Public Relations (PR) is a great way to get more exposure for your music, but it doesn’t come cheap. And that’s not just in the middle of a cost of living crisis either. There are plenty of different ways to get your music heard, social media being a big one, but landing on a popular blog will do wonders for exposure. But how do you find the right places to approach and how do you find the time to submit to the best ones? And who knows if they’ll even respond?
Luckily for you, we’ve held one of our weekly Music Industry Mondays events all about the best place to organise yourself when it comes to PR, SubmitHub. SubmitHub is an online platform that connects music artists, particularly independent and emerging ones (that’s you!), with music bloggers, playlist curators and influencers. If you’d like a visual step-by-step guide on how to use it, you can watch our full talk here.
Why use SubmitHub?
SubmitHub is the best way for new and smaller music artists to bridge the gap between themselves and influential mediums to boost publicity on a smaller budget. You could be paying £500, £1,000 or even upwards of £5,000 for PR exposure which is probably not within your means if you’re just starting out.
SubmitHub takes the hard work out of the equation and guides you through a streamlined process to submit and pitch your work to several influential blogs and other media simultaneously. By using its credit-based system, where you purchase credits and then use those to approach different blogs, curators etc., you won’t have to worry about forking out for a spot on Alpas Records.
And the best part is if you don’t end up using all your credits, or you don’t receive a response from someone you’ve reached out to, SubmitHub will refund you your credits for you to use again somewhere else. How kind.
SubmitHub even has a live chat and networking function available at all times. This means you can pop in a quick message asking users to check out your music or ask a question if you need any help. Take time to participate in chats, build your artist profile and contribute to discussions, they may lead to some meaningful connections.
Getting Your Pitch Right
Although SubmitHub has automated most of the process, with auto-fills, drop-downs to pick genres etc. and checking boxes to decide where to pitch and reach out to, you’ll still have a little legwork to do. This mainly comes down to pitching.
Using SubmitHub’s Quick Pitch feature, you can use your acquired credits to pitch your music directly to bloggers, playlist curators, and influencers. When pitching to curators and/or influencers, it’s important to be able to sell yourself in as few words as possible.
Using a bold font to make certain words stand out, like the genre of your music, who you most sound like, your name etc., will make it easier for the big guys (or gals) to scan your pitch and get an immediate idea of whether they’re interested or not. Make sure your pitch isn’t just a copy and paste, try to personalise it to each platform you’re reaching out to. Personalisation will go a long way.
Also, make sure to write your pitches in 3rd person as if someone else has written it for you. Nothing worse than seeing “I” in a bio or pitch.
SubmitHub has completely revolutionised the way independent releasing artists promote their music, even on a tiny budget. PR doesn’t have to be this big scary thing that costs loads of money anymore. Try out SubmitHub and see the results for yourself.
If you enjoyed this post, why not come to the live event? Grab your free tickets here for our weekly Music Industry Mondays events where we talk to industry icons and discuss best practices for new musicians. See you there!