Hey guys, welcome to electronic dance money, your number one business resource for making money as electronic musicians and producers.

What’s up guys? Welcome to a brand new episode of electronic dance money. I’m your guest, Christopher Guest. I’m your host Christian conceito with my guest, James, how are you doing James Krause?

I’m doing really well. I’m having a great time so far. How about you, Christian?

Not too bad, man. Just I just had the sickest breakfast burrito ever. So I just went to Chicago a couple weeks. Was it? Yeah, it was a couple of weeks ago. And I had this place called. I had this breakfast burrito called badass breakfast burrito. I don’t know. Have you been to Chicago?

Yes, but only barely. Dude.

It’s some of the best food I’ve ever okay. I thought austin texas had the best food ever. But Chicago has some of the best food I’ve ever had, specifically this breakfast burrito. And I’ve been dreaming about it. Until I was like, You know what? paydays? today. I’m gonna treat myself we’re gonna get a nice lunch. My girlfriend. We’re gonna order some lunch. And I went on grubhub and it was still on that Chicago address. The first thing that popped up was that badass breakfast. I was like, ooh, breakfast group. Sounds good. Let me put in Austin, Texas. And they have a badass breakfast burrito here. That’s the name of the restaurant was like, Oh my God. They have it here. My dreams have come true. And I was like telling my girlfriend’s like, this is gonna be the best breakfast burrito you ever have. It’s fantastic. I hyped it up too much for her. But I hate things too much. She gets disappointed. Listen, it was still so damn good. Still was the best breakfast I’ve ever had. She was like, it’s okay. It’s a little too spicy. I was like, like, you don’t. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re crazy. It was delicious. That’s how my Yeah, and so far.

Nice. Yeah, I I had a similar experience in Chicago. And I was on tour and we played Tinley Park, is the amphitheater out there or is that where Riot fest is I can’t remember there’s a there’s an amphitheater like a Live Nation shed outside Chicago, probably like 45 to an hour outside and holds this place. There’s a legendary vegan diner in Chicago, and I cannot remember the name of it. But basically everyone was like, we want food from this place. So a friend and I were like, okay, we’re going to Uber into the city. Pick up our food because it’s a call in order and then Uber back, we might have actually done left I prefer Lyft. Anyway, this is like 2015 so it doesn’t matter. Um, but the food was amazing, even cold. And everyone got a different meal and we all get to try each other’s stuff. Like somebody got chilly. Some people got sandwiches, it was like, it was so good. And I’m thinking spiral diner, but I know that’s not it because that’s in Dallas, or like the Dallas metro area.

I’m sure if I asked my buddy he would know cuz he’s a huge foodie, he lives oh my lord this we’re gonna get into the episode in just a minute. Once we get through this little banter, but now that we’re talking food real quick, my bed Chicago my buddy lives on the river and like a skyrise apartment on the 48th floor like yeah, oh my the the end he has the one of three balconies on his building. So it’s like it The view was unreal. And being like, right in the middle of downtown Chicago was fantastic. went to my first year in super into baseball, right? Yeah, kinda. I I’m super into like, local baseball, and I’m a Red Sox fan. I went to my first MLB game while I was there at Wrigley Field which was nice, man. We got to dairy. Dude, we got $12 tickets right behind home base. Like I know. I mean, crazy. It was I’ll have to send you videos. We were so close to the to the batter. It was wild. It was it was awesome. It was a great time. That’s incredible. Anyways, let’s actually get into the damn episode why we’re hanging out talking today. So real quick, Jane.

I will set it up. It’s the Chicago diner. The Chicago just in case anyone’s wondering. I don’t want to leave people hanging diner as

my buddy if he’s been. He’s like I say he’s a super huge foodie, and has eaten at some of the best restaurants there. So I’m sure he probably knows about it. But anyways, let’s jump in to today’s episode and we’re gonna be discussing some submit hub stuff. But first, James, let’s talk about your background because you’re not specifically involved with electronic music and I’ve had a number of guests on that. involved in electronic music. And I think it’s really good to bring on guests like you because you come from an outside perspective that a lot of producers, because, I mean, you focus more on bands, and EDM producers are essentially bands, they I mean they do within their own niche and their own language. They call themselves DJs, and producers, but you’re essentially a band. So in all this stuff we’re talking about in the music industry, everything we have talked about, I’m sure everything you’ve talked about on your podcast, it all correlates with each other. It all works with each other. It’s the music industry, it doesn’t matter what genre you’re in, whether you’re a band, or you’re a singer, songwriter, or you’re a DJ doesn’t matter what you are, it all kind of works with each other. So that’s why I do really like bringing on these guests that come from an outside perspective that aren’t involved, specifically within our niche of the industry. Because those outside perspectives bring a lot of really good quality of content and ideas. So let’s jump into first your background, how you got into music, and how you got to where you are today. And then we’ll start talking a little bit more about your submit hub background and why you why I wanted to bring you on in discussing it. So the floor is yours, man. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, thanks so much for inviting me on the show. And basically, I am a jack of all trades, or have been a jack of all trades, I’m trying to change that now. And I don’t even call myself a musician, I play music, I make music as you know, a mixing engineer for artists, I’ve put guitar work on songs for people, but I don’t call myself a musician, because playing music is not my career. So I make that distinction. Other people might call me a musician. Um, but I did a little bit of everything back in the day, I got started in radio, and quickly found a love for live sound and wanted to be the classic, you know, mid level club, live sound for and a house and tour manager combo. So I went to school at Bay State College in Boston. And then basically was like, yeah, Turing’s cool. Um, and I did three years on the Vans Warped Tour, as well as some other smaller tours here in there. And it was a blast. I loved it. Then I met a girl and was like, oh, time to settle down. Right. And that was five years ago, and that that whole situation has changed now, but I had a great time in San Diego. And that’s where I wasn’t doing much music at all. And that’s how I discovered submit hub. Because a friend of mine had kind of passed the reins for a blog called rock metal punk to me. And I was like, dude, I hate emails. And somebody said, Oh, go check out submit hub where it basically like, I could get paid 50 cents to listen to a song. And you know, whether I approve it or not, and then I could share the music that I really wanted to share. And it was so easy because all this stuff was in line. And this was about fall of 2016 so almost five years ago I think was like October November when did submit hub come out? The end of 2015 Okay, yeah, so it is still fairly new. It

was Yeah, super new at that time.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I joined I want to say like three days after their first birthday, and maybe that’s why I heard about it. Maybe they did like a big birthday. Right You know, announcement Yeah, something I don’t even remember at this point. Um, but so that was kind of how I stayed in touch with music while I was living in the paradise that is San Diego. And then I got back into music because of it. I started interning at a hostname at signature Sound Studios in San Diego, which for those of you not familiar with the area, blink recorded parts of Nm of the state there they used recorded there. Um, who else while while I was interning there, we had not Killswitch Engage but the guys from Killswitch Engage came through with like their side project, um, revolution came through for any of you reggae fans. Um, and that’s not to say like, those were the two big names that came through I was there but you know, 20 years ago, it was like big names every single day. Because you know, like, So Cal and pop punk go hand in hand and there were a ton. Oh, pod was another one. Another huge one. Again, not while I was there, but just like the the history of that studio. So going to work in there and like seeing all these pictures up on the wall. Um, you know, records from bands like newfound glory, and oh, man, I can’t even remember them

all. Were a lot of those original engineers that worked with those artists still there. Were you still learning from them.

There were two of them that were there. During that time. If I recall, one of them was named Mike. I don’t remember his last name off the top of my head. I’m really cool guy, and he’s like in the pictures with some of the bands like, Oh, I know that guy. And then the other one, Christian Cummings is, he’s been around for quite a while as well, I don’t think he’s in the pictures, but I know he’s worked on some big projects as well. Um, so that was kind of my like, re enlightenment to music. And since then I’ve been back in music. And one thing that’s been happening to me for, you know, over a decade ever since I started in music, his friends have always been hitting me up for advice over and over again. And I realized it was happening so much that like, I can’t answer everyone. So that’s why I started, what is now known as band five, not always known as band, but now is band five, which is basically a community centered resource for musicians and artists, mainly bands to learn about the music industry. Because of my experience, I love to talk about touring primarily. But my co host, Matt, we have a podcast, he is more on the branding side of things. So we, you know, switch off topics between the two of us. And he’s, you know, I met him on Warped Tour. So he’s also super into the touring side of things, just more on the brand management, Where’s his band mate was the, like the tour manager for his band. Um, and so yeah, I’ve been doing band five for the last few years, as well as mixing and mastering with my music studio. Um, but as much as I love mixing and mastering band five is where my passion lies, because I love helping people. And, you know, this is a way for me to help lots of people rather than typing up like a 10 paragraph essay to one person and then being like, okay, cool, thanks. I might read this some time. Now, I can type up a 10 person or a 10, paragraph, email and send it to, you know, hundreds of people, and they can read it or they cannot, but they have it. And that makes me feel good.

I started noticing that same thing, because I would get the especially doing like cold outreach, trying to find new leads and whatnot, talking to people or even just new clients where they start asking questions. And it was like that before I was like, Okay, all right, now I have to spend, which is like, occasionally, it’s fine. But now I have to spend 15 minutes, 20 minutes typing out this email. And by the end of it, it’s like, I have to reread it constantly. And it’s a lot, it’s a lot to have to sit down and write all that out. But now that I have a catalogue of 5060 plus episodes, now, it’s so much easier to just be like, oh, I’ve got you, here’s a link to these three episodes, listen to these, it has all the information you’re looking for. So much easier, so much better to to like, the way you can translate, you know, through audio actual talking, instead of just text, which can be you can have some miscommunication issues there, maybe you don’t tackle a subject entirely the way you need to, and also be like time restraints to have. It’s like, Oh, shit, I have to get to work on this. I don’t have time to finish up typing this long email. Let me quickly sum it up, you know, with it with a nice hour long podcast. Now you can at least you can really dive into an episode or a topic, I should say, the way you need to, instead of having to write a blog post in an email, or just write a blog post period.

