Part 20 - Appendix 1 - experimenting with SubmitHub

 As a follow on to Part 17 - Distribution Strategies I have started to experiment with some of the approaches.

First on my list to throw money at was Playlisting, and to test this I put $50 into the pot with SubmitHub, which is I think the largest of the third party playlisters.

Step 1 was researching playlisters and trying to find ones who had a good overlap with my music, then working out which songs to pitch to which lists.

Step 2 was throwing that all in the bin because SubmitHub had a very different view of my genres than I did and very few of the playlisters I was interested in came up as options.

Nevertheless, I persisted…

Week 1

So I picked 4 songs as starters and sent them through to 4 playlisters. I initially picked a few with fairly high rejection rates because, 1) if you don't believe in your stuff then who will? And 2) start high then taper down is an easier way to navigate the system.

Four rejections later…

Two rejections were basically long winded ways of saying 'not for me'.

One said they liked the song but it was a "a little too rich in textures" for their playlists.

Another said they liked the track but were looking for things with stronger vocal melodies.

Week 2

So I chose another four songs and, for the purposes of science, I chose two new playlists and submitted different songs to the two playlists who'd given me the almost-useful feedback above.

Four rejections later…

The folks who were after less texture last time got a much simpler song, and had this to say, "we are just looking for a little more shifting around of instrumentation adding a little more distinction for the playlists". Hmmm.

And the person who wanted a stronger vocal melody line got a song that is pretty much all about the vocal and melody, to which they helpfully said, "this grandiose and a bit heavier approach and melody, unfortunately, were too hard for me to place." Which was nice.

And the other two were another couple of wordy versions of 'meh, no.'

Week 3

For my next batch I was working to playlists that have a much higher acceptance rate and this time selected five options.

Four rejections later…

One said they don't accept songs over 3 months old and implied I was at fault for not respecting this requirement - a review of all their details on submithub showed no such wording but hey ho.

One was on holiday and so on hold.

The other three were more variants of 'meh, no.' But a theme was beginning to come through.

Week 4

I now had enough credits left for two more pitches.

Because one track was beginning to do the numbers a bit on Spotify (by my own low standards) I sent the same track to both playlisters to see if there was any advantage to trying to build on existing momentum.

Two rejections later…

One complemented the professional sounding vocals and production, the other said they "can hardly hear the musical base". I can only assume they were listening in mono.

Week 5

Those of you following the maths will have noticed that one submission is unaccounted for. The playlister from batch three, who had been on holiday, picked up the track and said, "It will do well in my By The Fire playlist."

Success!

Well, kinda sorta.

The playlist has some very established artists on there, along with some other unknowns, and boast over 5000 saves, but sadly that's the only metric you have to work on apart from some wildly optimistic* numbers in SubmitHub.

But now I can add another number to the data. After one month on the playlist my track had garnered a grand total of 31 listens.

During the same period it had several hundred plays from non-playlist sources.

Conclusion

So that has pretty much wrapped up my experiment with playlisting.

9 tracks.

15 playlisters.

1 placement.

31 plays.

50 dollars.

However amongst the banal platitudes in the feedback I was able to pick out one useful theme, my vocal melodies aren't catchy enough.

That's some actionable feedback that I can go and work on. Not sure it was worth $50 to get, but it's something.

Next month I'm going to try some paid placement and I'll feedback how that goes in due course.

* It's pretty easy to game your average listens numbers on your playlist - pick a few tracks from big names and leave them on the playlist for the duration, then swap out the smaller players and the ones that don't get traction regularly and it will keep the average unrealistically high.