Bachka Batjargel was finally ready.
He made his account several weeks prior to his first ever release. He wanted to feel better about himself and actually release a song. He had some songs in his personal “vault” that he wanted to show off to a few of his friends.
And he was ready.
It was 2017. He had watched two other rappers start to blow up on SoundCloud. So, he got it. It was surprisingly easy to sign up and use. He made his account, uploaded his song and showed it to five of his friends.
When he woke up the next day, his upload had 30 streams. He remembers feeling surprised, but the extra 25 streams was a big enough push to make him want to keep going. He remembers asking himself:
“What’s stopping me from uploading more?”
Bachka, Rap artist
Bachka, a Ball State third-year student who uses his first name as his stage name, is one of more than 30 million artists who have uploaded music to SoundCloud. SoundCloud was founded in 2008 as an online platform where independent artists could upload their music and listeners could indulge in their favorite artists while discovering lesser known musicians.
There have been several artists who accelerated their careers through uploading their music on SoundCloud. One example of this is Symere Woods, actually known as Lil Uzi Vert.
Lil Uzi Vert started uploading music to their SoundCloud account in 2014. By 2016, they were the most followed artist on the platform.
Germaine “B Swift” Russell, an Assistant Program Director at WHHH HOT 100.9 based out of Indianapolis, has been working with radio for a little over 18 years. He views SoundCloud as a complete gamechanger for the music industry.
“Some of the biggest songs have started on SoundCloud and other sites that eventually fell in our laps and grew to a hit,” he says.
Rapper Fetty Wap’s 2014 song “Trap Queen” is just one example of a song that was originally uploaded to SoundCloud and later took off, having success on the radio.
Since uploading his first song, Bachka has released seven albums and expanded his music to platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. His most successful song reached over 800,000 streams on Spotify alone. He credits the high amount of streams to a TikTok audio that was trending at the time.
“It’s because I sampled [the audio], ‘I just want to be the one you love,’ which was around the time that it started blowing up,” Bachka explains. “Because of that, people would search for the title of ‘I just want to be the one you love’ and I had a [trilogy of albums named that.] Next thing you know, people started going to that song.”
Social media apps such as TikTok play a big role within the music industry. B Swift says he uses apps like TikTok to decide what to play on the radio.
“Research is the biggest thing,” B Swift says. “I’m on Shazam, TikTok, [and] Billboards Media Base.” An example of when B Swift utilized his tools was when the song “Bad Habit” by Steve Lacy started to rise in popularity. He had never heard the song, but noticed it was number one on Shazam’s Indianapolis Charts.
“At that point, it was like ‘Yo we are missing something here. Let’s support it,’” B Swift recalls saying. “It took me doing some research and seeing how real this song is before even bringing it up for any type of play.”
Certain music apps have features that can help independent artists get discovered. One example of this is Spotify.
Spotify crafts playlists that feature independent artists. Bachka has utilized Spotify to push his music out to a wider audience and believes it’s the streaming platform that has given him the most success.
“Whenever you do make a release, they automatically send out an email telling [listeners] you have a new release and what not,” he says. “There’s an option on Spotify to actually submit your songs to playlist curators. If they really enjoy what they’re hearing, they can actually submit [your song] to big playlists by Spotify.”
Kieran Simmer, a Ball State senior who goes by BlueGiraffeKid, is a producer who got his start on SoundCloud. Similar to Bachka, he has since expanded his work to streaming sites like Spotify and Apple Music.
BlueGiraffeKid first became interested in music when he began taking drum lessons at age 10. At 12 years old, he started producing music and hasn’t stopped since. Aside from producing music, he’s also a part of a group called Hyphy and Holy.
The group travels around to different churches in the Indiana area and holds Christian hip-hop shows and events. In the past, Hyphy and Holy has performed at places like MadJax in Muncie and various churches near the Muncie and Anderson area.
While BlueGiraffeKid has found success in producing music and hosting events, he feels like there’s a stigma associated with starting a music career on SoundCloud.
There’s a certain term for this stigma: SoundCloud rapper.
“SoundCloud rapper has become synonymous with trash,” he says. “I think whenever I hear ‘SoundCloud rapper’, I just think of kids in high school.”
BlueGiraffeKid knows the typical comments people make when someone reveals they make rap music on SoundCloud.
“Oh, you’re not a professional.”
“You’re not doing your stuff right.”
“There’s a level of saying it’s a beginner thing and that isn’t wrong,” he says. “It doesn’t seem like you’re official if you put yourself on there. That’s where the trash stigma comes from. Because anyone can do it. It’s not impressive anymore.”
Despite the stigma, BlueGiraffeKid still vouches for SoundCloud and its accessibility and possibility of discovery.
SoundCloud is still getting traffic. According to SimilarWeb, a company that specializes in website engagement and analytics, the platform had over 121 million visits alone in August 2022.
“I think if you’re putting your music on Spotify and Apple Music, you should also put your music on SoundCloud because people listen to that,” BlueGiraffeKid says. “For years, that’s all I listened to.”
Moving forward, BlueGiraffeKid wants to make producing music into his full time career.
“One of the most beautiful things about music is that it’s a universal language, if I make a song and you speak a different language, you might not know what the song is saying, but you can still dance to it.”
BlueGiraffeKid, Producer
For Bachka, his goal with music is to collaborate with other creators more and keep making music he’s proud of. If making a career off music isn’t possible, he’d still love to make music on the side.
B Swift advises any artist struggling to break out to just do what’s best for them.
“Everybody’s journey is different,” he says. “Don’t give up. Pay attention to all the tools that you have for free that give you information and help you build stories.”
To learn more about Bachka and his music, listeners can find him on Instagram at @bachka317. To learn more about BlueGiraffeKid and his music, listeners can find him on Instagram at @bluegiraffekid.
Sources: SoundCloud Newsroom, SoundCloud, Spotify for Artists, SimilarWeb
