Welcome to Episode 63 of the band Hive Podcast.

It is time for another episode of the band hive podcast. My name is James Cross. I'm not here with Aaron Gingras or Matt Hoos today. Instead, I have a very special guest.

Steve Martin, who is the mastermind behind Ascending Everest, an ambient neoclassical solo project. How are you doing today, Steve? I'm doing great, Thank you. How about yourself? That's wonderful to hear. And I'm also doing well, thank you. And it's great to have you here because we've known each other for a few years with various musical projects that you've been involved in. We've been chatting about your mixes and what you're doing on SubmitHub, which this episode is gonna be all about maximizing your return on investment on SubmitHub.

But before we dive deep into that, do you want to give us a little bit of background on your musical journey and how ascending Everest came about and what you're doing with that project. Sure, yeah, So it kind of starts a bit before that, probably a couple of years before that. In fact, I'll go way back. I've been writing music since I was about 18. Something like that. Never really made a big deal of it. Had one nice break where I got a bit of exposure for something kind of thought, right.

I'll try to take this seriously now. So started putting some stuff together. Turned out I'm not the most talented of people at production. Naturally, I think James will probably agree with that one. But it got me into. I started making music, started submitting stuff as a few different artists. I then got into ascending Everest, while later, as I started to kind of move away from move away from rock for a while because I wanted to try and actually perfect, though I say perfect, the craft get just at all good, is it?

So I started working on some piano and ambient work, which is where something Everest came in on Bond. I kind of picked the name on the basis that I do feel a bit like I'm trying to climb a mountain on bond. Ah, much bigger one than, uh, that I would expect Thio. So is yeah, it's a big challenge, but yeah, that's where I've had the most success so far on bond. Yeah, I'm now moving back towards rock again. I got a new project coming out in. I don't know exactly when this is gonna be airing, so I can I can't entirely say.

But probably a couple of months from now, I should have a new project out called Control Center, where I'm going back to the rock. Andi? Uh, yeah, Hopefully with a much higher standard. Okay. Very cool. And the episodes airing on February 9th. So just about two weeks from today. Okay, Awesome, but yeah. So it's cool to hear that. You're kind of bringing things full circle, having gained the experience with production as well a SubmitHub on all your projects, but especially ascending Everest that you're gonna turn it around and bring it back to the rock world.

And I'm really excited to hear how that turns out. I know I've heard a couple of snippets, and I think it'll be really cool to hear the full tracks when they're ready. So for those of you listening who haven't heard of SubmitHub Submit of is a site that's dedicated to easily connecting artists, managers, labels or anyone else who wants to submit a song to taste makers, including bloggers, Spotify playlist, ER's YouTubers, social media influencers and even other record labels. If you're looking for a label, you can sometimes get conversation started there.

It's a very simple system. You can submit music for free, or you can submit using premium credits, which basically means you pay 12 or $3 to send in a song. And the advantage there is that you have a guaranteed response within 48 hours, and that includes at least 10 words of written feedback. Unless you say you don't want feedback. And so that way you know why you're getting rejected, which is better than you know, sending out a cold email that never gets a response and you're not going to get coverage because so many people have thousands of emails hitting their inboxes every week.

It's just bonkers. It's really an outdated system to send someone an email saying Hey, please share my song. That doesn't really work anymore unless you're an established artist, Unfortunately, but so SubmitHub is there. Thio help make it easier for taste makers and people who submitting music to connect. That's essentially what SubmitHub does now. Steve. The average approval rate for SubmitHub when you're using premium is 20%. But from what I gather from our previous conversations, you're able to consistently get results that are quite a bit better than that.

Can you tell us about what your most successful campaign was like? How what did you do for that campaign? How well did it turn out and how many shares did you get? Okay, so I think there's a couple of points to start off with. If we're talking about 20% that's gonna be across the whole of SubmitHub across all the different areas. I'd focused specifically on the blog's and curator side, so it's actually slightly better. The average there is 15% what I topped out at WAAS, 68% on the best campaign that I had.

The reason I said that was a maximum is because when I get to that point, I would I would classify Thebe front outlets according to sort of how well I thought I was suited to them at this time. You know, maybe there at a higher level that I'm at currently things like that. If I've got a track that's performing very well, then I'm more likely to try and push into those areas. So I'd say if I if a campaign ends at 68% I probably then want to continue that a bit.