Yeah. And the other thing I love about podcasting is it’s a lot easier to get guests to come on and talk about a topic that they know about, than it is to be like, Hey, will you write a guest post for me, because like, in my opinion, guest posts aren’t worth much like, I would not write a guest post for someone else unless it was a super high profile blog. And I wouldn’t ask anyone to write a guest post for me like, I don’t see the point, I’d much rather have a conversation with them and dig into what’s actually going on, you know, so that’s why I’ve had people like branding experts come on the show, we had a really cool, um, label owner, come on the shows Episode 42, or 44, Aaron Zimmer, from least of all records, least of all sound recordings, sorry. And they do one off vinyl production. So during the pandemic, how they adapted was they’d say, okay, you know, XYZ artists, let’s put up some pre sales. People can choose from, you know, like three or four songs that you put on a list. And however many records we sell. That’s how many takes you’re going to do. And so every single take is pressed to vinyl for a specific person are not pressed they do. I forget what the technique is, what it’s like actually cut in rather than a pressing. And so every single record that Least of all puts out is one of a kind unique, no one else has that version of that song. And it’s super affordable. It’s like 20 or 25 bucks for a record. So yeah, it’s a super cool project and I’m so glad to get to talk to people like And then I mean, I’ve gotten to talk to artists that when I was a teenager, I grew up listening to like, we had ballyhoo and I fight dragons on the podcast. I mean, I’ve seen them around they boasted Warped Tour. On the years I was out there. Or at least one of the years I was out there, um, went to an amusement park, kind of by accident and ran into I played dragons, like, hey, let’s go down the roller coaster. So that was fun. Um, so I kind of I know them, I’m not friends with them. But like, it was cool to now five years later, get both of those bands back on the show and pick their brains about music business, which in the past, it’s like, oh, hey, what’s up, man? Like, I like your music. Now. It’s like, tell me how you did this.

Weird perspective to like an awkward right? On stage like, digging into their personal time.

Yeah. And to be fair, when we ran into them at the amusement park, there mercs girl was like, you should join us. I’m like, okay, okay. Like, I didn’t just go up there and be like, let’s go on the roller coaster.

You’re right, right, right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. That’s awesome. Yeah, it was a good time. podcasting is incredible. It’s the scene I, with my industry, it feels like it’s still catching up with electronic music. And I did an entire episode on this about how artists should be like seeking out podcasts that they can get, try to get on to, that they can start promoting, you know, promoting releases or whatever, if they’re an expert on a topic that they can go on. And it’s related to their target market or whatever. utilize that. And I feel like there’s still such a huge gap because I’m one of you, I think podcasts in my industry that are doing specifically talking about like music, business stuff. There’s a couple of I think EDM podcast, Mr. Bill’s podcast, and then I think we’ll sparks these are all artists, they probably just go right over your head, that’s fine. But, um, I think those are like the only big podcasts in my scene that are like doing relatively similar things to me. A lot of those ones though, they’re interviewing artists, which I feel like that’s so overdone, interviewing artists in terms of like, just to enter Oh, how’d you write this song? Oh, what are you doing? Like that’s very overdone. Um, and so I didn’t want to get into that aspect. So but being able to be into introduced to some people that like, I mean, why Christiansen who I’ve had on the podcast twice, he runs donation, I think I sent his information over to you to get on another podcast. He like I remember listening to stuff looking at his videos, when I was producing, like, I wasn’t even in the music. I wasn’t doing business at all. I was just, I was another producer and DJ. And then to finally like, meet him face to face, I guess over zoom. But become friends. Like I was number we text all the time, Natalie, that it’s it’s mind blowing, seeing people that like, oh, I’ll never meet this person. And then four years later, like, life changes. And all of a sudden, now I’m having an actual conversation with them about business. it’s mind blowing. Another guy who has like a huge YouTube channel Zen world, which he does a bunch of tutorial stuff on, like sound design. And I again, I remember watching his stuff when I was in like 2015 2016 as a producer, watching your stuff. And I have friends that are like, this guy’s awesome. And then again, meeting him face to face, getting his number and all that stuff. It’s really cool to be introduced to people you never thought you would actually be on a first name basis with Yeah,

yeah, it’s a it’s a strange beast. But I like it. And to be honest, I did videos for like half a year, I think it’s like 32 or 33 weekly videos on YouTube. And Dude, I hated it. I hate talking to a camera by myself. And that’s why I was like, You know what, I’m doing a podcast like, I it was not a pleasant time for me. And you know, I’m lucky that I don’t struggle with mental health issues or anything like that, you know, so many musicians do so I consider myself extremely lucky. But I could still tell like this is not going to be sustainable for the long term and if I keep this up like I am gonna crack at some point.

Yeah, I agree that I’m the exact same with like videos that I it’s too awkward for me and then the editing I just too much. Yeah, for sure. So let’s jump into summit hub and talk a little bit about that. Because you how the reason why I wanted to bring you on is because you did an email course series, which will give everyone the information on that on how they can get get involved with that that email course because it is fantastic. The information in that is so valuable. I’ve got all of those emails starred in there in a folders specifically for me to review because I won’t remember everything but I’ll have the notation down and we’re going to be kind of going over that entire time. Course essentially here, at least bits and pieces of it, and then asking some additional questions.

I’m going to need to ask you for a testimonial.

Yeah, I have to get one for me because it is It was so great. As soon as I remember getting the first email and I didn’t even mention having you on the podcast until I saw that email about submit hub. And you were going, Oh, you’re gonna be getting these emails, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, okay, sick. I really like this. And then the Do you forwarded like all the emails over to me so I could get the entire thing because I didn’t want to wait. And it Right, right, right. Yeah, I totally forgot about that is fantastic, man. I mean, the whole thing is set up so perfectly. And I remember here’s the thing I I just had my friend, right before you sent these emails out. Before I asked to bring you on the podcast. I had a buddy that was like I hate to admit because my one of my friends mitts to label radar, I think and then I have another buddy who are no he submits the label radar doesn’t like Submit. He’s like submit hub doesn’t has never done anything good for me. It doesn’t work, blah, blah, blah. But then my other buddy submits through submit hub, and he’s gotten some, like, really good deals through that. And so I was like, okay, it’s maybe it’s in between, like, it’s okay, it’s not the best and but other people get really good stuff out of it. Maybe it’s in between, and then I got your emails, I was like, oh, there’s actually a strategy behind the way you approach submit up, and how you actually reach out to people and get feedback and utilize, I guess, the utilize the the different subscription models or whatever. So after reading about that, I was like, okay, clearly submit hub does work if you know what you’re doing. And so yeah, seeing that you actually, I don’t, are there any other courses, like what you have out there teaching people, all the logistics of everything.

I think it’s the most in depth one. I’ve seen people put out like, you know, 1520 minute YouTube video here and there, or a blog post or something like that, um, but it’s just basically kind of showing people like how to go through the process, right? Whereas mine is more and they do mention, like, hey, pay attention to these things, the things that I highlight, but I go more into the why. Because I think a lot of people watch that. And they see, okay, you know, step one, step two, step three, and they ignore the products like, this is important, don’t mess this up. They’re just like, that came between steps two, and three, let me go to the next thing. Whereas mine is more analytical and more like thinking about it, I have to give credit to my friend Steve, who is an artist that I met through submit hub, probably three or four years ago now, because he’s submitted my blog. And he’s given me a lot of the advice that I started using for my submit hub campaigns. And he’s, he’s still beats me by a little bit. So the best campaign I ever did, I tend to do campaigns in batches of 10 submissions. So starting with, like, the best 10 candidates for this song, ideally, candidates that have approved a similar song that I’ve submitted in the past. And you know, I don’t submit my own songs, because I don’t do my own songs, I submit songs for clients. Um, and so I’ll see how that first 10 goes. And my record for that first 10 was in the mid to high 80s. Um, I think it was like, you know, out of the first 10, eight or nine responded, and I ended up like 83 84%, something like that. Um, and then at the end of the campaign, I ended up, let’s see, I wrote down the numbers, I ended up doing 33 submissions total for that song. This is for a band called real talk with their song spent really cool band from New England, their drummer lives up the road from me here in Vermont, and the rest of the band is in Maine. And I think one of the guys just moved to like New York or something. Anyway, 33 submissions, 31 responded, and 16 of those were approvals. So I ended up with just over 50%. You know, like if it if it had been 32 and 16 approvals, it would have been 50% on the money. And the statewide average hovers around 21 22%. So you got down, you have a system for this. I Oh, I absolutely have a system. And I’ll get into that later. But Steve, my man, Steve, he has finished campaigns in the 60s. So I got starting, you know, those first 10 submissions Up, up high, like 70 80%. But he’s at the end of the campaign when he’s done like, I don’t know, 20 3040 submissions, ended in the 60s. And to be fair, he does a different genre. He does neoclassical, mainly. But still, he knows the game and he’s a computer programmer. He does like e commerce websites for large companies. So he’s got like sheets and sheets and sheets of data, which is something that I probably should do, but I’m more of just like a gut feeling guy like I listen to the song. I’m like, they like this. They’re not gonna like what I’m submitted. But this other place likes this. They’re gonna love this, I’m gonna submit to them. Um, so I can’t say I have as many like crazy spreadsheets as Steve. But I still, you know, I can compete.

That’s bananas. That looks okay. Because clearly you know what the fuck you’re talking about, um, I that that’s been proven, you can easily give us those numbers and you clearly know what you’re doing. And I’m, I guarantee the people that I know who submit through some app are not getting those kinds of numbers. So let’s what is going on,

let me jump in real quick there, it’s quite possible that they are getting a similar number for approvals, if their song is good, and you know, if it has good production, and it’s a good song, because that’s, you know, given you need to have that, they might get just as many approvals. But if they submit to 200 people, and they just like spray and pray, it might be a little faster. But then yeah, like, what is that that’s like 8% approval if you get 16 approvals out of 200 submissions. Yeah, so So obviously, that looks bad.

