenges

“Encourage acquisition of users and content”

To facilitate the continued growth of SoundCloud, it is important to encourage more users to sign up and use the service.

“Increase/enrich general brand awareness and recognition”

Increasing the awareness of the brand and its products’ features and mode d’emploi to the public would help to strengthen SoundCloud’s position as the primary place to host, discover and listen to original audio and to interact with the creators on the Internet.

“More people use SoundCloud than are aware of it”

Embedded players are touch-points where many non-members listen to the audio hosted on SoundCloud, however not often do people notice/remember the service that allows them to play/listen.

“The product is the brand is the product is the…”

SoundCloud is both the product and the brand. It’s important that the brand experience contributes to the product’s design and experience, and vice versa.

In addition to the above challenges, intellectual property rights and royalty rates differ from country to country, and are often prickly issues to deal with. The inventory of some uploaded sounds on SoundCloud’s servers can potentially impede commercial progress/brand perception and IP legislation can complicate or impede certain content partnerships. There exist algorithms which detect protected content and the removal of uploaded media through this algorithmic process is necessary for external stakeholder opportunities and relations, but can potentially impede general consumer and creator experiences.

SoundCloud’s key principles

SoundCloud’s product offering extends to both consumer and business interests, as an audio player, discovery network, a social network and a marketing tool. To represent the core SoundCloud product and brand I’ve broken its primary principles down into a framework of 6 items within 3 tiers, plus one extra item/tier that I felt essential which spans over the entire brand/product:

Storage

• To upload/download audio and add metadata (title, description, comments, etc.)
• Access to audio/metadata (private/public)
• Change audio/metadata

Playback

• The ability to listen to audio hosted on the servers
• Control playback of audio/anything involving progression of time, e.g. playlists (actions include play, pause, skip to time, skip song, etc.)

Creation

• Record audio
• Create playlists
• Create groups

Discovery

• Find audio/users/groups using metadata (title, description, author, tags, related info, trending, etc.)
• Recommendations

Sharing

• Ability to share audio/users/groups with others
• Likes, reposts, widget embeds

Networking

• Connect and communicate to other users (follow, messaging)
• Connect and contribute to groups

Reporting

• Help and community engagement
• Statistics/analytics
• Management of spam
• Feedback

These principles are given tiers to represent a hierarchical “dependence” (light emphasis) when themes related to any of the principles are used in communications and product design. By no means should this hierarchy limit the usage or narrow the scope when communicating principles, but as such they are illustrated and given hierarchical value to encourage a related connection. For instance:

• All principles below Storage rely on it to work.
• Discovery relies on Storage and Playback. Note that it doesn’t need Creation to function successfully.
• Sharing relies on Storage and Playback, but equally it would utilise Discovery and/or Networking for successful usage.
• Reporting is a constant, in-as-much as Storage, however it plays a passive supporting role all throughout SoundCloud’s design and underlies all principles

How the principles within tiers are linked

When communicating these principles certain visual or conceptual elements will be employed, and might be similar to what is described below:

Storage (1st Tier)

Audio, Track, Playlist, Collection, Size, Space, Drive, Capacity, Dropbox

Playback (2nd Tier)

Play, Pause, Skip, Next, Previous, Waveform, Buffering, Listen, Volume, Time, Playlist

Creation (2nd Tier)

Record, Capture, New, Create, Add, Queue, Private, Playlist

Discovery (3rd Tier)

Explore, Trending, Music, Podcast, Radio, Suggested, Search

Sharing (3rd Tier)

Embed, Widget, Email, Repost, Like, Public

Networking (3rd Tier)

Follow, Subscribe, Watch, Group, Message, Comment

Reporting (4th Tier)

Analytics, Statistics, Feedback, Block, Mute, Help, Satisfaction, Understanding

Addressing the challenges

Using the principles stated above, I will play around with some of the challenges and attempt to devise potential ideas on how to meet those challenges. I posit methods which are onsite (on SoundCloud’s platforms) and offsite (external comms and entities). Again, I reiterate that I’m not formally educated on SoundCloud’s existing brand/product strategies, so there may be overlap or redundancy with what SoundCloud is already pursuing, or perhaps there are points where the ideas offered aren’t relevant or possible to achieve.

