What Do Lil Uzi Vert, Post Malone and Khalid Have In Common? Soundcloud Helped Launch Their Careers

What do recent breakout artists Lil Uzi Vert, Post Malone, Lil Pump, Khalid, Trippie Redd and Lil Peep have in common? Each uploaded their first track to SoundCloud, where it was discovered and shared by a massive community of creators, listeners and curators. 

Soundcloud has clearly helped many musicians find an audience; and quite a few were from genres and scenes that largely did not exist anywhere else.

Soundcloud shared some success stories: 

• Lil Uzi Vert: Joined SoundCloud in 2012 and uploaded his first track to the platform in 2014, which resulted in him quickly gaining a large and loyal following. His notoriety among the community continued to grow and he was awarded the title of SoundCloud’s Most Followed Artist in 2016. In 2017, he went on to achieve mainstream success with #1 album on the Billboard 200 chart.
• Post Malone: Joined SoundCloud in 2014 and released his first single on SoundCloud in March 2015. He began to release singles to his growing community of followers leading up to the smash single, “White Iverson,” released on SoundCloud in August 2015, about 16 months prior to being released to other platforms. Fast forward to today and “Rockstar” is a hit in several countries, sustaining a #1 position on the Hot 100.
• Lil Pump: Joined SoundCloud and uploaded his first track in 2015 with encouragement from bestie Smokepurpp. Most of those tracks still remain only on SoundCloud, with his lead album single, which was released on the platform six months before the full album, amassing over 50M plays. That album went on to reach #3 on the Billboard 200 charts in 2017.
• Khalid: Joined SoundCloud in 2015 and in September of that year uploaded his first track, a ‘rough draft’ of ‘Saved,’ which amassed over 6K plays in just over the first day. Now, two years later, he’s recognized in the industry as one of the top emerging artists in 2017. Just over a month ago, he nodded back to his first days on the platform by uploading another ‘rough draft’ track – the acoustic song, ‘Perfect.’
• Trippie Redd: Joined SoundCloud in 2014 at the age of 15 and shortly after uploaded early collabs with XXXtentacion and DRAM, which helped to propel his follower count on SoundCloud. His biggest single to date has over 2M more plays on SoundCloud compared to plays on other platforms and he continues to leverage the platform – in fact he just dropped a mixtape with LiL Wop only on SoundCloud. His second full-length mixtape recently debuted at #34 on the Billboard albums charts.
• Lil Peep: Joined SoundCloud in 2013 and uploaded his first mixtape in 2015, which was immediately followed by a second mixtape and an EP, all only on SoundCloud and YouTube. Prior to his first full album “Call Me When You’re Sober” was released in August 2017, he joined SoundCloud Premier.