How to submit music to promo channels and playlists
Intro
When trying to make it big as an artist, promo channels, playlists and influencers can be a huge help to getting you potential fans by placing your music in front of a new audience in hopes that they will enjoy your music and want to hear more!
So now the step is figuring out where do you want your music to be on? Spotify playlists? Youtube promo channels? Soundcloud Playlists? Blogs?… once you’ve decided on that, it’s then time go get to work and find a way to contact those who run the channels/playlists so you can pitch your music to them.
Searching for different promoters and finding a way to contact them.
You’ve got to find a way to let them know your music exists, emailing/messaging is usually the best way.
Soundcloud Playlists/Channels.
1. Use the search feature on Soundcloud and search for broad terms relating to the style of track you plan to promote ‘ie, dubstep, future bass, trap’
2. Filter your search by either ‘people’ or ‘playlists’
3. Look for those who run a successful playlist or have channels that accept track submissions. You’ll be able to gauge pretty quickly which are artist accounts and which are promotion channels based on the variety of artists on their account.
4. Most promo channels have a contact/submission email on the right sidebar when you click on their profile. If not, there’s still the option to message the page from the mail icon in the top right of their profile.
Spotify Playlists.
1. Use the search feature on Spotify and search for broad terms relating to the style of track you plan to promote ‘ie, dubstep, future bass, trap’
2. Filter your search by ‘playlists’
3. Look for those who run a successful playlist with a high amount of followers and contains music that fits your track’s style.
4. Some playlist owners have a contact email in the playlist’s description. If not and the playlist is run by a brand, google the brand to either find their instagram or email from a brands website.
Youtube Music Promo Channels.
1. Use the search feature on Youtube and search for broad terms relating to the style of track you plan to promote ‘ie, dubstep, future bass, trap’
2. Filter your search by ‘channels’
3. Look for those who run a successful music promo channel with active subscribers and uploads music similar to your style
4. Click on their channel and navigate over to their about section, most will have a business email or a ‘submit section’
Music Blogs.
1. Use google’s search feature on search for broad terms relating to the style of track you plan to promote ‘ie, dubstep, future bass, trap’ and insert the word ‘blog’ after
2. Look for different blogs that feature your similar style of music by visiting their site
3. Almost all of these blogs will have a contact/reach out section for you to submit your music to.
(try steer clear of playlists or promo channels that offer you the ability to get in front of ‘x’ number of fans for a payment, as it goes against Soundcloud’s/Spotifys and Youtube’s terms and are likely bots/stream farms. There are legitimate paid methods which we’ll get into below, but as a rule of thumb any playlist/channel that asks for an upfront payment should be a bit of a red flag)
Composing the Email
So now that you’ve gathered the info you need to reach out to these promo channels, you’ll need to create the email/message to introduce yourself and your track you are pitching.
In an interview with Mo aka ‘Funky Panda‘ (375,000 Subscriber music channel) He describes what he is looking for in an email submission. I’ll cover the points below in the video here as well as adding a few other things to keep in mind.
Introduce yourself,
Be kind,
Tell them something very brief about what you have for them,
Supply a relevant private link for them to stream it
Supply a link for them to download it (not needed if pitching to playlists)
Be kind,
Sign off
PSA. When submitting to different channels/playlists don’t send them to multiple email addresses from the same email. Make sure to send one email per promoter. The link to stream/download can be the same, but for the email, it doesn’t look good or personalised if the recipient can see many many other email addressed that very email was sent to…
EXAMPLE:
Hey _____ hope you are well,
My name is _____ and I make up one half of a duo called _____
Just swinging by to submit a tune to your legendary channel, I recently just released my latest song “_____” and was hoping you’d enjoy it as an addition to your channel. It’s dubstep, with elements of orchestral and riddim.
Public Stream Link: “_____________”
Private Download Link (Dropbox) “_____________”
Thanks for your time, hope you enjoy 🙂
Best,
________
Follow Up
Been a couple of weeks and still no reply? It might be time to message with a follow up email. There could be a magnitude of reasons why the channel didnt respond (forgot to reply, didn’t like the song, haven’t read the email yet etc etc) so it might be worth reaching out one more time before moving on. But remember, these channels get swarmed with track submissions daily, so it pays to wait a little before you follow up with a reminder, maybe between 1 to 2 weeks…
New Methods:
There are new methods that make this process super streamlined and easy, but they are paid methods. Label Radar and Submithub are 2 key sites that are great to reach out to a label or influencer or playlist owner.
But like I mentioned above, it does cost. Both have a free tier and also a paid one where you essentially pay for credits and use those credits when pitching your music. This works out great for both influencer and artist. The influencer gets paid for their time and has music come to them instead of scouting for it. And for the artist, they get valuable feedback and know that the influencer is actually going to listen instead of just having their email end up in an inbox without an open. It’s not a ‘pay to get on a spot on a playlist’ method, its a ‘pay for the time of the playlist owner to get them aware of your music, get feedback and possibly a spot on a playlist’
And thats my top tips for submitting to music promo channels!
Best of luck, try to be patient and land some great spots on some epic playlists or channels to get some new fans!
