I’m a SubmitHub curator, and Jason Grishkoff is the founder of SubmitHub. In this chat we talk about how SubmitHub was started, how it works behind the scenes, and how artists can improve their chances when using the platform. If you aren’t familiar with SubmitHub, basically its a tool for artists to market their music, by making it super easy for artists to pitch their songs to Spotify playlists, blogs, YouTube channels and more.
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Important Points:
Every song is unique, but when you’re submitting and pitching your music in SubmitHub, Jason reminds artists to keep these things in mind: (1) Capture emotions that truly speak to your listeners. (2) Have a clear understanding of what your music is all about from the get-go.
Both Andrew and Jason encourage listeners to avoid the counterstrike reference of spray and pray in SubmitHub, instead, invest in making sure to meet the ideal genre match score. Ideally, 10% of the marketing budget can be allocated to SubmitHub.
Jason recommend reaching out to blogs to feature your music can be an efficient alternative to get potential fans and listeners to find you on Google when they search for your music.
Andrew and Jason believe engaging fans is an effective, efficient, and time-worthy initiative. Build relationships with people who can relate and will listen to your music, follow your journey and buy tickets to your show.
Podcast Outline:
[00:50] Jason shared how he worked at Google and how his music blog, Indie Shuffle, was instrumental in his journey to building SubmitHub. – Jason
[02:17] In 2013, Indie Shuffle reached its peak as an independent publisher. Spin Magazine offered Jason $180,000 annually to have advertising control on his blog. – Jason
[04:00] Jason talked about how he moved back to South Africa and found his stay enjoyable. – Jason
[04:26] Jason created SubmitHub to solve the problem of responding to 300 pitches they receive at Indie Shuffle. – Jason
[06:34] Andrew highlighted that failure is always a learning experience. Many big companies value returning employees that failed at a business venture because of their experience.- Andrew
[07:59] Jason makes sure to divide his time well between family life, individual deep work, and collaborative work with his team. – Jason
[12:03] Jason shares the key things to remember when submitting and pitching your music. – Jason
[17:28] Tapping blogs, according to Jason, maybe a cost-efficient way to increase your visibility when potential fans search for your music. – Jason
[20:10] Spotify playlists are great for bumping up your streams and, hopefully, getting placed in editorial playlists. – Jason
[22:15] Jason thinks that a $100 spend on marketing campaigns to generate 50 fans is a reasonable spend. – Jason
[22:52] Andrew agrees with Jason that playlist listeners are not engaged fans. They only listen to your music in the background. – Andrew
[28:18] Jason emphasized how competitive the music landscape is today, especially given the number of platforms available to musicians. Getting heard is constantly a challenge. – Jason
[31:37] Andrew talks about how much work it is for curators to go over the submissions they receive. – Andrew
[32:04] Jason highlights small but intentional features on SubmitHub, reminding artists and guiding them when they submit their music. – Jason
[34:44] Andrew pointed out that everything done on SubmitHub is designed around making sure that artists are getting their fair credit spent. – Andrew
[36:25] Jason pointed out that it’s best to manage your expectations, especially when it comes to rejection. Even big artists like Chainsmokers get rejected on the platform. – Jason
[41:57] Jason coded SubmitHub from scratch using Node.js, MongoDB, and React. – Jason
[46:08] Jason talked about how they sometimes gather information from artists who have been shared by playlists to give them insights into their Spotify data. – Jason
[48:29] Andrew and Jason discussed how some Spotify playlists seem to have been streamed by bots. – Andrew & Jason
[51:43] Jason referenced Shane Harris on how to build genuine connections with real people. – Jason
[55:32] Jason shared how the past six (6) months, Instagram brings traffic to playlists. – Jason
Wise Words:
[04:29] I founded a website called SubmitHub, which was, which was directly related to Indie Shuffle. It was to solve a problem that Indie Shuffle had in around, you know, 2015. We were getting right, 300 email pitches a day, and I had to figure out a way around it. So yeah, that’s where Submithub was born. – Jason
[06:34] I guess the cool thing is that even if you left and failed, they’d probably think it was just like a super valuable experience. So I’m a mechanical engineer by day. And it’s common for people to come back. They leave because they have a cool business idea. They try it and fail, and employers find that more valuable because like, they have this, all this business experience. And it’s, it’s just, it’s a different world when you’re trying to make it on your own. – Andrew
[12:50] I think a big mistake that a lot of people make when they come onto SubmitHub is to use a counterstrike reference spray and pray right. And then, on the site, they pull the trigger and hope something hits. But the reality is by just loosely throwing your credits out there, you’re probably wasting them because you’re not paying attention to whether that curator is going to like your style of music or is even worth it. – Jason
[17:28] Blogs might not have as many listeners, but when someone writes about your song, it shows up on Google. And it gives you some press to share with your existing fan base. It gives you some press to share with potential bookings. It’s got a much longer lifespan, and it can’t really be bought. – Jason
Resources Mentioned:
What is SubmitHub?
SubmitHub is a platform that connects music artists with music curators in a way that makes it easier and more transparent for everyone involved. Artists can pay $0.8-$3 per submission depending on the curator and how many credits are purchased at a time, and curators must either approve the song or reject it with feedback.
For more information on SubmitHub and how it compares to PlaylistPush (and a $600 experiment I ran using them), check out this post I did here: https://musicgrowthmachine.com/submithub-vs-playlist-push-which-is-better/
I also made a video showing how to best utilize SubmitHub as a music artist.