Challenge #1: “Encourage growth”

Encourage new users to sign up and existing users to increase engagement

Onsite:

• Make signup option more prominent across non-member touch-points (home page, explore page, user page, embedded widgets, etc.)
• Analyse existing user behaviour to build up user personas; detect if user is particular persona to target communications to educate and encourage specific features and behaviours
• Detail on official blog (or other related blogs) methods that users can use SoundCloud for marketing and promotional purposes

Offsite:

• Support content partners and key personalities/users as PR advocates/evangelists
• Run advertising targeting specific user personas/markets with related features of SoundCloud

Further development:

Analyse user data to build personas, then target those personas with communications about relevant product features.

Theoretically speaking, let’s say our user research has defined 5 key user personas (and each individual user profile could have multiple user personas):

• Casual Listeners (incl. unregistered users)
  These are listeners who listen to audio on SoundCloud via shares (e.g. news feed post, embedded widget, etc.). Playback is the primary principle at play, but Discovery can apply too.
• Heavy Listeners
  These are registered users who use SoundCloud as a primary source for audio consumption. Their behaviours are primarily marked by following other users, creating playlists and commenting audio. Playback, Discovery, Sharing and Networking are all equally important.
• Creators
  These are users who are active in submitting audio to the SoundCloud servers. Creation is the primary principle.
• Marketers
  These users use SoundCloud for Sharing, Networking and Reporting functions — they are either promoting users or the audio itself and looking for statistics that may inform business decisions.
• Collaborators
  These are often creators/marketers who are looking to team up with others for the sake of creating new audio together. Storage, Networking and Sharing principles factor.

Here are some simplified examples of user profiles with their persona combinations, and how those personas may influence the types of targeted comms:

Gary is an 18–25 year old male and fan of contemporary music. He enjoys a number of different genres and has a few favourite artists whose career he has been following for a while. Gary enjoys using SoundCloud to search for new songs and remixes by his favourite artists. Gary frequently likes, reposts and shares music to his social network feeds. He also likes to create playlists for different listening situations: work, exercising, parties, etc.

I’d class Gary as a Heavy Listener. In that sense, I’d be pushing comms that emphasised product features relating to Discovery (featured artists, genres; playback on mobile), Networking (abilities to connect to favourite artists); and Sharing.

Annabel is a 30–40 year old female who works in the music industry as a music promoter. She manages a number of artists and as such promotes their material through a label account on SoundCloud. She frequently likes and reposts her affiliated artists’ content, as well as uploading preview and full tracks of their new releases. She has a paid SoundCloud Pro account and uses the analytics to track what audio gets played by geographic location, which helps inform tour date planning. Because the label she works for is quite reputable, she often receives submissions via the Dropbox and messaging system from aspiring musicians who wish to be represented.

Annabel would be primarily a Marketer, but have elements of a Creator and a Heavy Listener. Principles Sharing and Reporting could factor largely as could also Networking to allow her to connect to her signed and unsigned artists. This particular user type could help to inspire new and/or improved product features regarding analytics, record label development, tour advertising/planning and so forth.

Douglas runs a conspiracy theory humour website with a friend as a hobby and they frequently create funny podcasts debating and lambasting the latest conspiracy theories in relation to world events and developments. They have a small but dedicated audience of listeners who enjoy their irreverent amateur humour, and those listeners often comment frequently. Doug is not famous nor does he have a paid account yet, but he enjoy seeing the likes, reposts and comments statistics increase each day. Doug and his pal often collaborate with other persons online (often the more dedicated of his audience, plus other amateur humorists) via the messaging system, to organise Skype interviews for the next podcast.

I’d class Douglas as a Creator foremost and also a Collaborator. Because he doesn’t have a paid account, it may be hard to detect if he is a Marketer (or at least interested in in-depth statistics) but I’d imagine most people who create would be interested in detailed statistics about the playback behaviours of their audience. With each new follow they gain, it could inspire Doug and his friend to quit their day jobs and produce the podcast full time, provided there was monetised incentive to justify such a change. Converting Doug into a paid account user because of the extra marketing features may prove fruitful. Additionally, adding new product features (i.e. monetisation, via shared advertising revenue or ability to promote audio in explore section) to allow Doug to gain prominence in the Discovery/Explore/Stream feeds and/or to convert Doug to a paid subscriber may encourage increased engagement with the platform. An invested/paid user is often a more active and vocal one.

