Getting your music to popular YouTube music promotion channels feels amazing. I still remember how excited I was when I got my music featured for the first time.
It wasn’t an easy task though. Standing out from dozens of other tracks promotion channels receive each day is hard. Making great music is not always enough.
You need to know when, where and how to submit your music.
In this article, I’m going to tell you how to get your music featured on YouTube promotion channels.
You will learn how to:
- find right promotion channels
- submit your music to promotion channels
- stand out from others
Preparing your music
Before submitting your track, make sure than it’s completely finished. Sending unfinished tracks gives the impression that you are unable to get songs finished or you can’t decide how it should sound.
Always finish your tracks 100 % before sending them. Be proud of what you have composed and stand behind it.
Perfecting the track is just one thing you should do before contacting promoters. You will also need to make art for your track.
Making album cover for your track makes it look more professional. The promoter will see that you have made an effort by making cover art.
Many promoters gives you an opportunity to submit your art along with the track, so they can use it. It makes promoter’s life much easier. And you should make their life as easy as you can.
Making album cover for you track can be hard, if you haven’t made them before. Luckily, there are many free tools you can use to make album covers easily.
You can use these tools for free to make art for you track:
I have used all them. You don’t need to be Leonardo da Vinci or Picasso to make art for your track. Just make simple covers with your track & artist name on it.
Try to make the art fit to the style of your track. You can find free background pictures for your cover from these sites:
Once your track and art is made, you can proceed to find good promotion channels for you music.
Finding YouTube promotion channels.
We all want to be featured on channels like NoCopyrightSounds, Monstercat, Trap Nation, xKito, MrSuicideSheep or DubstepGutter. Many tracks uploaded on those channels gains millions of views.
However, before deciding a promotion channel you want to get in, you have to ask yourself a question; is my music ready to that channel?
If you have just started making music, you may only get yourself disappointed by submitting on huge YouTube channels.
Of course I may be wrong! There is a chance that you could get on those channels straight away. However, in 99,9 % of the cases your submission will get unnoticed.
That’s why I always recommend to start with smaller channels where you can get in more easily. This way you can improve yourself and slowly start to submit to bigger channels.
The feeling will be amazing when your music will be featured for the first time. Even if it is a small channel.
So now I recommend you to search smaller YouTube channels promoting similar music to your songs. Make a list of as many channels as you can find and you are good to go to the next step!
Submitting your music
Once you have gather a good size of list promotion channels, you can start to submit your music. But how you should submit your track to them? Well that depends.
Each promoter has an own preferred way to receive submissions. You should always use their preferred method to submit music to ensure that your track will bet listened.
When you are about to submit your music, check out their YouTube’s about page, other social media about/info pages and websites. Look for any information about submissions and use that exact method to submit your music to them.
There are typically 3 different ways promoters want to receive submission and they are:
- emails
- submissions forms
- submission websites.
Email was the most commonly used way for promotion channels to get submissions just few years ago. However, this has changed. Nowadays most of the channels wants to receive tracks trough submission forms. Some of them are also using different submission websites.
However, submitting tracks trough email is still often used by smaller channels. This is because it’s very easy and straight forward to set up for them.
Email submissions
When you submit your track using email, keep your message clean and simple. Tell something about your track in couple of sentences and tell why the track would fit to their channel.
Make sure to add a streaming link to your track. Do not attach your track to the email. No one wants to download the track and some of people are afraid of getting viruses.
Most of the artists uses private SoundCloud links when submitting music to promotion channels. I personally use is myself, because the promoter can also download the track directly trough SoundCloud.
You may also use Spotify, YouTube or Dropbox to link your track to the email.
Don’t forget to add your social media links to the email. If the promoter is interested in your music, he/she most likely wants to check out your social media. They also need it to credit you in the video description if your track is chosen.
If you have a big or decent following on your social media, it can be a good idea to mention it in the email. This gives you authority, because the promoter will see that many people already likes your tracks.
Submissions forms
Many promotion channels are now using submission forms to receive tracks. This is because it’s more organised way to get music and it’s more easier for artists as well.
It’s also worth to note that with submission forms, promotion channels are able to handle better the copyright issues. Usually when you submit a track trough submission form, you have to accept that they can monetize the track on YouTube.
So keep in mind that when you submit your track, you usually can’t claim the track and collect revenue for that track, if they upload it on their channel. And this is totally okey, because that is how they make living and you get exposure. You just need to remember to who you have given permission to use your track.
Submitting trough the forms is very simple. Usually they are made with Google Forms and you just fill out the form and you are done!
Submission websites
There are several websites offering music submission services for promotion channels and labels. One of them is called Submithub for example.
These websites work similar way than submission forms. You get to fill out your information, submit your streaming links and accept their copyright policy.
Submission websites are more refined way to share your tracks and usually you can track your submission’s state. If you use Submithub, you can even receive feedback of your track and find & filter dozens of promotion channels, blogs, radio shows and playlists.
When I’m submitting my music, I go trough all Submithub’s promotion channels & playlists fitting my track’s genre and submit to them. However, you can only submit to couple of promotion channels at once. After that you have to wait 4 hours to submit again, unless you pay real money.
This is to prevent everyone mass submitting their tracks at once. Usually it takes me for a week to submit my new track to every channel listed on Submithub I want to.
Summarize
So to sum up everything, if you want to get featured on YouTube promotion channels, you have to:
- make decent music.
- create simple cover art for the track.
- find right promotion channels for your style music and matching skill level.
- submit your track using promotion channel’s preferred method.
Once you start to get your tracks featured in promotion channels, you will get more and more fans. Don’t get discouraged if your track is not immediately picked up by your favorite promotion channel.
You will eventually get on bigger channels as you improve, but it can take some time. Some channels may like your music, but it just might not fit to their channel right now. Everyone has their own taste music.