Zero plays on SubmitHub

Recently, I put a marketing plan together (ads, social media, playlisting etc) to try and start breaking as an artist.

For playlisting, the first campaign with SubmitHub just finished and I'm in the zero approval club! That's 38 submissions (80ish credits) and a big fat ZERO in terms of approvals.

I'm somewhat proud of the fact that every single person denied my song 😂. Here's the track I submitted:

The genre is electro indie pop (or some similar variant of that). My approach was to go through every curator, listen to their playlists and make sure I was a good fit.

In terms of feedback I received...

• Many said the song was nice, with good to very good vocals and quite good production.
• Some thought it was the wrong style for them.
• Some felt it was overall too repetitive / not dynamic enough.

To be fair, I agree with their point about it not being dynamic enough. This is a very old song I did 5 years ago. I was on the fence to release this song because I also felt that way too (just in terms of it being an amazing song that could turn into bonafide hit), but still thought it was a nice catchy tune that did get pretty good feedback when I tested it with people.

Since I'm coming from nothing (zero listeners, zero followers) I decided to put my not strongest song out first and save some of my better ones as I gain some steam. So that's why I did go ahead with this release first.

Anyway nonetheless, that's my way of saying I do agree with a good chunk of their feedback. I still think its a decent enough song, but apparently not amazing (at least in their eyes).

Perhaps the bottom line is this song is just not good enough. Or it could be my style isn't right for the platform, or I'm too unique/nostalgic for their tastes. Whatever the case is I certainly am nowhere near that 20% acceptance rate number that is quoted on their website.

This is a heads-up to all that a 0% approval rate is totally possible. I have a budget, so I'm going to do a small follow-up test run on Playlist Push just to see how it goes, but not expecting any approvals there, but we'll see. Most of my time/effort/money is going to go to community building, social media and ads.

Ads, although expensive, have been more effective, and I'm at least racking up a few streams, followers there. About ~300-500 streams at this point after a few days. I'm trying to build momentum for my future releases which I feel a lot better about. If i cross 1000 streams for this first song I'll be stoked.

Nonetheless, it's a grind, and I'm gonna just keep chipping away.

SubmitHub isn't the end all be all. Everything else so far for me has been more fruitful. If you're in the zero approval club like me, take in their feedback, improve and keep on trucking with other, diversified marketing efforts!