It's very complex, difficult, expensive, interesting and fun to be an independent music producer. Volume three covers my attempts to: make acoustic improvements to the studio; cut down my production times; learn the art of mastering in-house ad muc...
In this chapter I hope to compile all the info I amass about human curated lists. When it comes time to submit my album/songs for release, I am going to have to have all the names, assets, explanations etc in place - ready to go. If I don't know the rules, the ropes etc, I won't be able to submit the music in time to as many as I would like to.
Taking time before the album release to get these things in order, create accounts, prepare submission texts is invaluable. Once again, if I do this right, I increase my chances to be heard in the noise as compared to someone who doesn't do it. Read on an see how 60 to 70% of submissions don't even get heard by these curators simply because the indie artists that submit their work don't fill in the blanks correctly.
Doing this work today got me thinking and I created some accounts with these people just to be prepared.
Human Curated Lists
I started looking into my options here: I found Music To; Spotify direct submission and will add more as I come across it.
Music To
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The main goodie with Music To is this
"Music to playlists only publish one track a week and that track is promoted to the list audience for 7 days — in a world with practically infinite music and infinite playlists — context and promotion is everything." Wow. If you get on that list you have a great opportunity!
The free Spotify Apple Music Play submission at musicto.com has been around for a while. Their playlists are distributed to Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Deezer, Napster, Qobuz and Soundcloud. But they do not submit songs to Spotify's curated lists.
You click on the square that describes your music best and then you fill in the data and send it away for consideration. BUT WAIT. Read the article on the bottom if you really want your music considered at all. They are ticked by all the crappy submissions they get. They say that the reason they don't listen to 60 to 70 % of the submissions is because "the vast majority of the people who submit their music to us are either clueless, or lazy or both." You gotta do it their way or take the highway.
Another fact is that they want you to submit to the one and only list that fits your track best AND write a compelling paragraph as to why your track should be featured on that list.
"The #1 thing you can do to get a Music to curator to listen to your track is to write a compelling couple of paragraphs about why your track would be a good fit for their list."
They implicitly say that music to curators is read first and listened to only if the reading was what they were looking for.
Once again, it is not enough to create great music. You have to be a writer too, and a darn good writer at that!
