Soundcloud is a great platform for composers and producers to promote there work, one of the reasons for this being That it is free to upload to, whereas other sites may require you to go through a separate distribution service, such as Distrokid, most of these requiring a fee or a subscription and not uploading instantaneously. Youtube is another great platform for promoting your work, especially through the use of short for videos, or youtube shorts, this allowing producers or composers to do short attention grabbing videos to display there work. Within Soundcloud, you also have the option to attach hashtags and genres to your song. This is great as if someone is looking for a certain style, genre or description, it makes your song far more likely to come up.
One downside with Soundcloud for Beginning producers or composers is that if you are uploading your music with a free version, the sound quality is set at a worse standard compared to those of the paid subscriptions.
I use Soundcloud as it a straight forward means of uploading new music and is free. This plays a big role as a student trying to upload my new music as since I have no profits from my music, I don't have to worry about paying to upload a song with a separate distributor, and to add to this, I can upload music instantly which is great for if I need to evidence my work as it will upload in a matter of seconds, instead of the next day.
Social media is a great way of promoting yourself, and is typically now and industry standard to do so as it is so accessable. Youtube is particularly good for this, as you can follow other trends which have done well for other bands (such as guess the drummer videos). With youtube, you can also release music videos as a second means of consuming your content, as well as other videos like behind the scenes videos to help build traction to newer releases. Instagram is another good means of promoting yourself, especially for gigs and events, as the use of stories are attention grabbing and allow you to display posters for such events to your followers. The music industry utelises this well, as it will be that managers and labels with look for new artists through social media, a change from what used to be the industry standard which was going to events to look for new acts. This is great as managers and labels can see a whole digital portfolio of your work and have more evidence on why they should sign you.