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Speaking of yk Records, I tried a few different ways to spread the word about the label's releases this year. To be perfectly honest, getting together the music, the artwork, the distribution, the physical version of a release (should it exist) and a gameplan for releasing it is actually not that hard. Getting anyone to actually pay attention to it is nearly impossible.
Over time the label has established some dedicated fans and different artists have their own circle of fans that help with exposure but you really want a release to reach a wide, new, audience. I'm not saying the goal is exponential growth but you gotta reach new ears if you wanna keep an endeavor like this going. So, here's a few things I tried.
In the meantime, I'll continue to thank the Nashville Scene for all the coverage the provide and reach out to the likes of Small Albums, Dead Good Blog and their ilk to see if they like what I've got to offer. :fingerscrossed:
Over time the label has established some dedicated fans and different artists have their own circle of fans that help with exposure but you really want a release to reach a wide, new, audience. I'm not saying the goal is exponential growth but you gotta reach new ears if you wanna keep an endeavor like this going. So, here's a few things I tried.
- SubmitHub
I've actually been using this for a number of years with moderate success. You purchase credits for $1 each, then spend those credits to submit your music to a large number of blogs, spotify playlisters, instagrammers and other random influencers. It costs $1-$3 per blog. You can easily spend $30-$40 just submitting to a batch of random blogs but that's an insignificant amount of money compared to a proper PR campaign, which is always in the hundreds.
For me, the downside to SubmitHub is that it rarely results in anything positive. The bloggers are required to write something about your release so you will end up with a handful of kind words followed by a "...but" on why they didn't want to write about it or add it to their Spotify playlist. It can be fun but it's mostly just disheartening. Not sure if this is a ME problem or a THEM problem.
I'll probably continue to use it but also continue to not love using it. - Musosoup
Same general idea as Submithub, you connect with "curators" to get write-ups, interviews and playlist placement. The big difference is that you don't select which curators to listen to the music, they come to you. Basically, you put your music into a queue and hope that someone finds something interesting about it and wants to work with it. If they do, you pay $15-$20 per curator to get them to write about your release or do an interview.
It's much more expensive than Submithub but, again, way less expensive than a full PR campaign. The results were O.K. I don't think anyone involved did a bad job but it was a lot of work and a pretty decent chunk of change for work that isn't even online for a year.
Not likely going to use this ever again. Again, could be a ME problem - maybe the music I am submitting isn't a good fit for their service - but its not for me. - Playlister.club
Kind of a fusion of Submithub and Musosoup but hyper focused on playlist placement. You select a song from Spotify, put it into a Review Queue and hope that playlisters check it out and place it. The curators can also leave reviews, which I believe is just a bit of a signal to the other curators on the platform that the song is worthwhile.
It costs $40 per month to have one song in the review queue which was, frankly, a pretty steep price tag to me. I submitted two songs over two months and had pretty decent results! Both tracks were placed on 10 playlists with a few thousand followers overall. Does that equate directly to new fans? Are these playlists even legitimate? Are the listens coming from the playlists even legitimate? Hard to answer any of those questions. Obviously garnering thousands of new streams means nothing in terms of income but if it makes a handful of new fans, it might be worth it.
I will likely try this service again but $40/mo for one song to sit in a queue with the end results just being playlist metrics doesn't feel great.
In the meantime, I'll continue to thank the Nashville Scene for all the coverage the provide and reach out to the likes of Small Albums, Dead Good Blog and their ilk to see if they like what I've got to offer. :fingerscrossed:
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