Tips For Getting More Hits With Your Mixes

Hey Guys,

Just having a stroll through the Mixes Forum, I've noticed a lot of fairly ambiguous postings, so here's a few tips for getting more hits for your mixes:

Obvious Stuff:

- If its a SoundCloud or MixCloud Link, use the embedded players (check this STICKY for more info on how to embed SoundCloud) That way members can have a listen right here on DJTT rather than having to divert over to SoundCloud. Note: Please do not add an embedded player to your sig, you will be asked to change it to a regular hyperlink.

- Clearly state the Genre & Style of your mix: Is it a Mix? Mashup? Controllerism Routine? All this is valuable information. Also stating the Genre in the title can help. E.G. My Feb Mini-Mix [Electro House]

Edit: We have added a required genre prefix.

- Tracklists: Ok so most likely you will have the tracklist on the mix page, but posting your tracklist here as well will save people a lot of time. You will find that a lot of members may spot one track in your mix and listen because of that, so this is highly recommended!

- 10/15 Minute Mini Mixes: Most of the time these are from DJ's new to the game. This is perfectly fine, just realise that if you state stuff like "Hey, this is my first mix, help me improve!" you are definitely going to limit your demographic. Nothing wrong with asking for advice etc, but to be honest a lot of members will steer clear of these (myself included).
Tip: Try replacing "My first Mix" with "My latest Mix". Subtle but effective.

Edit: We now have THIS THREAD dedicated for mixes under 30 minutes.

Advanced:

- After Touch: After you've recorded it is very important to listen to the whole thing yourself to check everything went smoothly. You may have some errant glitches in there or you may have left 3 minutes of silence at the start. Use an audio editing program such as Audacity (Free) to do clean up, trim up the ends and maybe boost the volume etc if necessary. My general rule is i have to be 80% happy with it before unleashing a mix on the world. Put your best foot forward.

- Mix Length & Quality: While it is cool to hear a full 2 hour mix, bear in mind that a lot of punters will download mixes so they can burn them off to disc, so my recommendation would be to keep them between 60 - 79 minutes. Believe me, you will get a lot more downloads this way. Likewise, if the mix is really short, you may actually get plenty of plays but not very many downloads. Remember, even if someone listens for 1 second it still counts as a play in most cases. Downloads mean they like your mix enough to actually spend bandwidth on them, so in my opinion downloads mean more than plays.
As far as quality goes, thats a matter of opinion. Personally, i want folk to download and burn my mixes so i use 320 kbps mp3's, so when they burn them off they sound pretty good on the disc. 192 is fine for your iPod or Walkman, but they sound pretty awful when burned off. SoundCloud users, remember the player is a 128 kbps mp3 version of your mix, so it is definitely a "preview".

- Sharing Is Caring: While we all hate "Mix Spam" there are ways to get your mix some attention without going too far. If you use the groups function on Soundcloud, you can add a mix to up to 75 groups at once, if you choose these groups wisely and "refresh" this can not only get you extra plays but also some fans in the process. Same goes for facebook: add your mix to some groups and let the fans turn your creation viral.

- Cover Art: Whether you just use a stock image or unleash your awesome photoshop skills for this, the most important thing is to make it stand out. An attractive female wearing some headphones is pretty stupid, but seems to grab attention, for example. Check out some of your favourite djs on soundcloud and see how they do it.

Well that just about covers it for the moment guys, if you have any other tips feel free to post them and i'll add them to this list.

Regards, J