What tricks can you use to best submit your music?
Hello everyone-body and welcome to Creators Hustle where we deal with the business of the entertainment industry. I’m Richard Chemaly and today we’re looking at 5 tips to further legendarify your music submissions.
Tip 1: Learn about Embargos
Generally used in news media but extended to the entertainment industry too, embargos allow you to send information, and music, to platforms without giving them the permission to let it go any further before a particular date and time. Kinda like a for your ears only until...clause. Strictly speaking, there’s little you can do to prevent somebody from breaking the embargo but it almost never happens because nobody wants to be “that guy” and platforms who hurt the industry often lose support so there’s incentive to respect an embargo. What it allows you to do is have platforms listen to your track and arrange for interviews or social media campaigns or any cool release plan you can think of...but it gives time to plan it with the platforms who would like your track...so instead of just hearing your track on a couple of platforms throughout release day, you can do 5 or 6 interviews and drive more hype. To embargo is pretty easy. Just clearly label your submission “Embargoed (date) (time). Done
Tip 2: Indicate your availability for interviews
I may talk about interviews too much but they’re important for a couple of reasons. Especially on local platforms, you’re likely to get them because it provides content for the platform. You can score off of converting the platform audience into your audience. Most importantly, you can benefit from double marketing. Not only will you be present for the interview but it will offer a lot more social media potential. The more interviews you score, the increased perceived legitimacy you’ll have too. Yeah it may seem artificial but is it really? You’re in the interview, legitimately and draw whatever legitimacy comes from that, naturally. Anyway, if you’re available for interviews, make sure they know it and even if the interview is far, tech has come a long way.
Tip 3: Develop relationships
If you get a favourable response, make note of it and use it. The industry is small and any opportunity to improve your network is worthwhile. See where collaboration is possible and investigate opportunities. Compiler likes your track but can’t get you an interview? Offer to send them a voice note to play before your track introducing it on their platform. Blog is into your band’s story? Offer them an exclusive behind the scenes video you took while recording. Small gestures to help people out go a long way and good relationships within the industry can only be a good thing.
Tip 4: Don’t embellish and go on about your history
“Award winning that” and “acclaimed artist this” is abused, excessive and hardly gets the attention most people think it does. Yeah, if the artist is well recognised, some platforms would be more likely to give their submissions love but if a compiler needs to rely on the words, “internationally recognised artist” to know that you’re internationally recognised, they’re not great at their job...more likely, if you put that in there, they’ll sense the desperation. The story of the artist is important in the submission but it should rest on the laurels of previous accolades entirely. The submission is about the track being submitted, not the tracks which have already done well. Man’s Not Hot couldn’t even get Big Shaq a tenth of the views for Man Don’t Dance.
Tip 5: Control the follow up
If making good relationships is your aim, pestering compilers with follow ups is not the way forward. It may work for the particular submission but could ruin a future relationship so maintain good balance. That may be tough to suss out...like what is the balance? I’d say that if after one follow up 2 weeks after submission, you still get no love from a particular platform, leave it at that. Better to live to fight another day than to burn bridges because you came across and needy and annoying.
Of course, you could just skip all this and hire a plug to submit your music. If you do that, be sure it’s a plug with actual connections to the industry and not just some dude with a database of expired email addresses. But if you go at it yourself, you should consider everything mentioned in this video.
That’s it for Creator’s Hustle this week. If you like what we do, just share it with your muso friends who may find it useful too. Let us know what else we should deal with in the comments and …
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