Release

Discovery Mode is basically a program where Spotify will help get you more listeners by inserting your songs into other artists’ radio stations and general “autoplay” sessions - for an additional commission. More on the commission part in a minute. 

Jason Grishkoff started a music blog called Indie Shuffle back in 2007, when music blogs were still cool. After a 3-year stint at Google, he was lucky to take the blog full-time in 2013. From 2014 to 2015 digital advertising in the music industry changed rapidly, and a number of bloggers found themselves looking for alternative sources of income. Many gave up to focus on their day jobs, but Jason decided to double-down on his coding abilities and created a website called SubmitHub, where musicians, labels and publicists could submit their songs to blogs like Indie Shuffle. Flash forward to 2022 and nearly 30 million submissions have been submitted through the platform. Jason still runs the operation as the only developer, and the product is constantly evolving to meet the needs of the modern music promotion industry.

In honor of our 100th episode celebration, Ari will be answering more of your music industry questions!

Joining us this week on the New Music Business is Billboard’s music copyright reporter, Kristin Robinson. In this episode, Ari and Kristin dive deep into one of her latest articles ("How Did Two Unknown Latin Music Operators Make $23 Million From YouTube? The IRS Says They Stole It") and why it's more important than ever for artists to protect their works.

Tunecore just made the biggest update to their service since they launched 16 years ago: Unlimited releases for an annual subscription.

If you’ve had music on Spotify for more than a few years, you remember the days of muddling through the mystery-laden world of Rovi, asking gatekeepers and submitting tickets into a blackhole in an attempt to just get your...

Some people call this a “one sheet” because all of the necessary information is on, well, one sheet. An EPK can be formatted a few different ways. These days, most people are either making it as a single (hidden)...

For the first couple months of living on my own, I was very unstable. I was living amongst boxes. I couldn’t unpack my former life into my new one until a friend came over and forced me to. I hadn’t quite learned how to stand on my two feet and hold myself up - on my own. I buried myself in work, in community, in live music and occasional sexual explorations which were fun, but confusing. 

You can create a way for fans to save your song to their library or playlist in advance of the release. Why do this? If Spotify notices that your song gets a ton of saves or playlists on day 1, it will trigger their algorithms and potentially pop your song into various algorithmic playlists like Discover Weekly, Radio, Your Daily Mix, Releaser Radar, Radio, etc. And the more saves a song gets, the more likely a Spotify playlist editor will add it to a playlist.

After helping artists switch distributors, researching their (and Spotify’s) FAQ, I’ve put together this guide to switching distributors.