Mawr I want I want to start seeing rejections across the board from from people just in order to know. Okay, now I've reached the limit with the track that I'm working with in terms of actually what I would do the biggest thing, and you'll see this from everyone on. Submit hard. That's getting success that always tell you what it's super annoying. Do your research. It feels like such a waste of time, but it is incredibly, incredibly useful to actually spend the time looking at all the people that you're submitting. Thio.

What are their blog's like? What are their playlists like, what a potentially if you can work it out either from previous feedback that you got from them or from their own outlet. What are they like? Is people you know what? What can you possibly say to them that's gonna impress them? What would you say that might turn them off, Anything like that? Any information that you can find out is good information to be able tohave on. Did you can start to work out how to classify them?

You know, this this'll person doesn't listen for very long, doesn't give great feedback. There might still be unless they approve a lot, you might want to say Well, actually, they're probably not the right person for me to submit Thio because I'm not confident that they're going to approve what I'm sending and I'm not gonna get any any other use? Um, there might be people that are just just only approve stuff that is really at the at the top level on some people that are listening to This will be absolutely at that level.

And you've got great sounding tracks. You're just having a lot of success. Other people when you're just starting out, like like I had been starting out and will be again soon. You start on the bottom rung of the ladder, Andi. At that point, you're starting to think. Well, OK, who's actually going to take an interest at this point in May and that might, that might rule some people out, and that's totally okay. So, yeah, what I would start to do is work out who's who's up my level now, who are they kind of guaranteed?

People that I can submit to that are that I'm pretty sure gonna except me, who's maybe accepted me before, who accept a lot of a lot of tracks on, then kind of categorize going up through the levels to stuff that's beyond May on, then start submitting Thio all of the lower ones. See how that goes on, then kind of go go into those high categories until I'm seeing rejections go up. So I think I think I finished that something like 50% on that campaign. But that's because, yeah, I was starting to get rejected by people.

Um, so I normally spend about, uh, something like maybe 50 to 60 credits on a campaign like that. You probably spend more if you're in the rock world and you're trying Thio, submit to a lot of people in my in my area. There are slightly less potential. Curator is so yeah, I would probably look to go to maybe about 100 credits for a rock track that I was trying to push quite heavily, but obviously not doing all of those at once, like I say, starting off and then seeing how that progresses.

The other thing that I found was really important Waas to be giving a decent, quick pitch that was tailored to who I was actually contacting the quick pitch. It's something that you would send us part of the submission process. So it's just a short note where you could tell the curator something that they'd want to hear. What do you want to tell them that might improve your chances with that track? Andi. If you're contacting another 30 people, if you tell them all the same thing, that's a bit like sending out a generic covering letter for a job.

You've got this of your CV resume. That's your track. That's the main thing. But you want to call out stuff. Actually, that's in your It was in your CV that this specific person that is gonna want to hear. So instead of writing one in advance and then sending out to everybody, right, you're quick pitch for an individual curator. Thank them for previous coverage. If they've given you previous coverage, tell them how excited you are about their playlist or they're blogged. And of course, you've actually got something that you can quote about that because you've done that research.

So you have all of these ideas. If you put all of that into practice, I wouldn't say that my tracks are by any means the best out there. But if you put that kind of thing into practice that can significantly improve your return on your investment effectively, that sounds great. And that approach of starting small and then expanding your audience bit by bit, actually reminds me a lot of how to run a NIF active Facebook ad. Because that's what people do to is they will run a Facebook ad and start with a small core group that they're targeting, and then they will expand that to a larger and larger audience until they see their conversion rates start to drop.

So that to me is just like a whole new mindsets like Oh, that's exactly like running an ad. And in a way, that is what you're doing. Except you're only targeting specific curator is, but it's still in Add to them saying, Hey, please check out my song. It sounds like to boil it down into the very basics. Step one is do your research. Step two is submit to your best targets. The people you think are most likely to approve it. Step three is expanded to a wider audience.

And then step four is to keep that going until you see your approval rates start to drop. Is that right? Yes, I would add in a step zero, though, for that which is work out what you actually want to achieve, because submit has not necessarily gonna be the thing that makes you famous. It might. It might help you along the way, but it's not gonna be It's not gonna be the whole thing itself is gonna be part of an overall marketing strategy that you've got. So I think in order to be able to select who to target, are you interested in blog's?