You also might not be submitting to the best places, like if you’re doing that spray and pray, you might get the first you know, maybe the first kick in I see this happening, I could definitely see this happening easily, especially with like, smaller producers, smaller artists who are maybe they have one, maybe two releases with a record label under their belt, maybe that’s just singles. We’re not talking to EP or albums, just singles, and probably in the past year or two. When they get a label that’s interested in their music, they get very excited they get and it’s like they’re rushing to sign that contract, because they just, they like knowing that a label out there wants their music. It’s that approval, they feel like they’re getting the recognition that they want, they hope and deserve. But the issue there is there are a million and I don’t know if this is the same with your industry, with electronic music, there are 1,000,001 record labels out there it is there is a crazy amount of records. I mean, artists will tiny artists, no name artists will make record labels just so that they have a platform to release all of their own music on in sign almost no one like that’s a very common thing. There’s labels who get any song possible they release whatever, doesn’t matter, the quality music. It’s so common. And so there’s there’s a lot of bad quality record labels out there. And I just did in a whole I did. I talked a little bit about I can’t remember what actually I can’t I can’t remember what episode was two episodes now. But um, essentially, you’re paying. Yeah, essentially, I was saying like, okay, so if you’re, if you’re an artist, and you’re giving up 70% of royalties for your track, in theory, the idea of record label, what they’re there to do is they’re there they’re investing their own time and their money to promote this track. To get you in front of an audience and get you streams get you purchases, get you you know, people interested in you and get fans. That’s essentially what you’re doing. When you’re giving up 70% you’re giving up a you know, if out of $1 you’re giving up 70 cents. Now, a lot of record labels in our industry don’t do that. A lot do not promote your track a lot do not have like good playlisting, they don’t have good like, they don’t have promo plans set up. They don’t have jack shit, they don’t have an audience. So I broke it down for you. So I was like, let’s see, if you’re giving up 70% and a labels not even promoting your they’re making a post the day before your release, and then a post the day of your release. And that’s it. What the fuck are you giving up? 70% for? And so there’s unless they give you a giant advance, which they probably didn’t they don’t they do not? They will not do that. Yeah, they don’t do that. So it’s, it’s like what are you giving 70 70% up or if you’re if they’re not going to do these basic necessities that they need to do to have a successful release or even a moderately successful release. And so that’s the issue with I’m sure a lot of artists, a lot of producers who are submitting to submit have ensure they submit to 200 people, they do the spray and pray there are out of those 200 labels, there may be two or three I’m sure that are good labels that would do you well. And you they may not be the ones responding to you. And maybe it’s more than likely probably, I would assume, and this is just for labels. We’ll get into the other topics within Smit hub. But for a label, I’m sure it’s a lot of shitty labels. They’re like yeah, we’ll take it just because it’s like another thing for them to post on social media or release. It’s just another thing to put in the catalog. They don’t really care about your release, or you as an artist, and they’re going to take 60 70% And a lot of those producers might jump to that and run to it because they’re excited because they’re like, ooh, someone wants this track. But in reality, they probably don’t give a shit about you. So it is very, it’s important to figure out like, Who do I actually want to submit to doing research on labels? Like what what’s a good label that would actually take care of me? And Okay, can I look at their previous releases? How are they promoting stuff? This is all stuff I talked about in that episode. But I guarantee you, there are so many artists that are doing that spring pay tactic that is just it’s not, numbers might look good. Maybe maybe the numbers look good. Um, they could look better, but I guarantee it’s probably not the people you actually want to be submitting to. So

personally, I do not submit to labels on submit hub. Most people I know don’t use the label function, I don’t recommend it. Because if you’re a DIY artist and seeking out a label, you’re probably doing it for the wrong reasons. Um, I actually have a couple of podcast episodes on there. If you give me a second, I can look them up,

we’ll jump into the idea of what submit hub is for in terms of I guess what we’ll don’t dive into your idea of what you think submit hub is best utilized for because I am really curious, I know you mentioned it within your your course. But people here probably haven’t read it yet. I’m sure they will. So they’ll definitely want to know but what would you say submit hub is utilized for most Is it is it utilized most for labels, but you would rather go a different route? Is it mostly looking for influencers?

It’s mostly curators, and then influencers is always growing? And then labels would be like the least color use? Okay,

I’m actually on the platform. I’m interested to get into the idea of, of influencers and how people are using Yeah, cuz I would assume tik tok has got to be huge for summit hub and influencers.

It is Yeah, I definitely have some thoughts on that. And I have some some, some beans to spill on labels as well. And this is it’s not a criticism of summit hub at all. It’s not their issue. But so I the two episodes are number 35 and 36, of the banned hive podcast, you can find them at banned hive dot rocks, slash 35 and ban hive dot rocks slash 36. Or just search for band five in your favorite podcast app, whether it’s you know, Spotify, apple, whatever, and you can find those episodes. They are like 70 episodes back at the time of recording. So it might take some scrolling. But they’re there, it’s how to get signed part one and part two. Yeah, I’m not gonna spoil the episode. But we talked about why you don’t want to get signed, submit hub does have strong regulations in place for labels, like if somebody just releases their own music, that’s not gonna fly, you have to have more than one artist on the platform, you can’t be the only artist like you have to be an actual label to get approved to take submissions on submit hub. And they have similar guidelines for curators and influencers as well, you know, they’re not going to let on Bob and his burger shack that has 10 followers, you know, like that’s not useful to anyone. But there is one label that submits to me to my blog on submit hub all the time. They’re a metal label. And every submission they send just has really poor production. And the kicker is that this label will only sign acts on the condition that that act uses the labels in house production team. And I just think that is the worst deal ever. Like bands don’t. I can’t imagine they listen to that labels releases, because they’ve listened to they’d be like, Yo, this is terrible. Like, why would we ever signed to this label, and then the label now submit hub is a great tool. But the label from what I can see does not do any promotion, aside from submitting to people on submit hub, it’s like the band could do that themselves, and they could get better production elsewhere quite easily. Um, and you know, submit hub is a great tool, but it’s one tool in your tool belt, it should not be the only thing you do. And this is what I say to my clients do is like, Hey, I can submit you on submit hub, and I can get you good results. Because I don’t take clients with their song and their production aren’t good. So I know I can get them good results because I know like, hey, these are the curators that are going to enjoy this song. But I tell them, hey, like you still have to do other promotion to you cannot just rely on this, like, I can get you on 1020 playlists. And you know, that’s still a drop in the bucket if you want to get to you know, 5000 10,000 plays on Spotify 1020 playlists unless I hit a big one, you’re gonna get maybe 500 to 1000 plays if you’re lucky, you know, unless I hit like a giant playlist which typically I don’t target them because they’re much less likely to approve. I go for the ones that have a good mix of like, the stuff they share sounds good. They don’t only share major label stuff And like it’s a fit, you know, I, people are gonna hear my frustration here. But so rock metal punk is a blog that focuses on modern rock, metal and punk

with a very high emphasis on production quality, because it’s modern rock, like you can’t have modern rock that sounds like it was recorded in the 70s on a two track like that, that doesn’t work. And so then artists, and I mean, no offense, but rappers are the biggest offenders on submit hub, they will submit to every single genre and they’ll label it like screaming, I’m like, Dude, this is not screaming like, this is rap. And, and so like rappers just blatantly lie about their genre. But then there’s other artists where like, I’ll see something that’s labeled as hard rock. And I’m like, Yeah, I mean, it kind of sounds like ZZ Top, like, maybe it was hard rock 40 years ago, but hard rock now is like, you know, sick puppies or shine down or just trophy. It’s like the genre has evolved. And that’s why classic rock is a thing. And submit hub has a classic rock genre. So why aren’t you using that tag. And it’s gotten to the point that I actually I begged Jason, the owner, the founder of submit hub, to add the ability to exclude or to block genres. And he did that. So I have blocked classic rock if somebody tags classic rock on the song, even because you can choose multiple genres. So if they hit like classic rock, hard rock, because classic rock isn’t there, they cannot submit to me. So they have to take classic rock off to submit to me. So it’s like, I know, it’s a conscious thing that they are doing. When I hear a song that’s absolutely classic rock. It’s, it’s just mind boggling. And then they get upset, they get the client like, and if it’s a really bad fit, I will just refund them and be like, yo, it’s not a good fit, because there is a way to say that it’s the wrong genre and refund them. But if it’s like, if it’s close, I’ll just be like, Hey, you know, this is not the right fit. Like, I really like this. If I do you know, I’m not going to tell him I like it if I don’t, but I’ll say like, Hey, I really like this, but it’s just not a fit for our brand. And that’s probably the most common response I give, with the second most common being like, Hey, I love this song. Like it’s pop punk. Or you know, it’s screamo or it sounds like census fail or whatever. Like, insert mid 2000s to current scene band. I love production. Yeah. I respect all time low but they’re not my jam.

Dude. 2011 their dirty works album. So good. I love their dirty works out. How dare you? blasphemy, James blasphemy. I love their dirty workout. Their earlier stuff. Oh, right. I

am the classic pop punk poser who I somehow I didn’t get into music till 2008. But I grew up on some 41 and simple plan and Green Day. Because my favorite movie when I was a little kid was cheaper by the dozen and it didn’t have Green Day, but I had some 41 and it had Simple Plan. Yo and so once I got into music, and I was like, oh, who is this man? So I’m 41 Oh, this is this song. Simple Plan. What?

That was me and good. Yeah, I grew up on Good Charlotte, dude. I Oh, yeah. me some good Charlotte. And then same time. Yeah. 2008 2000. Yeah. 2008 2009 is when I like super guide. Warped Tour all the way. We’ve already discussed all this. Yeah. So that was the anthem of your youth? Yes. Okay. So submit hub, you’ve got three main tiers that you can actually submit to correct. So you’ve got influencers, curators, and labels? What does that look like when you’re when you’re actually submitting? I guess, would that would the standard and premium subscription models be incorporated in this? Like, does it differ on who you can actually submit to based off of standard and premium? Or can you submit to any curator on standard or premium?

Yes and No, so you can submit to any curator as long as they allow it, it’s a setting that curators can enable.

