Once you finish a song and put it out in the world, what comes next? Clearly it isn't just sitting around waiting for it to just magically grow. Modern musicians know this and that it takes a lot of effort promoting your music to get it heard by many. Currently, my social media feeds are flooded with ads for playlist submission or song promotions by x company for x amount of money. Certain ones vet playlist curators so that they ensure you aren't getting placed on a botted playlist. If that ever happens and your DSP finds out, you run the risk of your music being removed that you probably payed for to be on those services in the first place. So what gives? Is this the right direction we should all be heading once we finish a song?

I've looked into quite a few of these as just options, but I couldn't shake the feeling that a lot of them feel like total grifts and another way to waste money for little return. Everyone is chasing that 10k monthly listener mark where Spotify 'finally' thinks you're worthy to push into their discovery mode so it's pretty easy to see why a lot of people clamor to spending hundreds of dollars to get a CHANCE at being on a small to mid size playlist. A lot of artists are desperate to make it big super fast because our society has driven us to hold instant gratification in higher regard over patience and consistency. This is why I see these companies and ads the way I do. I don't believe that these rewards are just handed to you. I don't believe everyone even gets rewards for the effort they put forth as much as you think you 'deserve it.' Music shouldn't be about the destination of 'making it', and instead focus on the present moment of being able to create something that means something to you and that's special. That's where the rewards are in my opinion. Anyways, onto Submithub!

I kept reading on reddit threads about Submithub and I thought I would check it out. It's been running for over a decade and I have never heard of it. The website is super basic and doesn't win me over with how shiny it looks. It brings me back to the mid 2000's webpages and I kind of like that. I didn't really know what I was expecting to get into, so I watched a few of the instructional videos and found myself in the 'Hot or Not' tab. I select my genres of music I want to review and away I go. (Don't forget that there's an AI music button so you don't need to listen to that if it's not your thing!)

Upon first impression, it's super simple. Someone submits their song and users, probably other musicians, rate them on a scale of 0-100. Some people pay for premium status which allows them to have a more in depth review scale. Either way, you still get to leave a message for feedback. I think it's super cool that something like this exists and that it covers a lot of different music. Why not help out others while I try to help out myself? I try to leave as good of feedback as I can, but at the end of the day music is entirely subjective in my opinion. I went on to review a bunch of songs and actually found some cool artists that I follow on the website itself, and now on Spotify. It felt like a unique way of supporting everyone else who's just wanting people to hear your stuff. I'm sure there's a lot of people on the website who are really only there to help themselves, but I do hope that they eventually think what they are doing could matter to someone out there.

Once I got some hot or not reviewing under my belt, I decided to throw my own song into the hot or not bucket and see what kind of feedback I get. I'm still relatively new to songwriting as I practically only began in January of this year, so this felt like a cool thing to do to get feedback from others that I do not know and they don't know me. I find it quite interesting how different people's feedback is. Some are hyper specific, some are very subjective and come off emotionally, and some are just vague 'good jobs'. I guess this is what happens when it's a platform for artists that can submit reviews to potentially further their own music.

Overall, I think it's a neat experience that can give a little insight to how your music might hit with other artists. I know there's a few things I can work on moving forward, and that's good enough for me.