You're interested in curate er's you're interested in influences or anybody else. You should have an idea of where you're looking to get Teoh. Is it a number of streams that you're looking to get? Is it social media improvements? In order to be able to do any of the rest of the stuff to research, curator or whatever, You should know what you're actually looking for so that you could make that research valuable After that, everything you said exactly right, Yeah, I think that's actually a great edition. Having solid goals will help anyone so far in their musical career.

It's really amazing how many people say, I wanna be famous. I wanna be a rock starts like Okay, well, what goals are you gonna hit to get there? Like if you don't have smaller sub goals set up, you're just gonna feel dejected and discouraged that you're not a rock star in a week, you know? So I think that's a great edition there because you're absolutely right. So it helps not for everyone and even for the people. It is like you're saying different strategies will come in and be the best strategy for you to follow up on that since you touched on how many credits you would typically be spending, how many curators would you typically say?

That's for because curators could be, you know, 12 or three credits. Are you submitting mostly in the first round? Two smaller curator and then as your widening that net that you're casting? You're going to the higher spending curator Zor. How how do you decide? Or does that not even factor in? Do you care if they're 12 or three credits on die due to a degree? Because obviously, a two credit curator should be giving me value according to what I'm looking for of twice as much as a one credit curator.

In practice, they're not always going to work out quite the same. So it's not the only thing I look at. I rarely submit to three. Credit Curator is for anything just because I kind of feel if someone's saying that their their feet is gonna be this valuable to you. Thio get onto whether this is a blogger or a playlist. Whatever, if it's that valuable, is either not gonna be worth it for me or it's going to be worth it. But I'm unlikely to actually get in. So I put them right at the top on.

I would say I'm not really in that category. The few times where I have tried submitting to those it has kind of borne that out, and that's okay. But for anyone that's kind of 1 to 2. Doesn't matter at all. If they've approved me in the past on I think I'm about right for this, then, yeah, I'll definitely go with them again either way. Yeah, so if we're talking about, say, probably talking 30 to 40 Curator Ziff, we're talking 50 toe 60 or 70 credit something like that because quite a number of them are two credits these days.

I think that's also increasing over time. Eso some of my somewhere earliest campaigns. I managed to submit with one credit to people that are now accepting, too. But that's also okay because they're they're reaches increased. So now it's going to be more valuable to me. I think the other thing to bear in mind is about how much you're actually looking to get back. If you're for example, looking at it in terms off streams, then you would think one credit is roughly the same as $1. You can get it a bit discounted.

You probably will. But at the same time, if you just think about that like that, then you're talking for each credit that you spend. If you were going to get a return on that investment, you're looking a minimum 250 to 300 streams, assuming we're just talking Spotify because that's the easiest one to be able to work out numbers on etcetera. It's not the only streaming service out there on. Hopefully you get streams and other ones as well from it. But if you're looking at that, you're looking 250 to 300. But that's 250 to 300 to reach credit you spend not for each approval that you get.

So it's useful to factor in in mind how many you actually need to get at Seo 15% or 20% approval, right? Because you're actually gonna need to get a lot more streams in order to get that back. And that's okay. You probably won't at first because you're getting stuff in other ways, but it's important to kind of factor that in as well. Yeah, absolutely. And especially seeing that typical 15 to 20% approval rate. That means that if you're getting approved, let's say one in five times to make it easy. And you're only submitting to one credit curate er's, you're gonna be spending five credits per approval, so it does add up quite a bit.

But it's still, you know, when you're doing the math, it all has to work out again. Like you're saying, Steve, The goal that you have will also come into play with this So there's so many different ways that an artist can use SubmitHub. But I do think that you're absolutely right. Using it in a way that makes financial sense is so important because we see artists spray and pray and just submit their song to, you know, maybe every curator on the platform, I don't know, but lots of them.

And it'll turn out that it's like a folk rock song being submitted to a hard rock block. It's like that's Did you even listen to what this block does? So it's really incredible to see how sometimes people just think that if they spam everyone with it and it's not spam, but if they span everyone with it that they'll get better results. So knowing that do you have a target approval percentage for your campaigns that if you don't hit this initial goal, then you say, OK, scrap that campaign, We're going to go with a different song.