Okay, so they can enable standard or premium member Okay, okay. So

And the same thing goes for labels. But influencers cannot take standard credits. They used to be able to, but there have been some revamps of the system, trying to figure it out. Because influencers are just of a different mindset they want it’s pay to play. And so submit hub has a very anti payola stance when it comes to curators and labels, especially curators. Because, like you can get kicked off of Spotify, if you’re caught paying to be put on a playlist. So that’s why with submit hub, you’re always paying for consideration. You pay whether you get approved or not. And you still get something if you get declined, you get that feedback. Same thing for labels, but with influencers because they just wanted pay to play and the standard credits did not work out so they revamped it. And influencers are actually the most expensive on the platform, but it’s a guaranteed share or your money back. So Submit hub has, you know, adjusted their stance and it’s still very strong no payola for curators and labels. But for the influencers. It’s straight up paila any and even Jason admits that he was on the band five podcast A while back. He’s like, yeah, we’re going just straight paella for influencers, because that’s what we have to do.

So what is the lit? Can you break down the entire idea of what submit hub is? What What, what is summit hub used for? And why is it Why is it something that I mean artists in general should be utilizing.

So if an artist has been doing their due diligence and trying to promote themselves through email by reaching out to blogs, Spotify playlists, there’s all that you already know the struggle, you know that you send out 100 emails and you get a reply to like five of them. If you’re lucky, most people don’t even open it. If you have like a little open track, you’ll see like 10 of them open it five replied, and one said yeah, like upward on a playlist with submit hub that takes all that pain out of it for both the submitter, and the curator, like, I do not take email submissions anymore. For the blog I’d run. If it’s like a band that I really like, and it comes through, I’ll do it, but most of the time, I just have like a template reply that says, hey, please send it through submit hub. Um, so it’s literally the exceptions are bands that I know. And I like, like, the bands I grew up listening to everyone else is just like, I don’t have time for this, like, I don’t know, 100% that it’s gonna be an approval. So unless I know just by seeing the name, I want to share this. I don’t and even then has been, I love the use. Don’t get me wrong. But when they dropped the canyon, I got an email submission. And they were like, Oh, hey, do you want to hear the full albums? Like, yeah, sure. I’ll listen to it. They’re like, Okay, cool. Just let us know, in the reviews up. And a few weeks later, they replied, and we’re like, Hey, where’s the review? I’m like, yeah, to be honest, like, no disrespect. I love the use. But this is not my thing. Like, I’m not vibing with it. And I didn’t want to write a bad review. And they were super understanding like it was their press person. She’s like, thank you so much for not writing a bad review. Like we really appreciate that. Unless, again, no worries. Like, if they put out something like in a couple years, let me know. And their new record is much more up my alley. So point being. So main hub takes all the hassle out of email. I mean, it takes all the hassle out of submissions. Yeah, because you don’t have to email people

write emails, don’t get fucking buried or putting junk or whatever Get lost. And you’re like, Why is no one respond

Exactly. And so let me first get into the difference between standard and premium. And so keep in mind that the submission process for curators and labels is almost identical. You can submit standard credits to curators and labels, like I said, as long as they have them enabled. And you basically get up to two standard credits, at any one time. It costs one or two credits, depending on the blog or label settings to submit to each blog. So theoretically, you can submit to a maximum of two curators or labels at once, if you’re using standard credits. Sometimes it’s going to be one at a time. And as soon as you use those two credits, after four hours, they regenerate. So you’ll always have a maximum of two, but you could technically do, what is that six submissions a day, if you do it every four hours and you don’t sleep? Like you said, you go to bed at 10 and set an alarm for 2am. Submit read about again, set alarm for six submit, like

knowing some of these animals in the music. And we’ll do that.

Yeah. So that’s how the standard credits work. The thing here is there is no guarantee of any sort with standard credits, people can just decline them, you have to listen to a minimum of five seconds with those and then you can decline it with one button click. Or maybe it’s too I think I have to say, no, it’s one it’s one. So it’s super easy to decline a standard, all I have to do is listen for five seconds, or you can literally just let them build up forever. And you’re not penalised as a curator or label. So it’s possible it’s better than email, because you’re still more likely to get a response. But you are not going to get written feedback unless the curator has something to say. And typically, like in my situation, it’s if I really liked the song, but the production can use some work. I’ll be like, hey, these are some specific things. Please feel free to message me. You know, like, I’m a mix engineer. I’m happy to take a listen to you. And I make sure I make sure like this is free, right? Because I’m not allowed to offer services as a mix engineer. Yeah, in my feedback. So it’s like, hey, like, I’m happy to like just take a listen and give you some feedback for free. Like if you want more details, let me know. But if they don’t want more details, I’m not gonna write an essay, like so that way they know. It’s their turn on the podcast episode. Yeah, yeah, exactly. They want to do that. Um, and then for premium submissions, which are super cheap. credit, submit her basically, you start off at six credits for $5. So that’s what like 95 cents of credit not even like 80 cents of credit. And then the more you buy, the cheaper it is because you know, you buy in bulk, the processing fees go down, submit hub, it has a little more cash upfront, all that kind of stuff. And then you are guaranteed a response or curators within 48 hours and labels within 96 hours, or you get those credits back so you can spend them somewhere else. And with that response,

well. So with the service standard, it’s free is standard free onsubmit. hub, yeah. Okay, so it’s free, you get two credits every six hours every four hours. Okay. And then with the premium credits, premium credits, don’t regenerate, you have to purchase premium credits every single time.

Exactly, yeah. Um, as long as you know, like, if somebody doesn’t respond, then you get them back. But the advantage is, you have that guaranteed response time. And you’re also guaranteed either you get the approval, or you get at least 10 words of feedback. With 20 seconds minimum, listen. Um, you know, 20 seconds is super short. But most curators listen for a lot longer than that. And on every single curator or labels page, it will show you their average listen time. Um, it doesn’t show it down to the second, but they’ll be like, they typically listen for more than 90 seconds, or they listen for, you know, under 30 seconds, they listen between 30 and 60 seconds. And you know, it’s just an average, like, there are songs that I know we I’m one of the blogs that’s listed as over 90 seconds, which is like the most you can have shown on your profile, there’s some songs that I declined in the first 20 to 30 seconds, just because I know it’s not a fit, like I can tell by now that the production like you know, intro kicks in and the guitars are phased out left and right. I’m like, okay, no one who listens on an Amazon echo.is going to hear guitars. So like, I can’t share this because my audience is gonna be like, why aren’t their guitars in the song? And typically, like, it’ll still take me longer than that. 20 seconds to write the feedback. And I try to be detailed because, you know, I am a mix engineer. So if it’s something MCs related, I’ll give them as much detail as possible, you know. And to be fair, this is not just DIY artists who have phasing guitars. I’m super butthurt about it. But AFIS latest release, phasing guitars because their guitarist self produced and he was too lazy to record a damn guitar love. A damn guitar double and I’m just like, Dude, why so lazy? Like, you’ve had records done by Butch Vega, and Jerry Finn and Joe McGrath, like, you know how to record a guitar double, and you’re just like, No, I’m just gonna flip the polarity on this and, you know, make it super wide in stereo. I’m like, dude, no, that sounds like

Henry talking about that. A couple of months, we probably were, I think we were talking about EFI. And how they were I think we were talking about the main versus ASI. And like, they’re the difference in the way they’ve maintained themselves over the years. And asi is like, clearly chasing like,

they’re trying to cheap out.

Yeah, they’re trying to cash out on their relevancy from like, 13 years ago. don’t give a shit just trying to like, scrape the bottom of the barrel of everyone’s wallets just like, get what they can out of their fans, but I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re struggling.

It’s, it’s sad. Like, I love afib, they used to be my favorite band, and they’re still one of my, you know, top three, maybe top five. And I’m not a giant fan of the main I really liked the main, but they’re not like my top five or even top 10. But what I love about the main is that they care about their fans, and it is so obvious, and they’re not jaded. Like, I’m sure there are times when they feel jaded, but they’re still genuine about when they say they care for their fans. They absolutely do

their growth. I mean, their growth is a very great, like, thing to look at is their growth has not stopped. It’s fucking wild. Like you would think like, okay, they’re stagnant like it but you go to their Spotify playlists or their Spotify profile every single new release they come out with is their top most stream tracks. Yeah, exactly. It’s it’s not their stuff from like, their can’t stop won’t stop album, which was our EP album, I think it was, which was arguably like their biggest or their Black and White Album. Like those were those those albums were from, like, 2008 2010 the pinnacle of like, pop punk, alternative rock music, the pinnacle of Warped Tour like that was from two that like 2005 through, you know, 2011 maybe 2012 room Warped Tour was the thing. And the main was headlining like every single one of those from 2007 up to like, yeah, 2012 2013 and they were huge and you would think you go on to they’re a great really good indicator like a band to look to, like 3033 threes from that era 303 I love 303 their most recent album is much better than their previous ones. It’s going more back to their classic roots of their want album. They were huge at that time. If you go on to three Spotify, what’s that?

I call it cringe path.

cringe fart.

I mean, that’s literally what it is.

It’s like, it’s like electro pop rap. What it is, their genre is so wild. They really have created something original and different.

Those are incredible. The first show I ever worked on was a three or three show and it was their shows are bananas. Yeah, they had like, animatronic wolves with laser lasers. And they didn’t get to use their hazers though, because they weren’t allowed to in Boston. So they had the lasers but no fog and it’s like oh, it worked lame. But it looked really cool Anyway,

those wolves are so bad ass but if you go if you go to spot if you go through three Spotify profile their top stream track guarantees all from their want album It’s gonna be don’t trust me it’s gonna be starstruck with Katy Perry like it’s it’s these songs that are great like I still enjoy them to this day but it’s not their most recent work you go to the mains profile it they’re telling a completely different story they’re telling the story of growth of consistent growth that they’ve been able to maintain in their fans keep coming back to their new music and it’s better than ever every single time so um, yeah, those are two completely different stories of art in Timberlake ami like it’s I guarantee their their Spotify profile is probably going to be all their stuff from

like Miss murder girls not gay leading songs, part two. And I just want to point something out here that’s totally off topic. But the main there go givers ASI. Not go givers.