Challenge #2: “Enrich brand/product awareness and recognition”

Encourage activity through product design and communicate to existing and new users how and why to engage with SoundCloud

Onsite:

• Run usability tests to understand user behaviour and enhance existing product features to limit any negative points of interaction and user/usage attenuation (drop-offs)
• Focus on communicating the cultural value of SoundCloud’s service with targeted product offerings, e.g. rather than only advertise the literal product itself, advertise the possibilities at a user’s fingertips in relation to the SoundCloud products (app, website, etc.)
• Develop further product offerings that enhance SoundCloud’s cultural value as the single most important audio hosting platform: monetisation, audio transcription, audio collaboration, legal remixing opportunities, etc.

Offsite:

• Advertising can highlight and inform audience of specific features, based on the target market, e.g. music industry sites would target creators and managers/labels, marketing sites would target media marketers/promoters, etc.
• Take communications of cultural value with product to external channels

Challenge #3: “More people use SoundCloud than are aware of it”

Raise awareness of SoundCloud brand and product offering, especially on touch-points direct to all consumers, e.g. share widgets

Onsite:

• Emphasise SoundCloud branding on internal and external public-facing touch-points (embedded widgets, social network feeds — Facebook OpenGraph and Twitter cards, etc.)

Offsite:

• Run campaigns about SoundCloud through offsite channels to target users who listen to music. Emphasise Discovery and Networking principles of SC by showcasing popular genres/artists on SC and that audience can follow them for more original or recommended material

Challenge #4: “The product is the brand is the product is the…”

Align product offering with brand communications (and vice versa) and address any significant changes or differences that may occur before/after public perception

Onsite:

• Assess every new product feature offering and balance it based on what there was available previously and/or how it has/may change perception
• Research: surveys, analytics, market research, A/B testing, post-release feedback

Offsite:

• Before a new/changed feature is launched, precede with adequate communications through offsite channels to notify users of the benefits to additions/changes

Taking a couple of the above challenges and ideas, I explore them in a bit more detail than the bullet points above allow:

Further development:

Research product perceptions of existing and requested features and communicate effectively to the market

This relies on significant research resources in the form of surveys and product testing during development. Once a product/feature has been deployed, continued research in the form of capturing usage statistics is important. Also important is to qualify/quantify design decisions by doing A/B tests with the interface and post-release user surveys in order to gauge how best and how prominent the visual and interactive language needs to be.

For instance, let’s take the SoundCloud homepage as an example (remember, this was written in 2014):

The homepage is a promotional tool which acts as the face of the brand and the product. At the moment the homepage has emphasis on Discovery — promoting artists and their audio through nice photography, explore button and the playback widget. At the bottom a CTA to download the mobile app is present.

The homepage is super basic: it’s only really doing those 2 things stated above. There’s currently no emphasis on new user signups, which is strange considering that you can only see the homepage if you are not a registered user. The discovery emphasis is large with image, copy and interactive CTA encouraging users to explore the audio on SoundCloud, however the audio player/waveform itself is displayed beneath the fold.

My suggestion would be to equalise the three goals (explore, growth and playback) combined into the one space:

• Homepage has a full page photo of artist with visible audio waveform. Language talks of finding audio/artists (explore), or following artists/uploading your own audio (user sign up; growth)
• Alternatively homepage could have slideshow which alternates between promoting other artists/audio (explore), to uploading sounds and following users (user sign up, content upload; growth)
• If you’re visiting via mobile web browser, sniff the user-agent to display depending on Android/iOS which displays information about the app in question, underneath main message (either before fold or underneath)

Either way, having space to explain more about each feature (explore, playback, storage) could help to convert a new user. Since this homepage is only visible for unregistered users, having a brief outline at the top of the page to then provide more explanation of SoundCloud and its usage could prove helpful. Adequate research in the design phase before and after should determine that.

Communications Epochs

I define a period of a brand’s emphasised key messaging a “communications epoch” (or “key messaging dynasty”) — it’s also a completely arbitrary term I’ve just made up. A communications epoch is a period of time in which a brand has a select number of key messages that are emphasised — think of Nike’s “Just Do It” as a communications epoch. It’s a wide swathe of time (could be 1 year, could be 25 years!) in which the brand communications employed reference particular key messages and drive it home through repetition, iteration and remixing.

Much like a brand’s logo, a communications epoch needs to be defined by a consistent maxim that invokes its spirit to the market and beyond. It should be short and succinct, made to inspire those who are already involved and inspire those who aren’t to get involved. The responsibility I emphasise to this concept is large, but I think its content should be more an illustration of possibility than a literal statement, as there is power in the audience’s imagination and cooperation to take a concept and run with it.

