More often than not, new artists will think that making good music will equate to being successful. That’s only half of the truth – the other half is marketing.
Think of it this way. You could be making some of the best music ever, but if nobody knows about it, then that’s not going to lead to a successful career. That’s why it’s crucial that independent artists know more and more about the tools that can get their music in front of people who may become their biggest fans one day. And, one of the easiest ways to do that is with a smartlink – something that today’s interviewee knows quite a bit about.
We recently discussed Soundplate on the site – it’s just one of the many incredible tools out there that you can use to level up your marketing. They’ve got a smartlink creator, a playlist submission hub, and a truly unique mindset: before Soundplate was a marketing platform, it was a record label uplifting independent artists (and they still do that, to this day).
Because of their experience with underground artists, we figured they would be a great team to speak with. In this interview, we got to sit down with Matt Benn from Soundplate and pick his brain a bit on how you as an independent can boost your marketing abilities using tools like smartlinks. While we discuss a bit of Soundplate’s specific features in this interview, note that everything in here is going to be crucial for you even if you aren’t a Soundplate user (but we do recommend you at the very least check them out). Read on to learn how you can get more clicks on your music, and how you can turn those clicks into loyal followers.
First, for producers just starting out, what role should smartlinks play in an overall music marketing strategy?
A smart link is a simple page that lets listeners choose which streaming platform they want to use. If you only share a single link to Spotify, you lose every potential fan who uses Apple Music, YouTube, or Deezer. For a new artist, it is the best way to make sure that none of your promotion is wasted.
Artists should view their smart link as the central hub for their release campaign, all promo should drive to that link.
With every click to a smart link, you gain valuable data and insights into your fanbase which can help improve your future marketing and accelerate your growth as an artist.
Why is it important for artists to think about conversion when sharing links, and how can Soundplate help producers turn casual listeners into long-term fans?
I like to think of “Conversion” as the act of turning a one-time listener into a fan.
Getting a stream or track download is good, but getting an email address, a pre-save, selling some merch or show tickets is even better.
Soundplate Clicks has tools which help with all of this, for example you can use geo-targeted event promotion to show fans that you have a show coming up in their city, right at the moment where they have shown interest in your music by visiting your smart link. It can turn a casual click into a ticket sale or a long-term connection.
What differentiates Soundplate’s smartlinks from other link-in-bio or smartlink platforms?
Soundplate started life as an independent record label and over 10 years later, we are still running the label and supporting independent artists. We understand the grind of an indie artist because we live it every day.
All of the different smart link platforms have slightly different feature sets. I could talk for hours about our unique features like playlist unlock codes (for more free playlist submissions), artist pages, demo management for labels, password protected links for super-fans but ultimately the difference is our culture and our team.
Most music tech companies are made for investors and to extract the maximum amount of money from artists. We are completely self-funded and truly built to help artists. As a small independent team, we adapt and launch new features very quickly and offer a much more personal support experience.
Artists that subscribe to our pro plan, generally stick with us for a very long time because they know they can always get fast, human support and that the product is always being maintained and improved.
It’s easy to say that you are built to help artists, but harder to back up. Outside of Soundplate Clicks, we have a whole suite of completely free tools for artists like our playlist submission system, song analyzer tools,cover artwork designer and more. We have always been working to power independent music.
You’re also a major playlist submission platform. Does that service interact at all with your smartlink service?
The playlist submission platform is completely free for all artists to use, no account is required and it’s open to everyone.
Thousands of artists use the platform every day to submit their songs to playlists. Artists are limited to a small number of submissions per day to help prevent curators getting overwhelmed or spammed.
Pro users of Soundplate Clicks can generate one ‘unlock code’ per day which allows them a few more submissions each day after they hit the limit.
The playlist submission tool is one of many tools available to artists on Soundplate, It’s all part of a complete toolkit we are building to help musicians and labels manage everything in one place.
What types of insights can artists gain from using Soundplate Clicks, and how do you portray that data without overwhelming the user?
We completely redesigned our dashboard in 2025 specifically to help make data easier to act on.
We believe data should be actionable not just pretty graphs (although our graphs are very pretty!).
The dashboard shows live detailed stats, you can find out where your fans are, what platform they are finding you on, which services they prefer to listen to your music on and much more. We then help you use this data to improve your marketing, for example you can re-order the platforms on your links based on the amount of clicks each platform is getting in a single click or use location data to improve your ad campaigns or tour routing.
Pro users can also set up custom email reports which are sent weekly with a roundup of all the important stats and data from the previous week on the platform.
Lastly, what advice would you give producers trying to build momentum without large marketing budgets and how can Soundplate help get them there?
Consistency and hard work beats budget every time.
Make use of our free plan on Soundplate Clicks and all our free tools, use affordable options for content like the social media image generator on clicks or MusicTickers.com for animations.
When you are thinking about promotion, try to give your fans a true insight into you and your creative process. Oftentimes authentic content that really shows off who you are as an artist will perform better than polished, high-budget video or social content.
Use our free playlist submission system to get the music heard and use a Smart Link to capture every single piece of data from the traffic you generate. This can help you inform future marketing decisions and improve your targeting.
Finally, start curating your own playlist, this can be a brilliant way to network with other artists while promoting your own music. With our submission system, each time an artist wants to send you music to consider, they have to follow you first. You grow while networking and informing the algorithm of your taste and similar artists to your sound which can help with discovery.
The post How To Turn Clicks into Fans: An Interview with the Soundplate Team appeared first on Magnetic Magazine.