In Use Creating a fan gate Creating your first fan gate is simple enough: Specify which track it is on your SoundCloud page, upload the MP3 file somewhere, add the fan gate link to your track’s “Buy link” in SoundCloud, and you’re done. So let’s have a go and see how easy it is in practice… In theory, this sounds great because it helps you grow your SoundCloud following with little more than a few minutes’ worth of computer work. Whenever someone clicks “Download” on your track in SoundCloud, they’re automatically taken to your Fan gate which has a “Download & Like/Follow” button. (Note that he talks about using Dropbox for your files, but since the video was made the service has server space available to you making it even easier to add your music for downloading.) This video does a good job of explaining it if you’re still a bit confused.
Hypeddit works as a middleman between you and SoundCloud: You upload your track as you normally would on your SoundCloud account, create a special page branded how you want it to be in Hypeddit (they call it a “fan gate”) where you post a link to your file and add some banner artwork, and then you take the provided link to that page and add it to the “download” button on the track’s SoundCloud settings.
But luckily, it’s perfectly possible to do something similar on SoundCloud, which is a great place to host your music anyway, and that’s where Hypeddit comes in: It’s basically “fan gating” (getting a follow/like in return for a download of your track) designed to work with SoundCloud. A lot of DJs used this to grow their audience by uploading exclusive content and setting up these “like gates”, but as of late last year Facebook banned this practice. Until recently, there was a similar trend on Facebook called “like gating”: in exchange for a “like”, you got to download music via an artist’s Facebook page. Enter Hypeddit (pronounced “hyped it”)… An introduction to “fan gating” And a great way to do it is by getting follows and likes on your music from people who download it. It is the “social proof” that makes things happen for you and hopefully gets you noticed, with all the gigs and opportunities that having well-followed and well-liked tracks brings.Īnd while we would never advocate paying for false likes (it’s unethical but just as importantly, it doesn’t work), maximising every single genuine fan of your music is another thing entirely, and is in fact a smart thing to do. If you upload your own original productions to SoundCloud, you know the importance of getting likes and follows on your music.