A couple years ago, after finally releasing my experimental indie debut album, the time had come for me to do what I hated most — promote my own music.
I love making music, and I also love promoting other people’s music (that I like), but I despise promoting my own music. The whole thing feels kind of gross to me for some bizarre reason — like i sold out, or worse yet, sold my soul to the devil himself.
How could I sum up my experimental masterpiece in mere written words? How could I exploit something so personal, and dear to my heart? Would I even be able to handle rejection, or worse yet — no response at all?
I started perusing the web for music blogs who accepted submissions — and almost immediately noticed that many of these blogs were also accepting submissions via a platform called SubmitHub — and some only accepting submissions through this service.
I’m not going to lie, my shit radar immediately began to sound its alarm upon this realization. the whole idea pissed me off a bit for some weird reason. I have no idea why, it just did.
I remember thinking to myself: “Fuck these SubmitHub blogs!”
However, after emailing my album to over a hundred music blogs and college radio stations, and then spending over $200 on postage — mailing physical copies of my album to blogs and radio stations around the world, and then hearing back from only one outlet, I hit the snooze button on my shit radar and sauntered on over to submithub.com to see for myself what the commotion was all about.
My initial reaction to the submission platform was the strikingly simplistic layout reminiscent of the late 1990s, and also the pale color purple — that seemed to pervade the site. It honestly looked pretty damn legit (shiny websites with lofty claims tend to scare me off), so I said fuck it, and bought a shitload of credits to try my hand.
Honestly, at the time — the bulk discount got me.
I submitted my favorite track to around forty blogs, and to my surprise, received feedback from nearly all of them.
The responses were initially quite hard to stomach, but it was apparent they had at least listened to the track and put some thought into their critique, which made me feel a little bit better about the whole thing.
Two of the blogs accepted my track — and included it in blog posts with a slew of other artist’s tracks. At first this bummed me out a bit that they didn’t feature my track by itself, or at least with a couple other solid tracks. However, I’ve come to find that this really just depends on the blog, because since then, several blogs have featured many of Santa Rosa Records’ other tracks in a more intimate, and thought provoking way — which is much cooler of them than just stuffing a shitload of track embeds into a single blog post accompanied by a sentence or two, and calling it good. This practice should come to an end IMHO.
Subsequently following this initial semi-successful experience with SubmitHub, I decided to take a gander behind the curtain, so I signed up my very own indie music label & blog with the submission service.
We have and always will accept music submissions via email (a totally free option), just don’t expect to hear back from us. We receive over a hundred submissions every day, so it’s become nearly impossible for us to acknowledge each and every track that comes our way, that is, unless you submit your music to us via SubmitHub.
With this submission service, you’re practically guarandamnteed a response.
Why? You may ask. Well, simply because you pay us to take an extra moment of our precious time to verbalize in coherent written words what we like and don’t like about each and every track sent to us via this platform. It’s as simple as that.
If you cannot handle constructive criticism or are very easily offended, then I highly discourage you from using SubmitHub. The music blogs using this submission service will not bullshit you. The platform is not for thin-skinned individuals who deem negative feedback — indie artist abuse.
It is, however, good for you lonesome artists out there who are beginning to feel like you’re pitching your music to a brick wall. It’s sometimes good to hear back from a fellow living and breathing human being — telling you that they actually listened to your track, even if their opinion of it is not what you’d like (or were expecting) to hear.
So, if you’re looking for an easier and more efficient way to submit your tracks to music blogs — and don’t mind putting a few bucks behind this endeavor — then SubmitHub is your best bet.
Good music is highly subjective, so please don’t take the feedback too personally.
I must admit though, there really is some horribly palatable music out there. So, if you’re getting absolutely lit up with harsh critical feedback, then perhaps it’s high time for you to change something up.
Merely my $0.02.
Much love. And please, stay cool all you psychedelic dreamers. Your time will come.
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