I would do, but I tend to work that out on the individual song basis. So for some of them, I might think, Okay, this one is gonna be mawr marketable than another one on. But it doesn't mean that I don't want to try and market some of the less marketable tracks, But yeah, at this at this point, you know, like I said, I had the high of 68%. I wouldn't look for something like that again, I'd look for I tried to set myself quite low targets because I want to be able to hit them and kind of feel confident going forward.

So I'd probably look to be it about 30% on. I'd go from there kind of saying, Oh, great, I'm hitting by 50%. This is a really enjoyable campaign. But if I'm if I'm not about the 30% mark and I'm above average. Andi, I also prefer to target it in terms off. Some of the individual curator is themselves so or it's the levels of curator. So, um, I just getting ones in that kind of in that sort of bankers that I had already, um I getting them from that next group up where I'm Maybe I'm making a new connection with someone.

Someone didn't approve me in the past. They now have. That's, ah, networking connection for the future that I've got on my breaking into a new area, in which case that in itself is valuable. So I might target. Okay, I want to get another couple of curator that haven't previously approved me. That's maybe more important than the overall number off them. When I'm playing the long game of trying Thio build up a Siris of connections and people who like me and want to approve stuff in the future, you're playing the long game rather than focusing on that single campaign.

You're saying I might not get it this time, but then they know my name for next time, right? Yeah, absolutely. They're gonna know it. And there hopefully gonna have a positive interaction with me, even if they didn't enjoy the music and they didn't want to share it. So I think it's almost like it's like the marketing of yourself generally trying to get your name out to potential fans that might not even hear your stuff right now. But they know all of you for the future D curator, they're gonna hear about you in the same way they're gonna think, Oh, this person.

Well, this one wasn't very good, but okay, I'd like to approve him if he's got something good in the future, rather than I didn't really like what he did before. So I'm not so interested now because I would say curators are You might correct me if if I'm wrong on this, but I would take your writers and normally looking to reject rather than looking to approve just cause there's so much good music out there. So you're looking for the things that are wrong with a track. Anything that you can do that is going to make them not like you as much.

That's gonna be a big thing to try and avoid. Yeah, I think it really depends on the curator. I can't speak for all curate er's, but I know for me it really comes down to the first impression. So if an artist sends in a song that has a 45 2nd intro and the song hasn't even kicked in yet, I'm like, Okay, this shouldn't be here. Single. This should be like an album cut and I said it on a past episode. Some of my favorite songs are deep cuts, from an album with really long intros and just wonderfully, beautifully crafted music.

But I would never approve it on SubmitHub because it's not a single, you know, if somebody's submitting a song on submit, it should be a single that just kicks people in the face right away. You know, it's like Boom, here's the song, and obviously for different genres that will be different. But in hard rock and metal and punk, you want that song to start off with 90% energy and reach 100 10% by the end of the song. And that's really how tow hook a curator at least my opinion.

But again, I can't speak for all. Curator is only run one block so but Yeah, Overall, I think you're right. It's it comes down Thio. If people don't have that solid first impression, then they're looking for what they could say as a reason to decline it. Absolutely. I think that also, it leads neatly to something else that I was having to mention, which was about the more than just a quick pitch. The overall look of your profile on the tracks, details that you've uploaded. Those do make a difference.

They're not something that people will just immediately look at. But if someone's a little bit on the fence on, they see that you've got something that looks reasonably professional in what you've written that's gonna definitely work in your favor. On one of the best ways to try and work this out is actually to use the hot or not future on SubmitHub on. The reason behind that is if you're listening to tracks in your own genre, Uh, I should maybe describe what it is. It's a way that you can rape other people's tracks.

Andi, have them rate yours, and this is a user to use the thing rather than user to curator. So you're getting potentially you're getting artists perspectives, which are maybe going to be a bit more favorable than curator is normally. But it's still useful for feedback on you can click through. If there's anything that sounds like your kind of music on, it's in your genre, click through and see who's approving it. If you see that this is being approved by a lot of people that you want to submit Thio, you know this person is doing something right.