No, no. And I agree like

I, I should say the rhythm section of asi are like absolutely amazing genuine dudes, that a drummer literally gave me the sticks from their song darks. Now, when he goes into the studio, he uses one set of sticks for every single song that they record. And back in the day, I was actually working for EFI running the news section of their site along with some friends of mine. And we all got to meet the whole band and Adam all of a sudden grabs this box. And he’s like, Okay, everybody, like, and he told us the story about what he does. I was like, okay, so you know, take a song and I got to take dark snow, which is the intro off of their 2017 album. Super nice, dude. So as the bass player Hunter, great, guys. I’m not saying Davey and Jade, I’m not saying anything against them. I just don’t know them as well as I know Adam and Hunter. Because I know Adam and hunter are always the ones being like, Hey, you guys rock, thank you so much for doing this. Like they were just happy that somebody appreciated the band so much to do stuff for them to do that kind of work for them. Whereas Davey and Jade are like, you know, no pun intended. They’re jaded by all the screaming fans, and it. From what I’ve seen, the outside asi has become the davian trade show under the bass player is a legitimate producer. That’s what he does. When he’s not working on asi stuff he produces other artists Jay does not do that. Jade produces asi and asi side projects. And you can tell like they’re focused on us rather than the fans. And you know, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that per se, but it means the fans are going to notice and you’re not going to have the fan base that you once had. And that’s what’s happening with EFI so that bums me out but anyone who hasn’t read it yet go check out the book The go giver by Bob Berg and john David Mann, one of my favorite books. I’m sure you’ve read it christian

i is my my listeners are probably so fucking annoyed with how much I refer that book. It’s gotta be there needs to be there needs to be a go giver counter for how often I mentioned that book because it is so often still one of the best books I’ve ever read today. It’s my girlfriend loves the book, too. She doesn’t even like she doesn’t listen to any business book or read any business books or anything. And she’s still like, that was one of her favorite books ever. Yeah, so good. So

this is the new golden counter every time you mention it.

I’m gonna put a slide whistle in every single time.

You can sample that I give you permission. You may sample that.

I’ve even get a slide whistle now. Oh my god. I’m so whistle.

They’ve got my patch sent it to me yesterday. Dude. I now have a slide whistle as of last night and it was just sitting there and I was like, I know what Be Done.

The my girlfriend Mike Marty might kill me if I get a slide whistle because I will sit here all day just

oh god. Okay, so going I sidetrack too much by. No, I

do trust me. I’m the king of sidetrack note, no problem there.

Yeah, there’s something I want to wrap this back to the standard versus premium. Yeah, when using premium submit hope will show you the option of 20 seconds minimum lesson plus 10 words of feedback with feedback important, that same thing with feedback, not important. And then a 92nd. Minimum. Listen, I know the 92nd. Minimum listen is tempting, but do not do it. Statistically speaking, the decline rate is much higher, or the approval rate is much lower on that 92nd option, because curators don’t have to write feedback, they can’t get rated on feedback, because when they write feedback, you can rate it. So it can be really tempting to be like, hey, at least they have to listen to 90 seconds. Does not matter. Do not do it. Um, even submit hub says this, they have like a link right there. It’s like we don’t recommend this, why not? And then links to a giant blog posts that Jason wrote. And basically, it’s like, here’s the statistics. This only exists because enough people complained about it. So we added it. But we still don’t recommend it speaking from personal experience, like I decline far fewer 90, or I approve far fewer 92nd submissions than I do for feedback submissions. Because it’s that barrier. If I’m on the fence about approving a song, and I’m writing feedback, I’m going through I’m thinking like, yeah, you know, like, why am I not approving this? It makes me think about it. And sometimes as I’m writing my feedback, you know, I’m like, you know what, let me at least do a shout out for this. I’ll put on our Instagram, you know, it won’t be on our blog. I’m not going to write up a whole blog post, but I’ll put it on our Instagram. Within 90 seconds. It’s just like, Yeah, I don’t love it. See you. Right. So that makes a lot more sense. Especially if you’re getting rated for the feedback. Right, exactly. And that’s the thing like, so. That’s the other difference. If you choose feedback, important, you can get rated on it. If you choose feedback, not important. or not, you can get rated on it. But you can rate it, if you choose feedback, not important. You can still read it. But that rating doesn’t actually do anything. And it says that like it’s it’s known, it’s because if you’re saying, you know, I don’t care about the feedback, it’s not fair to then like, ding them with a one star rating. That that would just be like a dick move.

So. So you want to go with feedback. Important? minimum 20 seconds.

Yeah, exactly, you. And that’s the default option. Basically, do not change that option, just leave it as is on the default, because you will have better chances of being approved. I’ve also noticed that typically, the 92nd songs seem to be the ones that aren’t quite as good. So maybe artists already knows that it’s not great. And they just don’t want the pain. They’re just in which case to the ether? Yeah, but in that case, just don’t submit it, make it good. And then submit it, like make

it good. Or put it away and write something else and make that good. Yeah. Can you choose? What part of the song The track starts? Or does it start right at the intro? And the the curator can flip through the track measly wherever they want?

Yeah, it does start right at the beginning. And this is actually a common thing we see where, you know, the curator listens for a minute, and says, like, hey, like, I like this, but the chorus didn’t really do it for me and somebody’s like, but the chorus doesn’t start till a minute. 30 seconds, like, well, they can skip through it. So keep in mind, you know, it might say that, listen for a minute, that doesn’t mean they listen to the first minute, it does start there. But that brings me to another point, which is don’t release something with a stupid long intro as a single This is just human psychology. If people aren’t hooked in the radio edits, people, yeah, if people aren’t hooked in the first five to 10 seconds, they are not going to enjoy it. So if you put a song out and even if it gets approved, it gets put on a Spotify playlist and it has like a 32nd intro with just like guitar noodling and this kind of stuff before it actually starts, like, you’re not going to catch people’s attention on that playlist. Like, yeah, you got on the playlist, but it’s not going to do anything for you. And especially when it comes to standards, you have to capture people within that first five seconds, because otherwise they’re literally going to hit instant decline. When I think back to the songs that I’ve approved on standards. It’s the songs that get to the fucking point. I can’t remember the band’s name, but it was it’s a metal band from like Missouri or somewhere around there and just starts like a big drum fill, like and then guitars and like Yes, and I love to use asi as an example, which I literally use in my feedback when somebody sends me a song with like a 92nd intro or sometimes artists will send in the music video that has like 90 seconds of plot before it even gets to the video. I’m

just like, no music sound, right? People walking around.

So my favorite example to give in feedback is like, hey, this intro is way too long for a single I like the sound, but I cannot approve this. You know, I think songs like this are great. I love songs like this, you know, amphi song, the great disappointment, for example, amazing song, not a single, not even close. If you think about the singles from sing the sorrow, which the great disappointment is on, you had girls not gray, which starts playing guitar. Then you had leaving song part two, which starts with like a 22nd tap intro but it’s like, Okay, this is kind of cool. Can’t say I ever heard on the radio. It was a single, but I never heard on the radio. And they have silver and gold, which starts with like, calm piano intro and then boom, Jumbo. Bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, Tata. And then guitar. That’s how you start a single, you don’t spend a minute and a half of the looping pedal, just noodling around on guitar building, like, No, you have to catch attention right away. And you have to know the difference between a single and an album cut, especially on standards, but also, when you’re submitting premium. Because, you know, I’m sure I’m not the only curator who says this is not single material. It’s a good song, but it’s not single material.

And this is actually extremely good advice that you’re giving right now for EDM producers specifically this is, I can’t even explain how great of advice This is. Because a lot of what producers do when they’re writing music, they have specifically intros and outros, that are 15 to 30 seconds long, that are just drum loops. Usually, you know, it’s your kick snare hats with some little background follies, and then maybe the baseline or you know, like a part of the intro lead that’s going to be in the drop, or the climax of the song, they’ve got that and it’s just and then like, the last 15 seconds, or maybe eight seconds of the intro is like a build up. And then you cut the drums at the last bar. And then it goes into a big into the breakdown. And maybe there’s a vocal and it goes into like a breakdown lead. That’s how electronic music is built and structured. And then the outro essentially is copy it’s essentially a copy of the intro on the last 30 seconds of the song. And a lot of the times what that’s for is for DJ like a lot like electronic music tracks are made for DJing because DJs are going to play them out and they have to be able to mix into them and all that stuff. However, most tracks a lot of tracks today. And I even suggest this even just for like catalog reasons or submission reasons or playlisting reasons or radios like it, there’s there’s so many more benefits to writing two versions of your song A an original mix that is going to have that intro outro structure for your track for DJs. And then a radio ad it cut the intros and outros out, go right into the breakdown, or maybe even like, like eight seconds before the build up into the drill like getting to the point especially if there’s a vocal start on that vocal right away, like hook them with that good, nice, the first verse, or chorus or whatever, hook them right away, cut that intro out, especially for the submission stuff. And now you have two versions of the song. Now you could technically say maybe you have an EP, I mean, they’re technically the same song, but they’re cut differently. But you can send those two, if you’re getting them signed, somewhere like that can be a dual release. Now you’re not releasing just one song, but you’re releasing to the radio at it, I guarantee you is going to do so much better on Spotify, it’s going to get playlisted more. And you’re probably going to get more approvals on submit hub with a radio edit. So this is such damn good advice that you’re giving right now of like, make two versions of your song. Don’t, don’t cut. Don’t cut yourself off with just having an intro outro and being like, this is how it is this is how is made. This is how it’s going to be released. This is how you’re going to listen to it and judge it. Now you’re just like you’re holding yourself back and not giving you the opportunity to be like You know what, maybe I need to cut this out for just the average listener who doesn’t give a shit about the interaction. tell you right now, the average listener of electronic music doesn’t give a fuck about intros and outros. They don’t care about those, those 32nd drum loops building into the breakdown, they don’t care those are made for DJs that’s all that that’s there for the only reason an intro and outro is there for just for DJs everything else the in between stuff, the real the real meat and potatoes of the track that is for the listener to enjoy. intro and outro no one cares about it. So cut that out when you’re submitting that sort of stuff.

