How to find music bloggers, playlisters, and curators to submit songs to
In this article, I share with you some of my favourite ways to find people who might like to share your music with their audience.
Note: Some of the links below are referral links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you make a purchase.
Hype Machine
Hype Machine indexes music blogs and curators around the world, effectively curating music curators. If you manage to get a feature on a blog that’s indexed by HM, your track will at least make it as an entry in the Hype Machine database, and possibly even get you on their chart.
The more blogs that write about your song, the higher it can land on the chart. Hype Machine aggregates all of the articles a given song gets and organises them into a single entry in their database.
You can check out the sites they index here: https://hypem.com/sites
On Submithub, you can actually filter the choice of blogs to submit to ones that are “Listed On Hype Machine”, which makes for a good hype machine stratgey. I would couple this with their “premiere” option, which means that whichever blogs says “yes” first, gets to be the one who shares it first. Any other blog after that can still choose to feature it, but only after the premiere has been and gone.
The Indie Bible
The Indie Bible is a great resource for artists and managers, as it not only gives you a huge database of curators who want new music, but it also has some great guides as to how to approach them and generally navigate the business of music.
Submithub
Submithub is a platform that connects music curators, bloggers, influencers, youtube channels, and playlisters to music artists and reps such as yourself.
Developed and founded by Jason Grishoff, the platform allows you to upload your music and submit to curators that might like to feature your music on their blog / playlist / channel.
Submithub’s standard credits are free to use, and they allocate you 2 every 4 hours. You can also buy premium credits, the main advantage of which are that when you submit to a curator with a premium credit, they have to either listen within 48 hours, or you get the credit back. They are heavily incentivised to listen to premium submissions as that’s how they make their money.
I like to use premium credits as it gives me the guarantee that they will hear the song, which is as good of a guarantee as you can get in this business! Submithub tells me if and when they listened to it, which is way better than blindly sending emails!
Musosoup
I have started using Musosoup more recently and it has proven useful for getting the music to people who are keen to promote it. The process is that you upload the music, then anyone who is interested in promoting it will make an offer to promote it on their channels.
Slightly different business model to Submithub and certainly worth consideration. A major difference here is that your money only goes to those who promote it. Whereas with Submithub you are paying for consideration / listening, with no guarantee of promotion.
MySphera
Not unlike Submithub or Musosoup, MySphera is a submission platform for artists and reps to send music to curators. I recently started a campaign and already got in a couple of playlists. They send you an email each time this happens.
Reddit is a great place to share and discuss music, but you can’t just go in there spamming. Reddit etiquette (aka reddiquette) is a thing. Follow a bunch of cool music sub-reddits and only post in a way that’s compliant with the sub. Different subs have different rules so be respectful, otherwise you’ll get banned on your posts will be deleted.
Here is a list of music subreddits to get started.
Instagram / Twitter
I’ve approached many curators on Instagram and Twitter. I do this simply by using the search tool, searching keywords such as “indie” or “alternative rock”, adding the accounts that show up, and sending a soft DM like “Hello, are you accepting submissions at this time? I have some new music that might be a good fit for you. Thank you.”
Sometimes they will feature an email address on their bio, or a link to their own website and submission form. Be sure to keep and eye out for all of this info!
Before you get started!
Absolutely do not go in for the kill on the first message! Focus on building relationships. Just spamming your link to people is a waste of their time and yours. Your intent is always visible!
Christopher Carvalho runs Unlock Your Sound helping up-and-coming indie artists create and strategically release their music.
