#StartupStory: Get your music heard on SubmitHub

However, for artists, the way of getting your music out there has been flipped with SubmitHub, an online platform that helps artists get in touch with playlist curators in the hopes of including their music on their lists.

After creating the music blog, Indie Shuffle, Jason Grishkoff founded SubmitHub and shares more about the platform that recently received its 12 millionth submission.

Jason Grishkoff, founder of SubmitHub and Indie Shuffle

Can you tell us a bit about SubmitHub?

In a nutshell, SubmitHub connects aspiring and already-established musicians with curators.

These curators come in many shapes and sizes, from music bloggers to Spotify Playlisters to Instagram Influencers. The idea is that if you get enough of them to shout about your new song, you’ll end up picking up some solid momentum and gain a passionate following.

What sparked the idea? How did you get started?

I started a music blog called Indie Shuffle back in 2008 before Spotify and SoundCloud were a thing. For more than a decade now, myself and a team of fellow music-lovers have been writing about our favourite music discoveries, and we’ve built a fairly loyal following in the process. At our peak, the website has generated more than 6 million streams per month.

One of the “downsides” of having a popular music blog was that aspiring artists - worldwide - were reaching out to us on a daily basis asking for us to write about their new music. It got to the point where we were receiving 300+ emails a day, and that just wasn’t possible to manage.

Enter SubmitHub. In late 2015 I decided to code a little side project that would make it way easier for us to sift through and manage our music submissions to Indie Shuffle.

What is the main purpose of SubmitHub?

The platform solves two problems. Firstly, it makes it way easier for curators to manage their submissions. Secondly, it makes it way easier for artists to contact curators who might be interested in their music.

How exactly does SubmitHub work?

The concept is really simple: artists fill out a basic form that includes a link to stream their song and then choose which curators they want to send the song to (based on filters such as “genre” and “country”). We give them all sorts of information about each curator’s behaviour and history so that they can make sure they’re selecting the right folks.

To submit to curators, artists need to use “credits.” Most curators ask for between 1 and 3 credits per submission (credits cost about $0.80/R14 each).

The curators then either “thumb up” (to share it) or “thumb down” (to let them know it wasn’t a fit). If it’s a “thumb up”, they’ll share it with their audience and everyone goes home happy. If it’s a “thumb down”, they need to explain why.

Either way, they get to keep the credits that were used - this is essentially the “carrot on a stick” that incentivizes curators to log in daily and listen to their submissions.

What sort of challenges did you encounter while developing the platform?

Probably the biggest challenge has been around expectation management of users. The core concept of the platform is essentially “Do you like this song enough to share it?” and 90% of the time the answer is “nope”. That means the average artist ends up facing a fair bit of rejection on SubmitHub.

It’s not easy for them, and over the years we’ve put a lot of effort into softening that blow as best as we can. It’s a natural part of the music industry - the competition is absolutely mental, and even the most-successful acts face their fair share of rejection.

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What advice would you give to other aspiring entrepreneurs?

Don’t quit your day job until you’ve got some momentum behind your project.

There’s always spare time in the day to work through a hobby, and dropping everything for a startup idea that hasn’t been tested is a big risk.

Music is a language that all can relate to. What's the difference between SubmitHub and your competitors?

We don’t sell success and share as much data as we can. There are tons of music promotion services out there that essentially sell a product that guarantees listeners. And those aren’t honest services - 99% of the time they’re faking their data or using bots to drive up numbers.

Covid-19 has certainly stirred things up a bit. What message do you have for creatives out there?

Geeeeez that’s a broad one! Being on top of your online game in 2020 is definitely more important than ever. I sincerely hope that musicians will soon be able to return to live performance (their bread and butter financially). Until then, my recommendation is to “throw spaghetti at the wall” until something sticks. There are a million and one ways to promote music online, and SubmitHub is only one of the tools available.

SubmitHub just passed its 12 millionth submission and has more than 1,300 labels, influencers, and playlisters. What's next?

More automation! We’re trying to keep our team lean and small so that we can focus on “playing offence” rather than getting bogged down in too many processes. Automation is core to that, so I spend a lot of my time trying to optimize things as best as possible.

Lastly, what's your ultimate go-to song to lift your mood?

It’s crazy, but...my daughter has been forcing me to listen to lots of kids' music. It’s nice to ground myself in a nursery rhyme or ten on a daily basis!