So what are they doing right? Is it that they've got a profile that stands out more than yours? Do they do something different on the track that maybe you don't do? Do they have or do they have? That could be any number of reasons why and then you can see that on a number of the's going forward, and you can try and work out what all of these people do that I don't do because they get better success with the people I want to target. It's an easier way than going through the popular charts on there and trying to see what's getting a lot of lot of approvals.

You can specifically say these are the people on targeting and they're approving this. So I'm going thio. I'm gonna learn what this artist does differently. That is pure genius right there. I would have never thought of that. That's amazing. I shouldn't be telling you this, should I? Now everyone's going to do this and hot or not is just gonna explode. Oh, yeah, I think that's an amazing tip right there, because it just really opens it up. And, yeah, it takes some time, but people can also earn credits from hot or not.

So in a way, you're getting paid to do research for the music you want to submit. And then you have those extra credits from doing the research to submit the songs. Absolutely right. Oh, hacking the system. That's amazing. It pays to do your research quite literally. Yes, absolutely. Well, one other thing I wanna touch on is that you're quite active in the SubmitHub community in in like the artist chat room and hot or not chat room and that kind of stuff. I've seen some artists talk about having issues with the platform.

I'm sure you've noticed some mistakes that new users on the platform make repeatedly. Can you touch on a couple of pitfalls that new users or even experienced users maybe you should avoid. Yeah, sure. So let's go with a few of the really simple ones to start off with. As I was saying earlier, try to make a good impression. If someone doesn't approve your track, you're probably not gonna be very happy. But that doesn't mean you wanna leave them negative rating because then they're not gonna like you in the future.

My personal approach is I don't rate anybody straight away. I always wait a while because whenever a decline comes through, I'm annoyed on I've gone through to rate people rate people's declines when they decline me with a standard credits. There was never even any feedback. I've got no reason thio rate, but all I still wanted to rate them low because they declined me because they must be evil. If they did that, they're not. But wait a little bit of time and you'll probably feel better on do.

You can choose what you actually want to say about them that will improve your relationships going forward. Otherwise, I think one of the biggest things is people not knowing what they're looking to achieve thinking, Oh, I'm going to get thousands of streams because this person averages offering maybe a lot of streams. And if you actually would look at the individual playlists that they have available, it might be that you're submitting them, say a punk song. But their best performing playlist in terms of monthly listeners is indie rock on.

They have a big punk playlist, but it doesn't have as much engagement. So be aware of that. Don't just say, Oh, they get this many streams So that's what I'm going to get, so don't necessary just expect that to happen. Ah, what else is a common mistake that people are making? I think generally, they they all fall under the category of not doing enough research or not knowing what you're trying to do to begin with, maybe also trying to spread themselves too thinly like, Are you looking for curator that you're looking for blog's or you're looking for influences?

You'll see artists complaining about all of those groups as being useless on bond. They all can be useless if you're not targeting them right on. They all can be useful if you're targeting them in the right way is part of your overall marketing. So, you know, work out what you're looking for. If you want great write ups, you want bloggers, you're not gonna get a great right up from an influence the most of the time because they're posting something on instagram story or whatever. It's not gonna be the same thing as having something just out there that's giving you credibility.

If you're looking for streams, you're going for a curator straight away because that's how you're gonna immediately get people thio pay platform like that. Yeah, overall, No, no, what you're doing on that will be That will be a huge detail, a huge thing that you can dio. Yeah, when you send out the same quick pitch to everybody, that's not gonna work. It's a really pain to create 30 separate campaigns for 30 curate er's Andi and it will feel at the time like it's not worth it in the slightest.

It will be worth it. It will be hard to measure that it's worth it, but it will be worth it. I'll give you one other tip. That is something that I do, which won't work for anyone that likes to keep their inbox 100% clean. You'll receive an email when your campaign is submitted. You'll receive another email if you get approved or if you get declined. Obviously, I have a folder for all of those. Submit. Hub is so depressing a place at times because there is so much rejection.

E I mean, if we're saying 20% of submissions get rejected, that get accepted, that means four times out of five. For every interaction with the site, it's a negative one. So whenever I get a decline through, I'll look at it. Look at the feedback, try and learn whatever I can from that. But I haven't really talked about that very much so far. Learning from feedback, if a curator actually tells you something that's useful, learn from that on. Try and see where there are patterns. But, yeah, I'll file the decline away neatly in the email folder.

