Connecting Artists, Creators, Curators & Influencers

#HowWeListen Live: In Conversation Podcast

“I didn't know anything about the music industry. I didn't know that there were publicists trying to push stuff. I was clueless. So getting emails at the start was really cool, especially when it was from artists that I recognized.”

Our guest on today’s episode is Jason Grishkoff the founder of SubmitHub. With just a hop, skip and a jump, Jason moved from the world of high finance to working at tech giant Google. Then a side hustle and hobby – the Indie Shuffle Blog (it’s music discovery powered by real people.), led to founding SubmitHub. The goal was to efficiently and transparently connect artists with curators, the “right” people, in order to get music heard more efficiently.

One of the key stages of getting your music heard and promoted outside of your own network is accessing the world’s music curators, but who are they? How can artists and creators access these curators and influencers themselves? This is what SubmitHub is an expert in. The platform was built with musicians and curators in mind. You upload your music, then use pay-for credits to submit it to trusted and user-scored curators (there is a free song-submission feature as well). They listen and then respond directly from within the SubmitHub platform.

Byta’s Marc Brown has always tried to impart as much wisdom as possible to anyone wanting to operate within the music ecosystem. DIY is your best first step, finding out how everything works, by trying and often failing for the first time. There are no shortcuts. This was a great conversation between two people trying to do similar things in different ways.

Jason spoke to us from Cape Town, South Africa

Show Notes:

#HowWeListen Live: In Conversation

SubmitHub

Indie Shuffle

00:10 - Byta.com

03:15 - NAPSTER

03:57 - 2007 music

07:54 - Indie Shuffle

09:00 - MP3 Blogs

09:40 - Web Sheriff

13:18 - The advantage of a publicist

17:36 - SubmitHub explained

21:23 - Solving the problem of email inconsistency

25:33 - Hype Machine

27:38 - Knowing who you are and what you want as an artist

33:30 - How to approach advertising your music

39:00 - Who should I send my music to?

43:03 - How to take advantage of playlists

48:32 - The difference between followers and listeners

55:46 - Playlist pitfalls

58:35 - Pay for playlisting/fake playlists

1:01:00 - What else is an artist to do?

1:03:00 - TikTok

1:06:00 - Take Spotify out for drinks, if you can find them

1:08:00 - Get as much traction in your first 28 days as possible

1:12:00 - Byta.com

Music by Fin Productions and Oliver Lyu

Episode Credits:

Artwork by Jen Pmphrey

Hosted by Marc Brown

Series coordinated by Jamie Ford

Produced and edited by Colin MacKenzie

Music by Fin Productions and Oliver Lyu