Yeah, I absolutely agree. And I also think there’s there is literally a difference between an album cut and a single That’s not saying the album cut is a bad song. It’s just saying that it’s a not a good introduction to a potential fan. Um, so like, let’s say, listener, you’re going on a date. Are you gonna look like you’re at home playing Xbox on a Saturday night? Are you gonna, you know, put a little effort in, you’re gonna put some effort in. And that’s not to say, You’re not a good guy or a good girl when you’re at home, in sweatpants, playing Xbox. But that’s, that’s, that’s your elden cut right there. Like, you have a single to put out there. No pun intended, because you’re probably single.

There’s number one, there’s number one, where’s the slide whistle? There we go. Opposite sound. Oh, good. Oh, beautiful. said I was to execution.

Um, but you know, you have to single and you have the album cut, and you’re not just gonna, you know, cut off the sweat pants. So you have cut off sweat pants and call that your single? Like, that’s just gonna look like you have the you wanted cut off jeans. And you didn’t quite make it there. This discussion? Man, I’m so sorry. But I’m having a blast. No, it’s

um, beautiful. I

love it. But like, just just to riff on that a little more at the intro of new politics song. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. first single ever released. It’s an electric guitar clean goes through the main riff of the song once. And then the drums come in. And the distortion comes in. And they start yelling. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. It gets you a little intrigued. It leaves you know, like four seconds at the front for the the DJ to talk over if it’s a radio station they can make Yeah, here’s new politics. Yeah, yeah. As it’s Fading in, and boom song. 30 Seconds to Mars. Um, what was the big song What if I wanted to break the kill has a super long building synth intro. And then the vocal start with the drums in like that six eight pattern that they have radio at, it just goes straight to the drums and the six eight pattern the synth has gone. Like, you can have a radio edit that turns an album cut into a single. But you also have album cuts that no matter what you do, they’re still album cuts, they’re still you in front of your Xbox in sweatpants. Like it goes both ways. And I was tying this into some point that I’ve now totally forgotten. Oh, you were saying that he cut the intro and the outro off. And then about 30 seconds each. That is a minute, you’re cutting off for the Spotify version for the playlist. And you know what that means? You get more plays more quickly. Because if it’s in a playlist of like eight songs, and you just cut each one of them down by eight songs. Now, how long is the average EDM track?

Three and a half minutes probably maybe pushing for sorry, cutting it down to two and a half to three? Probably Yeah.

Which is like the typical rock song length.

Mm hmm.

So now what you can do is with eight songs on a, you know, short album, long EP, whatever you want to call it. I think Spotify considers eight songs and albums, you now basically have cut two whole songs off of that without cutting any songs off. So if somebody puts that album on repeat, guess what? People can listen five times to every single song in the time that I’ve taken to listen to four songs or to the album four times, which means you now have gotten eight more plays on Spotify in the same amount of time, which means you’ve gotten paid eight more times in the same amount of time songs on Spotify. Gotta make them short, short, sweet, to the point.

This is what’s so great about lo fi music is every song is like a minute and a half, two minutes. It’s so short, it it gets the point. It’s easy music to put in the background, and they get so many damn streams because it doesn’t take much to like it you could put an entire lo fi EP or album on and it just every song feels like it’s blending into the next one. There’s a seamless transition doesn’t feel like any specific beginning or end. And that is great for looping and just having in the background and getting those plays. It’s the same thing like what you’re talking about in terms of cut those intros and outros out and you cut down how long it takes to actually listen. And every song feels fresh. Doesn’t feel like because when you have those long intros and outros in there, it feels repetitive it you can feel the repetitiveness like it’s like, okay, when are we going to get to where I want to go? Okay, let me skip ahead. Or you just get not not this one, skip. And now you’ve just lost the stream.

Yeah, and that’s another thing Spotify pays out, as long as you hit at least 30 seconds. They pay you for one whole stream. Doesn’t matter if people listen to a six minute song or a two minute song as long as at least 30 seconds. You can paid the same amount. So there’s literally no point. And I’m looking at bands like between the buried and me who did this before Spotify was a thing, but they put out a 17 minute song. And it’s like, dude, when you release it on Spotify, because it’s in five distinct sections, like when you put it out on Spotify, I sincerely hope you cut that up, because then you’ll get paid for each single one. Same for Green Day on American Idiot. They have songs that on Spotify are combined, not separated, but combined. And they are separate songs on the album on the CD. I’m like, Why on earth? Would you do that? Because you are getting paid less for the same amount of streams? That makes no sense. Yeah, nothing changes. Yeah. And I totally know why they do it. Because there’s, you know, this is back in the day, when you had a fade from one song to the next gapless transition. And people are moving away from that, because it doesn’t do well, with shuffle play, or, you know, playlisting, that kind of stuff. So that’s why they do it. They don’t want a bad jump in there. But it’s still a stupid idea. I’d rather take a bad jump and get paid for it, then lose half my money.

Spotify has like a mixing option. Anyways, we’re like, fade out fade in. And a lot of the times you don’t even notice it transition and all of a sudden, oh, I’m in a new song. Exactly. have that feature. Yeah, it’s whatever. I’m sure we could go, we could probably do an entire podcast episode on our gripes of the industry and stupid decisions.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Speaking of stupid decisions, I’m going to bring it back to submit hub. And you know, there’s other stuff that we can still talk about with submit hub, but one of my pet peeves. Artists, when you get approved, reply to your messages, oh, good, like pulling teeth. So for our MP, when we do a shout out or a post, we also do an Instagram audiogram with it. And for that we need copyright permission, and we need the audio file. Literally at least half the time, when I request the audio file on the copyright permission, which they’ve indicated that they can give. It’s like three days, no response, four days minimum, okay, I’ll follow up with them a couple more days, no response. And then there’s a feature that lets you request an update. And this works for submitted as well. So you can do this to curators and labels and curators and labels can do it right back to you think influencers as well. And basically what that means is, when a curator does it to you have 72 hours to respond, or they get to keep your money for free. They don’t have to do anything, but they keep your money. If you’re an artist, and you do that to a curator, they have 72 hours to respond, or you get your credits back. Most of the time. When I do that, it’ll be like I’ll send it in, they have 72 hours to respond after I’ve already waited three to four days. And then like on the third day, right before it runs out. They’ll be like, Oh, yeah, here’s the stuff. It’s like, great. Like, you just throw up my whole posting schedule for the week. Like I said, I’d share it within a week and then release. Now it’s going to be like three weeks from now, because it’s going at the back of the line. Guess who’s never getting approval again. That too. When that happens. I most often just block them because I don’t have to refund them in the future. I don’t see like, Oh, hey, I approved them in the past like, Oh, this sounds good. I’m gonna approve them again. And forget that that happened. I’m just like, Nope, I had to request an update block. So they cannot submit to me anymore. blacklisted such a fast way. Exactly. So honestly, it takes 10 seconds to log in to submit hub calm, every single day, go there. And check your messages. If you have an Active Campaign, if you don’t have an Active Campaign with approvals outstanding, whatever, like you don’t check it, you know, every day, 365 days of the year. But if you submitted and you have approvals that have not been shared yet, check it every single day. There’s no excuse for that. And, you know, this is not something that I do often. But sometimes, like, I’ve had artists where they reply, but don’t do it. So I just mark it as shared. I’m like, here’s our homepage. I couldn’t share it. I didn’t get the info. You responded. So the escalation canceled, but you still didn’t send what I need. I’m sorry, like I did my best.

here just the chat was there. Right? It’s in your court?

Yeah, by the time I’ve asked like four times it’s like I don’t care anymore. Like if they go to submit hub somehow it’s gonna be like, well, they asked for times, like and this submit hub recommends this to the bloggers chatroom. If like if this is a recurring issue, they they cancel the escalation that you sent, but do nothing like then just mark it as shared. Like and and leave a note explaining it. So it’s not like it misses something that you shouldn’t do. But this is a warning for submitters reply to people, especially if they request an update. Don’t mark it as seen Then do nothing like that’s just stupid. Excuse me, like I’m getting upset. But like, you’re trying to get people to share your music make it easy for them.

This is where we get into the personal. Yeah, personal responsibility part of the episode regarding artists be more responsible. respect people’s time. I especially like what you’re saying with, like, these are people who are interested in your music. What, like, there’s nothing more than an artist wants than people to be interested in their music, you’re on Smith hub for a reason, right? You want your stuff to be shared. Someone wants to share it, like at least respond with anything. Even if you’re like, Listen, you know, no, I don’t want to go with you. I’m not gonna send anything. Sorry for wasting your time. Doesn’t matter. Just give a fucking response to something.

Yeah. And, you know, I should, I just want to mention this, I know life happens things, you know, people have a tough time, especially the last year and a half, like that is totally understandable. I can empathize with that. But lately, it’s been like, literally 50% or more, half of my approval is just ghost as soon as it’s approved. A couple of weeks ago, I had one artist that I had to escalate on them, and they sign the copyright and didn’t even send like an Oh, we’re so sorry. Like, they just like signed it and didn’t say anything. Um, and this ties into my next point, which is rejection hurts on submit hub. And especially, I know that a lot of curators don’t write good feedback. Like, especially like the Spotify playlist is, I’m a blogger, and I’m an audio engineer. So I can speak about music with some eloquence, I’m not saying I’m Butch vague, or you know, anybody like that I don’t, I’m not formally trained. But I know, terms. And I know what sounds good to me. And I know how to improve stuff. A lot of curators don’t and especially like the Spotify curators, like I was saying, they don’t write about music, they just have a vibe that fits on a playlist that people like that vibe. So they don’t even necessarily know how to write good feedback, because they’ve never written in the past. And that is something that submit hub looks out for, like if it gets really bad, they’ll reach out to people and say, like, hey, like, you should look into this. But at the same time, as much as it stings to get rejection, do not ever react badly. To a curator. There are some artists that just one star every single rejection out there. And I can tell you right now, those artists, they’re probably going to lose a lot of curators that they can submit to, like for me, because I know my feedback is good. Maybe the artist doesn’t agree. That’s fine. personal differences. Music is subjective. But if they don’t agree with me, when I’m giving objective feedback on how to improve a mix, I don’t want to write feedback for them again in the future and get another low rating. So I don’t deal with them. I say, Okay, welcome. That’s fine. Like, it does not matter to me. Like I love music, but I love music, I don’t want to be stressed out by music. So if there is an artist that I know is gonna leave me a one star rating, just because they’re upset that they got declined, like I can empathize with that. But at the same time, I don’t want to deal with them in the future. And, you know, there’s a bloggers chat room. I know, I’m not the only blogger who does that. You know, there’s other curators who do that don’t give people anything less than a five star rating, unless you never plan to submit to that person in the future. Because you never know who might block you. I don’t block everyone. But I certainly block everyone who one stars, like it’s four stars, and they have a good reason. And they left feedback about what I can improve on. I’m not going to block them, they have a fair point. But if they do a one star with no response, because you can leave a response to I’m just like, yeah, I’m not dealing with that.

