Songwriting News: Is This Playlisting Service Legit? (2024)

If you’re considering using SubmitLink and are looking to verify that they’re a legitimate service before spending money with them, here’s my short answer:

Yes, SubmitLink is legit.

I’ve run campaigns for two tracks on the platform. My most recent submission cost $27 and resulted in three playlist placements which, according to my best estimate, drove somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 streams. From what I can tell, looking at the data in Spotify for Artists and at the playlists themselves, those were all from real, human listeners (not bots).

Obviously, 467 streams is not going to lead to an appearance on The Late Show or end in a big-label record deal – but at a cost per stream of five or six cents, it’s still a solid result. And I like it even more given the fact that I got to handpick the lists I was pitched to, which meant that each one was a good fit for the music.

My biggest issue with SubmitLink at the moment is the simple fact that they don’t have a ton of curators on their platform, which puts a cap on the level of results you can get. Other than that, though, I’m a fan.

The TL;DR version: If you’re looking to supplement your Spotify growth, SubmitLink is a worthwhile spend.

You can give the platform a try yourself here.

And if you want the longer version – with more details on my experiences with the company and my results – then keep reading.

The backstory on SubmitLink

This is probably worth mentioning for transparency’s sake: I actually first heard about SubmitLink directly from Aaron, the founder at the company.

Aaron is also the founder of another platform that I really love – a playlist data software called Artist Tools. In 2022, I’d been using Artist Tools for a while, and I think I reached out to Aaron just to see if he’d be interesting in connecting. To be honest, I really can’t remember the details of how we first got in touch, but I know we sent a few emails back and forth and eventually ended up chatting on a call. At some point, Aaron mentioned he had another playlist submission service called SubmitLink, and that he was interested in getting my thoughts on it.

I agreed to try it out. So, in 2022, I ran a test campaign for an artist I work with.

I came away impressed by SubmitLink, but with no results to show for my spend. The problem, as I told Aaron, was that the curator network on the platform at the time was nearly too small to be useful; I only found four curators I deemed worth submitting to, and given that an average approval rate on these platforms is about 20%, I wasn’t surprised to get rejected by all four.

But I liked the model he was building, so I made a note to try the platform again.

So, in 2023, when I ran an experiment with 16 different Spotify promotion companies, I included SubmitLink. This time around, things went better. (More details on the results in a bit.)

First, though, I think it’s worth explaining…

How SubmitLink works

I’d classify SubmitLink as a do-it-yourself pitching platform, by which I mean two things:

1. On SubmitLink, you choose the curators and playlists to which your music is pitched
2. There’s no guarantee of results

This is, more or less, the same model that SubmitHub and Groover use. It’s different from the done-for-you pitching model that companies like Indie Music Academy, YouGrow, and others use.

Typically, do-it-yourself pitching platforms result in less streams. But if you use them correctly, they can drive higher-fit placements (meaning that your song will only ever be placed on playlists where it makes sense in context) – and high-fit placements tend to lead to higher engagement rates and, potentially, greater algorithmic growth.

At a very practical level, SubmitLink works like this:

1. You hit the “Promote A Song” button and paste in your song’s Spotify link.

2. You choose between “Manual” and “AI” campaign modes.