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What type of feedback should I choose?

Summary

Numbers sometimes speak louder than words, so here goes. As of February 2023, approval rates breakdown as follows:

  • With feedback: 21% approved
  • No feedback: 12% approved

Your options

We recently revamped the way feedback works. More on that here.

As of 2022, when choosing how to send your song on SubmitHub, you’ll find yourself prompted by the following screen:

We strongly recommend choosing either "Specific feedback" or "Please be gentle".

We do not recommend choosing the “No feedback” option.





Why "No feedback" is bad

Here are a few reasons to avoid the “No feedback” option:

  1. The average listen time of outlets on SubmitHub for feedback submissions is 2 minutes and 5 seconds as of April 2022. You can see real-time stats here. Part of the reason is that writing feedback takes time — often more than 90 seconds. So they're already listening for 90+ seconds on average. Which leads me to the second reason…
  2. When curators are asked to write feedback they’re forced to think about the song they’re listening to. And often while writing their feedback, they change their mind and decide they actually like the song.
  3. Most curators start writing their feedback shortly after the song starts playing so that they can type as they listen
  4. Per #2, they often change their mind halfway through and decide to approve it instead
  5. But, with 90 second submissions they don’t write feedback and are forced to sit there and wait until the song passes the required mark
  6. Most people don’t have the patience for that, so they open up another tab — maybe their email or reddit — and wait until the song is done
  7. This means they’re distracted and aren’t actually paying attention to your song
  8. When they come back, they can’t remember what they were listening to, so they might just decline it
  9. The feedback you get on SubmitHub will often leave you scratching your head. But after 10 or 20 responses, it becomes possible to start to extract a “trend” or “common theme,” and that can sometimes be helpful. At the very least, it gives you insight into *why* people declined your song

Of course every outlet is different, so the reasons listed above don’t explain everything. But the numbers don’t lie: “No feedback” submissions get approved 12% of the time; “with feedback” submissions get approved about 21% of the time (for both the “Specific” and “Gentle” options).

In conclusion, we strongly recommend choosing either of the “feedback” options. Your odds of being approved are almost double.