I don’t blame you at all. There’s Okay, so there’s two points to make here. One is going to be the people that are leaving those one star reviews with no critical feedback in regards to or no Critical response in terms of your feedback of like, I don’t agree with this. Because, you know, A, B and C or even the people who are just like, yeah, they just one star, every rejection that they get, those people probably aren’t gonna go anywhere. I mean, realistically, they aren’t I just

want to throw out there. You know, when I, when I get a low rating, I listen back to the track again. And almost always, they’re the worst ones that we’ve ever received. Like when it’s a one star, it’s just the, the lack of self awareness. They think, Oh, this is a hit. This person doesn’t see at one star. And like, I can empathize that with that is like, that’s a mindset thing. You know, maybe there’s some mental health stuff going on there. I can empathize. But it’s also not my problem. And like I said, I don’t want to do that in the future.

They’re probably not going to be all that successful. So this is what I’m actually going to do. Because Ooh, man cold outreach is either hit or miss. It’s a lot of these artists that are that way are the one stars, you know, they’re the people one starring they can’t Take rejection, and they don’t handle criticism. Well. Yeah. And so

I find that the better an artist is musically, the more talent they have, the more likely they are to react well to rejection. Because they have confidence, you know, to pull out a specific example, I got, I think as a three star rating a couple weeks ago, because I told this guy like, Hey, you know, your songwriting is really good. As a whole, I liked your production and mix. But your snare is super loud and has a lot of low mid mud. Like, honestly, if it weren’t for that, one thing. I would probably approve this, but it just does not sound good to me. Um, and then history started and said, minor technical details like, yeah, minor technical detail. But when I’m getting 100 songs a week that don’t have minor technical details stick out, yeah, I’m gonna pick one of those rather than yours. It’s a tough market. But I guess the point here is, don’t take your rejection out on the curators makes it the curators start sharing bad music, they lose their audience, and then the shares become worthless, and the curators aren’t going to have an audience. So they’re not going to be on submit hub anymore, potentially. So it’s, you know, don’t bite the hand that feeds. And again, I’m not saying that every, every curator does a good job, like there are curators that don’t do well. And if there’s a curator that just said something so stupid that you never want to submit to them again, yeah, let them have it, give them a one star, like, that’s totally fine. Just know that, you know, don’t do that, if you’re not planning, don’t do that, if you are planning to submit to them again, then you’re just shooting yourself in the foot is the other thing. When a curator reviews your submission, they can see past submissions from you. And they can see that rating. So even if you have not blocked them, if you you know, left a low rating on it, they might just see that and refund you. Or they might see that and like write the best feedback they’ve ever written and decline it just out of spite. Now, I’m not saying I do that, if in that case, I just refund it. But I could conceivably see some other curators being like, I like this, but I’m gonna decline it just because like, Who cares if they give me a little low rating? For me, I don’t want to deal with another low rating. So I’m just like, yeah, whatever refund, those ratings are seen by curators, and they are specifically shown when you submit again. So the best thing you can do is, you know, stuck up a little bit like, even if it wasn’t the best feedback, if it was acceptable. Give them the five stars say hey, thanks so much for listening to the track, we’d really appreciate it. We’ll try again, maybe next time, it’ll be a fit. And then it’ll be like, Hey, you know what? This person took my took my feedback, okay. And the best thing that I love the most is seeing artists who put in their quick pitch, which is like a little field you can fill in. Hey, thanks so much for your feedback about XYZ element of the song. We made sure to pay attention to that in this new song. Here you go. I’ve had other artists rework the song do a remix me like, Hey, we remixed it. Um, one of them had an intro in a music video that was super long, like, yeah, we cut the intro out. So now just post the song. I’m like, yep, I’m approving that I liked the song. So, you know, rejection sucks. But sometimes it’s literally just not a good fit. And if you fix that, the curator will share it, and they will appreciate it. If you highlight that and send it to them again, and say like, Hey, we listened. Like that’s probably going to turn it into an approval unless the curator was just biessing In which case, that’s when I would give them a writing,

right? Well, this is all about like, you know, you don’t want to leave a bad taste in someone’s mouth. Here’s the thing. A lot of especially when you’re on your level of a curator, I’m sure a lot of you probably know a lot of other big curators that are also on summit hub. Like you’re you talk with these people, you’re friends with them. So that’s something you need to keep in mind. People talk about other people people talk about the best things they find. And then what’s the other thing they talk about? They talk about the worst things they find they talk about the worst reviews they talk like people look for bad things so when when you give like what you’re saying if you submit to James here and he rejects you and gives you a three star and you just one star them or and you give you’re like you know what, fuck you dude, you don’t know what you’re talking about. James is going to block you and probably tell just happened. He will people have told me that he will tell everyone about how shitty of a person you are. Or if if someone else mentions your name, and James goes, I remember that PC shit, like, people talk. So you don’t want to. You don’t want to run your mouth and give yourself a bat and I’ve talked about this so many times, especially with labels because labels are the big thing with with our industries. Everyone’s trying to get Single Sign the labels. And so when I tell a lot of amateur producers, this when you’ve only been writing for two or three years, you’re probably not ready to sign to the biggest labels in the industry. And yet, they will submit time and time again, these terrible tracks to these labels. When they listen to the third or fourth track, and they go, I remember this name, he’s already sent in so many bad songs, they’re just going to delete it, or they’re going to mark you as spam. They’re going to do something to stop getting those because they’re getting hundreds of submissions a day. And if they go, Oh, we already know this person doesn’t send the best music. We’re just gonna outright, you know, block them so we don’t get that they’ll clear up our work will be you know, well, now you fucked yourself. So if in three years, you are really good, and you are ready to release with them, well, now they don’t even they know they’re not getting any of your emails now. And same thing with summit hub.

Yeah, I just wanted to say something on that note, feel free to rebrand. Like, if you’ve been that person, it might be time to just pick a new name rebrand, like change it up. disassociate yourself from the former identity, the former branded

new haircut, put some fake glasses on, wear new clothes, change your name. rebrand,

but also don’t make the mistake of mouse rat and rat mouse and 3d scan and whatever other names that Dan chose, and Parks and Rec, like they had like 20 different names over the series. That is ridiculous. I, I knew a local band that did that.

They just rebranded like change, like rearrange their name,

I think it was four times. Let’s see they first they were, I don’t even remember the order, but Nautica a colorful Symphony, and stay home were three names that I remember. And then I think there was a fourth name is too much. And and there was one time that they asked if they should change it to lawn knives. And I was like, No, just email. Long knives. It’s such a bad knee long knives like oh, yeah, like do not do it.

It’s even worse than long knives.

Yeah, so feel free to rebrand. Don’t do it to off don’t

do too often there’s a there’s a real one rebrand is good, maybe. But the one rebrand is usually all you need. Okay, so let’s start. I want to I’m curious, because we do need to wrap up here pretty soon, what is let’s get into what’s your gripe with labels on submit

Personally, I just don’t have a use for them. I’m most of the artists I work with. Due to the size and relative potency, let’s say of the labels on submit hub. Most of them are kind of on the smaller end. That’s not to say they’re bad. But I’m a strong believer of until you can’t do it for yourself, do it for yourself, or hire somebody who can at a flat rate. Um, and so, you know, for example, a lot of bands, hire a publicist at a flat rate, like $800 a month or whatever it is, and like, Why on earth? Would you waste that money? Do you realize that, you know, you can go on submit hub, you can send emails to curators that aren’t on submit hub, you can go to other platforms. So submit hub is the largest one, you can do all this yourself. And yeah, you know what, it takes some time. But unless you’re earning $800, or whatever, you’re paying that publicist in that amount of time, it’s not worth it. Don’t be lazy, do it yourself. Um, and, you know, publicists aren’t the only thing like, I see a lot of bands looking for a manager. And I’m like, Why? Why would you do that? You get like two emails a week. You don’t need a manager for that. Unless this is a manager that is truly invested in your music and is going to do a good job for you. One that doesn’t really take a cut. Yeah, like to go back to I fight dragons. Um, they got really lucky with a manager named JJ and he was back in like 2008 when flow bots made a big he was flow bots manager and he loved I fight dragons music. So they signed with him and he got them a major label deal. And it ended up not working out. He got them out of the major label deal. And this is something we talked about when Brian was on the podcast brought from I fight dragons. I can’t remember the episode off the top of my head. But you know, if you go to the band have podcast and they’re like the, I want to say 7877 by 70s. I’ll pull it and put it on the show notes. Oh, thank you. Thank you. He talked about how they re released. Their original two EP is the first EP was not on the label. And the second one was on the label. But part of the label deal was that the label bought the first EP master rights and says like, yeah, that that must have been tough for you to rerelease those two e peas. And he goes, Yeah, well, actually, our manager JJ was awesome. And he got us the deal. And then when he got us off the deal, because we said we don’t want to be with the label anymore. He actually negotiated that we have the rights for all physical copies, we can make whatever physical copies we want. They still retain the digital version. So digital sales, streaming, all that stuff goes to the label. But if the band wants to make physical copies, they can make physical copies. And I’m like, that is bad as that is a good manager who clearly cares about the act and knows what he’s doing in negotiation. Right. And has connections. This was Atlantic Records. It was a an imprint called photofinish. What Yeah. I don’t know if it’s 303 or Cobra starship, one of them is on it. Yeah. So Cobra starship was on the other one then which was, it was not Atlanta. It was Fueled By Ramen, I think was Cobra starch. I don’t remember the label. I can’t remember for sure. The tour that I remember specifically was three or three Cobra starship, travie McCoy and I fight dragons I was working for I fight dragons for the one show. And two of the acts were photofinish and to wear a different label which might have been fueled by an O. Atlantic though I’m not sure I I know Fueled By Ramen got bought out but I don’t know if it was Atlantic, which is Atlantic’s part of Warner main thing being he had the connections to get them on on a label and to get them off the label with his clout. Um, so it’s it’s important stuff to have the right manager don’t just jump through the first person that says yell manage you. It’s like, well, what can you do for us? This is all paying you for

this bleeds into every single artist in the It doesn’t matter. Genre doesn’t fucking matter genre side, every single band artists DJ, singer songwriter, they’re always like, wins that manager coming. They don’t even have a label release, or maybe one release. And they’re like, wins that manager coming. We want a manager and I did it all episode on this. I can’t remember the pod. I don’t remember the episode. But it was why you don’t need a manager yet. Because it’s, it is like these managers not going to do anything for you. If you’re going to find a good manager, it’s probably going to cost you money. Because the manager probably does that for a living, and you probably can’t afford them. Because they have to feed their family. And you probably even if you could afford them, they probably won’t take you because you might not have anything to offer to them that they can pitch to anyone get you signed anywhere. For the book, they were you’re not going to go anywhere, because you’re just you’re not there yet. You’re not ready. Like you could have one release, have all the money in the world, no fans, no social following. And be like, I’m ready for a manager and start talking to a manager and the manager is gonna look at you and go, fuck do you have, like, you’ve got nothing to offer.