On If I get an approval, I'll just leave that in my inbox just sitting there so there's never too much negativity when I when I go and look there and that that just helps me stay with a more positive mindset about things which again is gonna help me with all the rest of the work that I'm doing at the time. I think that's a really good idea because you can then also sorted by approvals and have a folder for approvals and a folder for declines. And just when you need to pick me up, go look through the approvals or, when you're doing your research, go through the declines.

That's actually a really great ideas. Well, here, just dropping knowledge bombs here, left and right, Steve. Oh, well, the thing is, I've tried and failed a lot of times on God. The great thing about it is you do learn with something like this, how to improve it. So if you if you do this enough times, you will start to learn, even if you're even if you're not good at it. To give you a rough idea. I think my first campaigns that I did, I had about 7% and then 11% approvals on, then moved into the piano area.

I got 14% of my first stuff, so that's reasonably similar to what I was getting before on. Then I could learn a bit more I got to about 35% and then to the high of 68. So it did come with time and that for me, that took years. But I didn't have someone just explaining all the things that we just talked about on here. So hopefully for everyone that's listening. They could actually, they could make some of those jumps a little bit quicker. Unless you're competing with me for exposure.

In which case, try and forget this briefly. But overall, I think thes things really do help Thio jump up from that 7% thio closer to 70. Yeah, well, I have a feeling I know what you're gonna answer to this next question. If you had one piece of advice the most important piece of advice to give to artists who want to use SubmitHub, What would it be? I've said this a few times already. How would I do the research? Spend your time on there and spend way more time than you think is sensible or healthy?

Look at it at you should know as much as you possibly can before you make that submission. Because once you press the button, your credit uh gone. Yeah, you sent something out. You spent the money. Technically, if you cancel a campaign, you could get that back. If people haven't already approved or declined it. Feel free to do that if you feel it's performing really badly. But otherwise, once you hit, send, you know that's it. It's now out there, and people are going to review it. Before that point, you could be doing as much research as you want on.

You can get the best possible idea, and that's no guarantee that it's going to succeed. But it puts you in the best possible position. And why wouldn't you want to be in the best position when you click that button? Yeah, I think that just goes to show how important the research is, because I thought that's what you're going to say and that's the third time you brought it up. So that show is like, if you do your research on SubmitHub, that is how to find better success now.

Obviously, the songs have to be good, too, but you can greatly increase your approval rates by doing the proper research. That's what Steve's keeps coming back here to say so please anyone who's listening. If you're on SubmitHub. Do your research. If you are now curious about, SubmitHub. Do your research and submit. Give it a shot, see what happens. You know, do the research and put your music out there. The worst thing that can happen is you're out 20 or 30 bucks. If you start small, submit. Hub is a great tool to be part of your toolbox.

It shouldn't be your only tool. You know, you don't go to build a house with just a hammer. You know, you have so many different tools to build a house, but you still need a hammer. So go to submit, hub and try to make that part of your toolbox and see how it works out for you, Steve, to wrap things up. Where can people find your music? Where would you like people to go? So whatever streaming platform you like, you can find me as ascending Everest. Hopefully soon you'll be able to find me as control center is well with the new rock project.

So if you feel like waiting, wait for that. Otherwise, if you want to check out some piano and Ambien Yep, ascending Everest everywhere. Thank you so much, Steve, for coming to talk about your submit help strategies. I think it's going to be really helpful for all the artists listening to the podcast. So thank you very much. Being a real pleasure. Yeah, absolutely. And I hope you have a great rest of your weekend. Wonderful. Thank you very much you took that. Does it for another episode of the band.

I've podcast big thanks to Steve Martin of Control Center and ascending Everest for taking the time to talk about his SubmitHub strategies. We hope it's really helpful to you so that you can go out and find just one more tool for your tool box to promote your music submit. Hub has a great built in chat community on their site, so if you have any questions, feel free to hop on over there. Or you can also join the band hive Facebook Group to ask general marketing questions there or questions about anything music business related.

You can find that by searching for banned hive on Facebook or by going thio better dot band slash group in your browser toe automatically be redirected over to our Facebook group. Thanks again for listening. We'll be back with another episode next Tuesday at 6 a.m. Eastern time. Until then, we hope you have an awesome week. Stay safe and, of course, as always, keep rocking.