The Music Submission Survival Guide

A practical guide for musicians, an inside look for music lovers, and surprisingly good advice for everyone else.

Yep, this post is a little bit more geared to the musicians in the room than usual. I promise there’s still plenty for everyone here, but if you’re really annoyed, don’t worry — I’ll be back next week with my usual music recommendation content.

Have you ever wondered how bands manage to get discovered?

In the face of massive amounts of AI-generated content taking center stage and streaming platforms prioritizing profit over discoverability, how the hell are musicians supposed to stand out?

Sure, sometimes it’s money — PR teams, “industry plants” (a topic I won’t bother getting into for now), or aggressive social media campaigns.

But sometimes, it’s just knowing how to write a decent email.

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I’m no industry bigwig. Hell, I barely exist in the music business ecosystem. But I do have this newsletter, and that means I get a lot of submissions in my comments, DMs, and inbox.

Most of the time, this is great. You all know how much I love discovering new artists, especially small ones, and sharing them with you. Those emails and DMs are part of how I build my Known Unknowns playlists, for a start. But just as often, the issue isn’t actually the music, but the way it’s pitched.

Cool… so, what do you want me to do with this video exactly?

The other day, after I received flurry of comments and emails with YouTube links sans context, I realized that a lot of musicians are missing a trick.

So, I recruited an expert to help.

How Not to Screw Up Your Music Submissions - A Guide

If you don’t already know and love Cassidy Frost, former music publicist and current author of Dedicate Your Life To Music, now is the time to make your acquaintance.

I may not be a musician, but I still never miss an installment of their newsletter. It’s not just because they know their shit, which kind of goes without saying, but because they are passionate about building community around music. That’s exactly what I’m doing from the listener/appreciator side of the equation, so you can imagine why we were drawn to each other.

This isn’t just about music submissions — it’s about how people try (and fail) to get noticed. It’s about learning to lean on your community when looking for opportunities, and the fine line between “putting yourself out there” and “annoying the crap out of people.”

I asked them to help me out in crafting a guide for how to make music submissions stand out more. Not just to me, but to anyone actually “in the biz.”

First: Cassidy — a positive person and industry insider helping musicians craft pitches but never actually receiving them — will give you a lot of incredibly useful “Do”s.

Second: I — a pessimistic goblin inundated with music submissions but otherwise a total rube — will lay into the “Don’t”s.

Together, we hope to provide you with both sides of the coin.

If you’re not a musician, don’t be so quick to rush off. This isn’t just about music submissions. It’s about learning to lean on your community when looking for opportunities, and the fine line between “putting yourself out there” and “annoying the crap out of people.” This is just as relevant for job applications, networking, or trying to get an avoidant to text you back.

Cassidy Frost’s Best Tips for Submitting Your Music

1. Know Your Audience

So much of doing a good job with music submissions is learning about who you’re submitting music to and making it easy to plug your music into their existing system.

• Know the name of the person you’re emailing.

Gabbie’s note: I can’t tell you how many times people have misspelled my name, and it’s plastered all over my publication! I’m so bombarded with submissions that I’ve started ignoring the ones addressed to “Gabby” or to the wrong person entirely, like Scott Lipps!

I kinda feel bad for Jimmy, because it does seem like he cares about what he does. Unfortunately, this email is clearly a copy/paste job, with a spammy subject line to boot (I fished this one out of my spam folder, in fact).

• Know their role at the publication you’re pitching to. Are they the editor, a blogger, a contributor, a DJ?

• Know what style of music they cover, or if there’s someone who covers your style of music at that publication.

• Know their coverage formats.

  • For example, do they specialize in premieres? Features of new music? Local, specific coverage based on upcoming events? All of this is information you can usually piece together by spending time reading the publication and maybe poking around a bit on social media. This will put you ahead of 90% of bands (and even some publicists).

If you don’t have a solid grasp on the above, it’s not worth reaching out — you’ll just be creating more spam. It’s better to do a good job sending your music to five publications than it is to blast out spam to 500.

2. Tighten Up Your Pitch

You don’t need a long, cumbersome bio, and you definitely don't need to pay someone to write a long, beautiful bio full of flowery adjectives about your guitar tone. That actually makes it harder for music writers to do their job. Your press bio should be exactly six sentences long.

Send an electronic press kit (EPK) link with a release-specific bio and a DISCO link to where you can stream and download any unreleased tracks.

3. Pretend You’re at Work

Never act like a rockstar when talking to music writers or anyone else in the industry. The person on the other end of your email is just someone trying to do their thing, so treat them with politeness just like you would a coworker. You don’t have to grovel, but be polite, responsive, and send them music that’s actually good at least a month before you’re hoping for coverage. That’s all you can do to make someone want to write about you.

