Jason GrishkoffWe launched the ability to submit to record labels almost exactly 7 years ago (March 29th, 2016). The idea was less about guaranteed signing of artists and more about making connections between labels and artists so that they could discuss potential opportunities to work together.
At the end of March (2023) we will be sunsetting this feature 🎴
Why we've made this decision
- Decreasing interest from artists
- Customers are not happy which creates a lot of extra admin for us
- The industry has shifted
- Most of the high quality labels are not actively looking for outside submissions and have a full roster
- Many have shifted from a "traditional" business model to a "boutique service" model, which we can now provide with the Marketplace
A bit more context from Dylan
First and foremost: what I’m about to say does not apply to all of the labels on SubmitHub. There are plenty of good apples. However, as with every cider harvest, there are going to be a few that aren’t so hot. Picking out the rotten ones takes a lot of work.
Here are some of the issues I’ve noticed emerge over my 7 years working with labels:
Profit vs. “Product”
Our single biggest challenge since launching this side of the business is that we try to avoid labels with predominantly profit-based motives. These labels view artists as clients rather than part of their “family,” and for them SubmitHub is quite an attractive “sales funnel.”
Since day one we've strived to only work with those who seem to embody a traditional, relationship-centric label structure. However, identifying the precise intentions of hundreds of labels via the internet is definitely not black and white.
Something I’ve noticed over time is that there are labels who recognize that the more artists they sign the more they stand to earn. As you can imagine, in these cases there are high approval rates, clear communication in the beginning, and then very little after the fact in terms of valuable support provided to the artist. These labels predominantly offer album artwork and distribution with the promise of “marketing” that never actually materializes.
We've mostly eradicated this problem, and SubmitHub users are very good at reporting labels whose behavior might not be so kosher. SubmitHub would not be where it is if it weren't for that dialogue, and we are hugely thankful to our community!
Boutique service vs. Traditional label support
That brings up an important point: A lot of labels who offer to release music are only offering a basic album art + distribution package -- both of which are services that in the modern music industry are much easier to figure out on your own. For that, Canva and Symphonic come to mind, and SubmitHub's upcoming feature, Marketplace.
Inactivity
Generally speaking, successful labels are too busy dealing with their roster to focus on signing new acts. We keep finding that those who sign up to SubmitHub are virtually inactive from an external perspective.
Quality control
This last issue is probably the most important of the few that I've listed: Our system isn't designed to hold labels accountable like it is with our curators / influencers.
Once a song has been approved, that's just the opening of a conversation. In many of the complaints we’ve fielded, the label stops responding to chats (for seemingly no reason), which is very frustrating for artists! When the conversation does carry on, it usually goes one of two ways: 1) the artist is relatively inexperienced and they don't know what they want -- which is not a kind of power dynamic I actively want to proliferate -- or, 2) the artist knows what they want, in which case, Marketplace would actually better suit their needs.
In conclusion…
You might be thinking: “Well why don’t you come up with fixes to all of them, like you have with other aspects of SubmitHub?” And my honest answer is, there’s just very little incentive and it’s A LOT of work. That effort is much better put towards Marketplace – and the rest of the site :)
Some numbers
Okay, Jason here again. As you might already know, I’m a numbers guy. And in making the decision to “sunset” the labels side, I wanted to look at more than just anecdotal information.
Submission volume
Since its launch, we’ve seen:
- 799,054 responses from 1,267 unique labels
- 85,049 approvals (“connections”)
For the past year, submissions to Record Labels have made up roughly 0.7% of the overall submission volume on SubmitHub. The trajectory of interest in label submissions peaked in 2020 (Covid?), and has been on the decline since then.
Chart: submissions by year
Customer support
When looking at the number of disputed approvals relative to the "share" of overall submissions, label submissions are 16.2x more likely to get a complaint than curator submissions.
Here's a breakdown of the underlying statistics, comparing % of submissions to % of complaints:
The 16.2x "more likely" number comes by dividing the ratio of 8.57x (labels) by 0.53x (curators).
What comes next
For those labels currently receiving submissions on SubmitHub, there will be two options:
- Transition to a "curator" role
- We recognize many labels have their own high quality Spotify playlists, and we'll assess this on a case-by-case basis
- Apply to offer a service on the Marketplace
- We're getting close to launching this feature, and hope it'll add a new avenue for labels to connect with artists
As for existing connections that have been created between artists and labels - those won't disappear! All your historical data will still be accessible :)
