Recent updates

[Changelog] August 7, 2026

Howdy folks! Been a little while since I did one of these. Mostly because I went to visit my family in the USA in July. I'm back in Cape Town now, which means you should be seeing lots of updates over the next month or two.

First though, some milestones!

  • Our AI checker, powered by SH Labs, is now doing analyzing more than 50,000 songs per day!
  • This week we sent out the 10,000th SubmitHub Package - I'm working on a big blog post analyzing all the results and what I've learned about Spotify's algorithm (stay tuned)

On the notable media / coverage side, Jon from Two Story Media did a good review of his Packages experience and DJ platform Traxsource announced their partnership with SH Labs.

Okay, okay, seeing as we're already on the topic of AI, I may as well start there:

AI Song Checker

  • Version v4.0 rolled out at the end of June, including improved support for Treblo, Lyria3, MiniMax, and more
    • Yesterday I added extra verification for Treblo, thanks to their public Treblo detector (refreshing to see an AI company do this!)
  • More and more "general public" users are relying on the AI Song Checker, so I tried to make it a bit friendlier
    • This involves a cleaner input flow, compact result box, full-width verdict row, and better song presentation
    • I also added view counts and a trending list of recently checked songs - my thinking with the "trending" section is that it'll surface the songs people are really curious to know about. Just a fun little experiment for now :)

Links & Ads

  • There's a new "Meta traffic" filter so you can isolate visitors that arrived from Facebook/Instagram ads. I'd say it's about 99% accurate, which ain't bad!
  • You can now use TikTok Events API server-side conversion tracking
  • Email addresses can now be used as link page buttons
  • Ad Studio rebuilt on a live WYSIWYG canvas, so the preview matches the rendered ad

Packages

As mentioned, I'm working on an article that analyzes the 10,000 packages we've run so far to see if I can figure out any trends. Two initial takeaways:

  • Hitting popularity of 20 and 30 doesn't seem to automatically result in algorithmic uplift;
  • Popularity score and # of streams are very closely tied together;

On the code/product side:

  • I made it easier to cancel individual parts of a package (playlist, Meta, blog, radio) without killing the whole thing
  • Meta ads target by the lyric language of the song rather than defaulting worldwide
  • Genre targeting auto-saves, is shown in the launch email, and a human pick outranks the automatic one
    • Initial decisions are driven by What's My Genre?, which is 90% through a big behind-the-scenes overhaul (kinda driving me crazy, but worth it)
  • Improved the whole custom package flow to be a little easier

Submissions

  • Unified mark-as-shared modal with various different settings
  • Improved chat notifications when sharing (previously a mess of text)
  • A few sync updates:
    • Tidal added as a full playlist-sync platform 🎸
    • Soundiiz sync destinations shown as public badges
    • Spotify playlist renames propagate to Tidal/Deezer/YouTube/SoundCloud mirrors
  • On the "debugging" side:
    • Scheduled shares survive when a curator's Spotify becomes disconnected, and automatically resume once Spotify is reconnected
    • Missing Spotify tracks are now easier to find when sharing songs
    • If someone shares to Spotify manually, I double check the song is in there first
  • Song uploads:
    • Way easier flow that doesn't require you to upload an MP3 or WAV
    • Album/EP link and release date auto-filled from a pasted Spotify or Deezer URL
    • Clean source cards for Amazon, Audiomack, TikTok, Instagram, Pandora - instead of loading heavy iframe/embed codes
    • Record label and collaborators editable in track metadata

Misc

  • Playable example tracks for every genre (you can see that here)
  • Billing section to view and remove a saved payment method (from your account)
  • Keyboard shortcuts for writing curator feedback
  • Marketplace conversations allow document attachments
  • An in-depth reanalysis of all of our translations. I know lots of English still needs to be translated, but if you see issues with translations that are already live, feel free to let me know in the comments below

What's next?

  • An upgraded What's My Genre? model
  • Continuing the translation upgrades
  • That blog post about packages and the Spotify algorithm
  • Experimenting with Meta's new value rules feature

Special requests? Use the comments below!