I’ve thought up a couple of particular maxims that may define a particular communications epoch for SoundCloud, or perhaps just illustrate a direction. Since SoundCloud is still growing, I feel inspired to consider concepts which invoke that young scrappy upstart spirit:

“Don’t stop”

Aside from being a lyric referenced in many popular songs (“Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough” by Michael Jackson; “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey; “Don’t Stop” by Fleetwood Mac) it also references the concept of time, in relation to audio playback and recording. As such, SoundCloud doesn’t support stopping audio (only pausing it), and even used in more inspirational ways (“don’t stop listening”, “don’t stop the music”, “don’t stop learning”, “don’t stop exploring”, “don’t stop dancing”, etc.).

“Don’t Stop” evokes a sense of the infinite, of the unimaginable that exists until it has been pursued to the point of creation. It is open-ended, ripe for an audience to grasp and employ. The strength of this maxim is that it is short, affirmative, active. It’s poetic, energetic, encouraging, and can be communicated in inspirational tones, perfect to create or encourage a cultural zeitgeist. Its simplicity also allows a myriad of ways to communicate various comms messages and strategies without limiting the key emotive qualities, and its short and sharp nature means it’s easy to remember (and easy to parody) further emphasising the connection back to the brand.

Riffing off the concept of “Don’t Stop” a conceptual principle could be “looping”, which can be conveyed by video/animation and audio; statically with visual patterns; physically with kinetic sculptures; dynamically with data. Since the waveform is such a strong SoundCloud brand element, it could be worked into a visual repeating pattern. Looping is also a common concept in music creation, so there are many elements relating to audio that this concept captures.

“Listen to your world”

Obviously a more literal concept, however the world implies something larger, but can also be smaller: your professional musical livelihood; an obscure sub-sub-sub-genre of music that no-one else might know about. The world can also imply not just music but all kinds of captured audio like podcasts, field recordings, samples, etc.

This particular concept can also be adjusted for other key principles. While “listen to your world” would be the main usage, “record your world” could represent the principle Capture, “discover/explore your world”, “share your world”, “connect your world”, etc. The benefits of this maxim is that it is an active statement, one that encourages a person to do or make something in the world — preferably involving SoundCloud!

Let’s Play

Another short and sharp message like “Don’t Stop”, however this one has a more positive upbeat vibe. It could also be mutable like “Listen to your world” by incorporating the principles’ verbs: “Let’s Explore”, “Let’s Share”, “Let’s Connect”.

Going further beyond

It’s my personal opinion that effective marketing needs to achieve a certain level of target market recognition, which relies on cut-through (the ability to be seen above the noise/competitors) and retention (the ability to remember the brand and key messages). I feel this is achieved by simple, stripped down concepts (stated in the “communications epoch” section above) that are then consistently echoed throughout communications and other brand activities (product design, etc.) by conscious and directed messages and mediums.

In its essence SoundCloud is an artistic cultural medium (creation, sharing and distribution of music, knowledge). Being an artistic cultural medium allows availability to artistic collaborations and concepts, ones which may exceed the existing marketplace boundaries and inspire the collective consciousness further.

In some ways creating physical or mental happenings or cultural events (i.e. going “viral”) in which a large group of people are inspired to carry or remix the message (be it platform-based or merely conceptual), who in turn repeat that same message (or the essence of it) to further drive brand recognition and retention would be recommended. It fits into the existing culture of sampling and remixing which has potential to drive a deep connection to brand and attachment to culture.

With the emphasis of SoundCloud being a technological platform, I feel it would be in its interest to find innovative and evocative ways of utilising the platform to illustrate what one can achieve with it, on any particular level, cultural or commercial. The more interesting concept/execution (be it successful or not) may help generate the required amount of cut-through and retention, or at least add to the awareness/enrichment of the experience. This may involve sponsoring internal teams or third-parties to design and deliver applications and creative usages of the SoundCloud platform (that abstract video display merging video art and live data in the SoundCloud foyer is really captivating). These particular commissions could have one or many key principles behind their inception in tandem with the selected communication epoch’s maxim, elegantly integrated into content partners’ strategies which are either online or offline (physical activations that interface with the ‘Cloud, etc.).

Then again, I also live by the particular motto “make cool shit” — so as long as SoundCloud’s doing that, telling people about it, and better managing expectations, you’ve got my approval.