What is a download gate? Download gates are online tools that work like a barter system for artists, it allows you to share something in return for social fanbase growth. For a musician, it can exponentially grow your followers organically rather than how it would grow with just a plain old free download!
The initial days of download gates were quite tedious, Click. Dj and Hive were among the first gate sites to streamline the process. The founders exploited the opportunity of artists prioritizing platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and SoundCloud over Facebook. The big drawback of these platforms was that they offered ONLY MP3 downloads in exchange for Instagram, YouTube, or Soundcloud followers.
We’ve come a long way since then, gates have become a more advanced offering, not just MP3 but also any type of file (music or otherwise) – access to a specific website – for single or multiple social interactions – great statistics for insights (usually in paid gates). This has aided a new perspective to the promotion of music and the growth of the SoundCloud repost network. Here are 4 handpicked download gates to help every aspiring artist grow his followers.
HYPEDDIT
Hypeddit is an online toolbox for sharing music and promoting music. Together, our tools help you with getting your music heard, making your music more viral, and acquiring more fans and followers. A very promising feature, ‘Top 100 Charts” which enables you to accumulate plays provided as you climb up their charts.
This site hosts a really great set of online FREE TOOLS that also aid your music more likely to be heard across a larger audience.
The main features of Hypeddit are
- SoundCloud follow
- SoundCloud repost and comment
- Youtube account subscribe
- YouTube video comment
- Instagram follow
- Twitter follow
- Facebook authentification
- Email collection
- Spotify account/ playlist follow
- Auto promotion through Top 100 charts
On the price front, Hypeddit has a free plan that works great for most artists’ needs. The free plan allows you to as many download gates as you please. The benefit, for every download the artist gets 1 follower across a limited option of widely used platforms, which is not really too bad versus the pro plan which costs $9/month offering 3 followers per download and access to all social media platforms. Artists can further promote their music with automated e-mails to their fans.
The service greatly aids budding artists who are looking to grow their fanbase with great potential with minimal economics and effort.
CLICK.DJ
Click.DJ is one of the original players of the download gate game. From a rigid tool that simply maximized download conversions but has now proven to be a handy tool for artists’. It helps build a grow your followers across platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Soundcloud, Twitter, Spotify, and E-mail. The tool offers Advanced Statistics, Advanced Follower Map, and In-Depth Activity Feed which is quite great for artists’
Some of the features Click.DJ offer are
- SoundCloud follow
- SoundCloud repost and comment (with an option to hide comment on the download page)
- Spotify account follow and track like
- YouTube video like and comment
- YouTube channel subscribe
- Facebook follow
- Twitter follow
Click.DJ offers a free package that allows artists’ to have up to 5 download pages and access to 25 URL Gates, which is not too bad for some who’s just starting out but wouldn’t work for a more serious artist who would have to probably got for the paid variant at $9.99/month or $45/year giving you access to unlimited download pages and gates as well as automatic follow sync, premium follower tools, and export follower emails.
It offers a very easy and intuitive UI and makes it quite easy to setup a download gate for your music, this is a great advantage for someone who has little to no experience at creating such sites.
TONEDEN.IO
Founded in 2014, Toneden.io has been a really polished tool to use for download gates and social media brand growth. They offer services like automated social ads, personalized messaging for Facebook Messenger and a lot of free Growth tools to increase your fanbase. Apart from being a great tool for artists’ & creators but also for Live event ticketing and E-commerce businesses that are looking to grow their customer base.
Features offered by Toneden.io are
- SoundCloud follow
- SoundCloud repost and comment (with an option to hide comment on the download page)
- Spotify account follow
- Spotify track save/pre-save
- Spotify track play
- YouTube channel subscribe
- Facebook follow and share
- Twitter follow
Toneden.io goes beyond on their service delivery for artists and creators alike, and the best part about all this is it’s completely FREE! They also offer a ton of great knowledge on understanding marketing and algorithms of popular media platforms in their blog. Now with the introduction of ‘Streamlinks‘ which is an RSVP gate for artist streams, they have now entered the online Livestream market to further help artists grow their followers. To top it off, they also offer great insights into the download gates or purchases to help you target or understand your audience better.
THE HUSK
The Husk” is the only fan-gate platform available on the internet that pays out royalties. It’s a completely free service that allows and artist or creator to monetize their work with timely auto-payments from The Husk on the first of every month! It has one of the easiest interfaces which helps speed up setting up gates making it very easy for those with lesser knowledge.
The Husk” offers great features like
- Easy creation & editing of Gates
- Comprehensive statistic overview
- Monetization and Timely Payments
- Great support from the service team
- Unlimited gates and third-party app link.
- Soundcloud Follows and Repost
The Husk has zero charges or membership fees, making it extremely accessible to everyone! Every artist makes $0.1 for each follower, making the only focus growth of the artist’s fanbase. The only drawback that The Husk posses is it that it is integrated only with Soundcloud unlike other gates and this might narrow the artist fanbase to only Soundcloud users and cripple flexibility. But for a bedroom producer who releases on Soundcloud, this is ana amazing tool to monetize your music with the least amount of hassles!
They recently introduced a collaborative service with The Husk called ‘Grow with Us’. An advertising tool made by The Husk team aimed at enabling music growth with first of its kind service.
The download gates mentioned in this blog are extremely accessible for anyone and can easily help you grow your brand with great efficiency and also understand the market and analytics behind the marketing of your own music. If you have a personal favorite that you’d like to recommend to us, drop it in the comments!
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I have been in the entertainment business for more than a decade. From playing in clubs to managing them and from being a part of competitions to judging them, I’ve come a long way in being on both sides of the industry. A headstrong personality to deal with and a perfectionist. I monitor DJ student progress, help them find placements, and brand building activities.