When it comes to follow-ups: When I worked as a music publicist, I typically sent out a follow-up email about two weeks after making a submission. I had a good enough success rate that I never had any reason to stop. But as with any relationship, knowing the person you’re submitting to and respecting their submission preferences and guidelines is the best policy¹.

4. When in Doubt, Keep it Local

The best way to get coverage for your music is to start local. College, community, and public radio stations almost always have formats for covering local music. Most bigger markets have at least one or two local publications (blogs or alt weeklies) that cover local shows. These publications are much more likely to cover emerging musicians in their market than national publications.

This is also an opportunity to build relationships with real people in your local music scene. It is 10000% worth your time to get to know the local DJs and music writers in your town. Say hi to them at a show. Introduce yourself. Don’t be weird, just be kind. If they played or wrote about something cool, tell them you really dug it.

Gabbie’s note: I may not be local to you, existing on Substack as I do, but I have earnestly been trying to create a community here as well, and “don’t be weird, just be kind” applies so, so hard.

My Best Tips for How Not to Submit Your Music*

*Especially if you want to be featured in New Bands for Old Heads

Cassidy is a ball of sunshine, but that’s probably easy to do when they aren’t flooded with requests for features.

I’m not so thoughtful or forgiving, but I will be just the tiniest bit more brief.

1. Don’t Spam

We already discussed this, but it’s worth repeating. DON’T SPAM. That means don’t add anyone to email lists they didn’t ask to be added to.

It also means you must sound like an actual human being when you’re crafting your email, or risk getting caught in a spam filter. I routinely fish out a handful of legitimate requests from my spam every week!

2. Your Music Doesn’t Need Your Trauma

Please, no sob stories. If your song is amazing, I’ll cover it. If it sucks, no amount of “I wrote this while my grandmother’s dachshund was battling the flu and I just need ten more people to add it to their playlists to get him a new squeaky toy”² is going to change that. I’m sorry, but it’s giving Nigerian prince scam.

That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t give context! Introduce yourself, explain your genre and influences, all that jazz. But unless your tale of woe is inextricably linked to the music in some way, it’s not relevant.

3. Don’t Send Attachments

No music files. No PDFs. If you send me a ZIP file, I’m not opening it. I’ve been through too many corporate phishing trainings for that.³

Like Cassidy said above, throw together links to every streaming platform all in one place and send a link to that. Get your EPK together. Make it as easy as possible for people to listen to you and promote you. Remove all the barriers.

4. Never Offer Pay for Play

I will save my full lecture on payola for another day, but for now, just know this: if you offer to pay me for a feature, I will immediately assume you’re either a scammer or a cop.

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In case you’re wondering, here’s a real world example of an email that actually caught my attention. I’m still deciding whether I love this band, but their approach isn’t too shabby at all.

Remember this isn’t one size fits all. KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE is the most important takeaway. Sometimes personal details DO matter, but what personal details does your recipient care about? In my view, unless you can connect on something you know you have in common, it might be better to keep it to the music. BUT THIS IS NOT A SCIENCE. Just be kind, be cool, don’t waste time.

A real-life email from a real-life band!

Bonus from Both of Us: A Note About Subject Lines

A subject line is the first thing that grabs attention in an inbox, so it’s arguably the most important part of your pitch.

We’ve given a few examples of what not to do (sound too generic and spammy) and some general advice about approach (know your audience) but we have a little more to offer.

1. Keep it short: phones cut off long subject lines.

2. Fill it up with facts: people don’t read and they need all the details up front (ex. GENRE BAND releases SINGLE on DATE)

3. …but tailor to your recipient: know when to let your personality shine through.

4. Too many exclamation points, caps, or emojis also land you in spam jail.

What gets your attention?

Good News - Submitting to New Bands for Old Heads is Easier Than Ever

Musicians amongst you, I know this is a lot of info, especially after the rant I just delivered.

To take the guesswork out of it, I created a submission form.

Have I just rendered this entire post irrelevant in the process? Nope! It’s not a get out of jail free card to ignore everything Cassidy and I just advised. It just makes things a little more streamlined.

A Final Challenge - The Perfect Pitch

I know that this post has been super targeted at the musicians in the audience, but I hate to leave anyone out.

With that in mind, I want to challenge everyone, musicians and fans alike:

Can you describe your favorite band in one perfect sentence?

Try it: 'If you like X, try Y' (my personal favorite, as you know). Or tell me why a band deserves to be bigger.

Leave your best pitch in the comments, and I’ll save my favorites for a future post.

1. I know this sucks and is counterintuitive to everything Cassidy just said, but for me personally (likely not many others) following up is pretty much a guarantee that I’ll bump you down to the bottom of my list. This is a passion project for me, not my job, and I have very little time as it is. Clogging up my inbox even more isn’t the way.

2. I am a sucker for animals, though, so this might actually work.

3. But attachments are better than nothing! I definitely do receive plenty of messages with just the name of the artist/song and nothing else, which is essentially a guarantee of zero follow-up.