And that’s the thing, like, if you’re getting major label offers, you might need a manager. Yeah. But you want a manager who’s not just gonna skate by and be like, Oh, you’re on major label, cool, I’ll get free money. Like, that’s not what you want. You also if the label offers to give you a manager, no runaway? Because that manager is going to be looking out for the label around Yes, yeah, well ask around and find the manager who’s good at what they do, but is independent of the label, you’re sending with it with a different label, and they’re involved with that, that’s fine. As long as you like, Hey, no conflict of interest. We’re with this label you work out for us. Not this label, not your label. But by no means should you ever go with a label manager for the label that you are working with. That’s just that idea. And it’s the same thing until you do not have the time to do something where that takes away from your other business activities. You should not outsource it. Um, you know, I hear people say, I don’t know what to do. Okay, you’re listening to a podcast right now. You know, this podcast is teaching you how to do these things. You know, Krishna, I don’t know if you take topic requests. But if you do, tell people how to take topic requests, because then if they don’t know how to do something, they can ask you and you can do a show about it.

Yes, 100% if anyone has a topic, and I’ve said this before to go to Envious audio.com slash podcast, just scroll down, and you’ll see the form that you can fill out to reach out and if you have any requests, you have any questions, fill them out, trust me. I’m dying for content ideas all the time. I would love new ideas. It’s it’s a process coming up with new ideas. So if you have anything you’re struggling with, go fill out that form and I guarantee I’ll put it on my list and make an episode about it. It’s incredible the time we’re living the ability that we have one to be recording this podcast you to be consuming this podcast. There’s been there’s no No other time in the history of the earth of the human race that we’ve been able to do what we’re doing here. And now it’s the same thing from like 30 or 40 years ago, you couldn’t self release, you know how hard it was to just distribute your own music all over like, it was so hard to get anywhere without a label now is, everyone has a song, everyone, everyone has something on SoundCloud, like,

I think 30,000 a week are added to Spotify, something like that.

It’s crazy, you walk down the street, but main street of whatever town you’re in, and I guarantee you will walk by three or four people that probably have a song, either on Spotify or SoundCloud, but it’s so easy to get your music out there. And if it’s that easy to get it out there, it’s that easy to figure out what you need to do to market it and promote it yourself. And you don’t need those other sources currently, to get you to where you need to be to where you will need that manager. Or maybe even labels help or whatever. Because I mean, that’s like, like what we were talking about before, when when a label is taking 70% it should be that they have something you cannot get on your own. There’s an audience reach that they have that you don’t have, there’s something that you don’t have that they do, that’s going to significantly help you. If that’s the case, then that label release is probably going to be for you. But that label has nothing to offer. Don’t give up a huge percentage. It just doesn’t make sense. There’s nothing for you there that you can’t do on your own or figure out like so much. Oh, we could rant on this. Yeah, ever, man because the it’s so lately in artists don’t listen to that’s the struggle to is so you’ll yell at them in their face. And they’ll be like, ah, I still want to go this route.

Yeah. And something that, you know, maybe they have to learn from experience. Maybe there’ll be that one in 1000 artists that has a good time with it. Yeah, um, but you know, to tie that all back in, this is why I don’t use the label portion of summit hub. Not because I think the labels aren’t good. Like, I’m sure there are good ones there. I haven’t really looked at it. Because none of the clients that I’ve been working with have either expressed an interest in it, or had the need for it. Like, if, if an artist isn’t ready for it, I’m just gonna say like, Hey, I don’t think this is a good idea. If you want to submit it, then go for it. But I’m not gonna do it for you. Like, I I’m washing my hands with that. Um, and that just that goes for so many things. Like it’s tough. And like you said, artists don’t listen. Um,

it’s struggle. We love you guys. We love you artists.

You make great music like that’s why. That’s why we’re involved with this.

The music is awesome. But stubborn, stubborn. Yeah,

I’m just I want to throw Whoa. Oh, same time. I think podcasters in general have to be stubborn to stick with doing a show every week or two. I want to throw something else out there, though. Which is, artists? How much do you spend on education on how to run a better business? For a lot of you, I’m going to guess that number is between zero and $50. Maybe you bought a book, maybe you subscribe to some magazine, whatever it is. Why don’t you go find somebody who’s an expert in whatever field you want to learn about the music industry, because they are out there. Make sure you find someone reliable, they probably have a course. If that course has a refund guarantee, which most courses do 30 days, 60 days, whatever. Buy it, even if it’s 500 or 1000 bucks, just buy it. Take a look at it, see if it’s useful to you. If it is great, if not refund just make sure you do it before the time runs out. Because most people will say, Hey, we give you a whole month we’re not going to, you know it’s been a month and a half Sorry, just do that. Because even if it’s $500 or $1,000, or whatever, that beats the hell out of paying a publicist $800 a month, every month to handle leads to incoming emails. So you get that you could literally have done and you probably by taking you know XYZ course, could have turned that into 20 incoming emails a week with actual opportunities for you. I get it’s, it seems nice and easy to have a publicist, a manager Angel, who whatever it is. Yeah, absolutely, there’s a cool factor to it. But then when you complain about spending money on a course, or something that will make you as a person better. Now just just focus on that. And maybe then you will find that you are good at this thing. And you can become a publicist or a manager or whatever. And actually be a good example. And set that example for other artists say like this is what a good manager does. Those people are they’re not. They, they suck, don’t, don’t go with them. Here’s what you need to do. And then you can show them via mentor to them. Like, that’s the way to go. If you’re going to spend money, invest in yourself until it’s at the point where any further investment in yourself, I’m not saying stop investing in yourself, but where that would have a lesser impact than bringing on somebody else to your team.

I could not have said that better. That was perfect. This is exactly why I bring outside people and because there’s so many lot of words of wisdom to come from other parts of the industry. And for people who are listening. Listen to James because Damn, knowledge bomb dropped a massive knowledge bomb. Thank you so much, James. Let’s wrap it up. Is there anything else you want to jump on real quick about submit hub. Otherwise, go ahead and plug anything that you’d like to plug in? Just give any ending advice?

Yeah, well, first of all, thanks so much for having me here. I’m always happy to learn about the layout. Yeah, I’m always happy to nerd out about the music industry that I hope you leave that in to because I will talk like, okay, we’ll slide whistle. I love to nerd out about the music industry. As anyone listening can tell, I get sidetracked. I love just talking about music and business in general. I apologize that this, this article, this episode is all about submit hub. And maybe a quarter of it was actually about submitted. But as I was saying at the start of this all when I put out content, I tried to put out content that makes you think and isn’t just like step one, step two, step three. So I hope that everything we talked about today makes you think about how you can make a better summit campaign and how you can be a better artist who runs a business and, you know, hopefully a successful business. But because we did get sidetracked so much, I’m gonna shout out where you can get the free email course that Christian mentioned reading at the beginning of this, just go to band hive, dot rocks slash EDM, that’s a special link just for all you electronic dance money listeners. So you can sign up for the course for free. And then as you’re going through it, you know, feel free to hit reply on any of those emails and asked me if you have questions, and I’m totally happy to to get back to you with the best answer that I can provide. And, you know, maybe some, like mid 2000 seen bad puns as well. Who knows?

You can see see me go ahead and CC me down those two if you need some advice, specifically with EDM stuff.

Okay, I will see see see see.

Slide whistle dammit.

Anyway, again, that link is band hive dot rocks slash EDM. We have a cool link, we’re not a.com because that was like $3,000. So it’s like, well, we rock so it’s band dot rocks.

Oh, that’s ridiculous, man, that domain business sometimes it’s lucrative.

Oh, yeah. I haven’t checked it in a while. So after we hang up, I’m gonna go check it again. And maybe I’ll buy it.

Oh, man, dude, thank you so much. This is a lot of fun, James, I’m sure there’s gonna be something that I see you talking about, again, either in your emails or online. That’ll be like, Alright, we got to get on. We gotta get on the line. Again, do another podcast episode. But two hours goes by just like that. Thank you so much, James. I appreciate your time. And we’ll talk soon, man.

All right. My pleasure. Thanks so much, Christian. I hope you have an awesome rest of your week. You

too. Take care. Thanks for hanging out and checking out this episode of electronic dance money. Guys, this was such a fun episode. I hope you enjoy James go check out band hive. Like I said, it’s good to learn things from other people in different parts of the industry if even if it’s not directly related to your genre and what you’re working in. James is a super knowledgeable guy. And their podcast has a ridiculous amount of information. I cannot recommend it enough. Go check it out. If you want any of the links of any of the things we talked about. In today’s episode, just head to Envious audio.com slash Episode 60 to check out the show notes and I’ll see you guys next time.