Reply to Building an audience

I've slowly started gaining some fans over the two years I've been active on SoundCloud. When I started, it was just a place to put some mixes I did to show to other DJs and promoters. Over the past few months, however, I've gotten more serious about producing and have slowly started adding to the list of remixes I have on there, as well as working on some original mixes I'm going to be adding pretty soon.

How have some of you gone on to reach as many listeners as possible without resorting to spamming them? I know that most places say to make good music and people will naturally share it with others, but I don't want to wait for luck to play its hand.

Maybe I'm putting too much importance in the numbers game, but I really just want to get my music out there. It's a big motivation to produce more when you see that others are enjoying it. I offer everything for free, so the end goal isn't fame or money. I really just want to grow as a producer and share my work with as many people as possible.