If Everything Is Brilliant, Then Nothing Is.
If anyone reading this thinks it’s fun to reject 90% of the music people submit to be reviewed, think again. It sucks. Music is a very personal art form. As such, individuals tend to take it very personally when someone they don’t know except by reputation rejects their music.
Everyone who writes a music blog or website — whether as a hobby or as an all-out business — is trying to curate something that is aurally appealing often while striving to stay in their own particular lane of fanfare or musical interest. When you like so many different styles of music, though, there are multiple lanes to choose from.
Where music is concerned, I openly profess to following the late John Peel’s symbiotic approach to curation:
“Curation is the difference between what you think people will like versus what you know they’ll like.” — John Peel
Imagine the great fortune to receive untold submissions spanning the pantheon of musical style from people all over the world delivered to your inbox or mailbox every single day. Now, add to that dozens upon dozens of PR companies emailing you music by artists they represent.
Now, picture yourself going through all of those hundreds of emails and finding a way to keep them organized along with keeping up with your other personal and work emails. Can you see it? For any human being, much less someone whose hobby is writing a music blog, such a process can become toothsome.
Then came Submithub.
I’ve been using Submithub as an interface to make my life as an independent music reviewer just a little bit easier for just over a year now. It’s been a terrific experience, the most robust one I’ve had as a music reviewer in the 14 years I’ve been doing it. Innovated and built lovingly by another long-time music blogger, Jason Grishkoff of stalwart Indie Shuffle, the interface has made the task of keeping a consistent approval and posting schedule much more efficient. Thanks to Submithub, I’ve been exposed to dozens of acts whom I had never heard of beforehand & heard many tracks that I continue to count among my favorites. It is not the only interface of it’s type, but it’s the one I find most usable and intuitive.
This is what I do: I listen for new music because I’m on a quest to find a sound that is unique and exciting to me. Then, I share whatever I discover with anyone crazy enough to subscribe, read or listen to what I have to say.
This kind of used to be (and still is often) the job of an A&R person at a record label. Unlike record label A&R folks, I do not make a living at it presently and do so with no complaints. I am involved in other music-related projects that pay for my life & today, my life is very good.
My primary reason for reviewing music on Loudersoft et. al. today is the same reason I’ve always listened for new music: because I enjoy the process of discovery. I look at Submithub’s charge of $0.50-$1 per submission for an opportunity to submit the track as a sign of respect. I do not have any clickthrough advertising on my blog, nor do I make a living from these $0.50- $1 amounts. That money goes back into hosting for my site which, if you’ve ever hosted a website you know, isn’t cheap.
Not just anyone is invited to use Submithub for reviewing music and, certainly, not everyone uses it the way I think it was intended. It is an honor to me for which I am grateful that anyone cares what I think about music & is willing to jump through a few hoops to ask my opinion.
In the last few months, many people who have public and private careers besides just making music have begun using Submithub to promote their own music. In addition, they’re using what we say to do things like write articles and books and run Twitter accounts that make fun of the things we say. They make direct and veiled threats about what they’ll do with the content we generate. They use it to gain click-thrus, attention and advertising or investment money for their own projects other than just their music.
I think it’s wonderful that people who aren’t professional musicians have discovered the service. Despite all this new music coming our way from professional and non-professional musicians, I would be willing to bet that the overwhelming majority of people don’t actually listen to even a fraction of the music each of the members on Submithub are listening to on a daily basis. And hey — maybe what we’re doing actually is ridiculous or funny. Maybe people seething with anger and broken hip, obsessed with the “keeping ‘real’ of shit”, truly believe we’re all a bunch of randomly selected gurgling fans playing God and rejecting people like judges on American Idol. Isn’t it grotesquely, comically absurd?
I’m cool with being personally objectified by people who are offended or feel rejected by me in this one role of my life if it’s defensible that the objectifier is doing so with taste and positive intentions. I’ve begun to see that this objectification is not always that way. It’s vicious and cruel, pointless and done to regulate what the objectifier sees as a power structure that must be attacked and ridiculed. Having haters isn’t always a good thing; yet it seems, in this case, having haters is a sign of strength and growth.
If you’re not sincerely and deeply embedded as a lover of music, what would be the point in making music much less listening? Many artists get into music with the intention of using their music as a means to being validated for their particular slant on the universe, their own mantras and vibrations. I look at this and think, “You know, that’s a lot like what I’m doing, isn’t it?” But not really. I could honestly give a rip if anyone likes or dislikes my music choices. I try very hard not to be precious or perfect because music, unlike most art forms, is only perfect one time: the first time you hear it.
As both a person who has performed music professionally myself and, also, as a lifelong music consumer, I’ve come to understand that songwriting held too preciously never really grows.
Joni Mitchell said:
I always took this to mean that you give birth to a child and raise it, but then you eventually have to let go of it and let it take on a life of its own over which you have no say-so or control.
If everything is brilliant, then nothing is. That’s what makes reviewing art very difficult because I want every child to be precious and brilliant & it’s just not possible. Songs, like children, are flawed and human & the most loved is often the least liked.
If I have to accept this reality while I’m listening (which I do), the @bestofsubmithub’s of the world and the like should do the same at the very least. Find a better source of humor than leeching off the unpleasant task of telling someone their child is being kept back a grade.
My opinions are not solid gold or always original. I don’t need to be reminded of that by a former PR person. My opinions are, for better or worse, always honest. If you’re asking a person with a somewhat trusted voice to take on the task of talking about your music in a way that is completely honest, what benefit is it to anyone to pretend something half-finished is mind-blowingly original? Why do my reasons, or anyone else’s, for passing on a track matter so much to you? Is it really that funny that I have to tell someone hey, your song isn’t for me? As someone said to me today, “Sometimes I feel like the rejection note is like trying to explain to someone why you think they are ugly.” I won’t say anything to an artist on Submithub that I wouldn’t tell them face to face. That’s a lot different from getting caught by your company hiding behind a Twitter account for some kind of small glory.
Websites and labels who accept submissions through Submithub are, frequently, accused of making ‘Sophie’s Choice’ every day with people’s art by those who inappropriately weight the importance of who or what accepts or rejects their work.
As an imperfect, vain, occasionally foolhardy former hooligan myself — one in whom some segment of the population puts their faith to recommend good music — I want to quit doing this nearly all the time. Yet somehow, my love of music keeps me here. It draws me back in because of the promise of finding that one gem that will enrich my life or the life of someone else.
I can’t speak for others who review using Submithub, but I personally do not listen to music with the thought of how my review can help someone to start their career or propel their vision forward. I also can’t tell you exactly in so many words what “it” is or what I’m looking for. Until I hear “it”, I often times don’t even know myself. Songs I never thought I could possibly like have turned me on to entire genres of music while songs I thought would be certain genius fell flat.
Maybe it’s because of how I got to this point. I have been digging for records from the time I was old enough to look at a vinyl record and tell you who made it. I started DJ’ing when I was ten years old at a local night spot. I spent my tween and teen years haunting record shops and flea markets, record swaps and bargain bins, working a shift at a local community radio station and shopping the stacks of closing libraries searching for something special. My life has been spent at nightclubs and house parties and all night affairs in basements, buying mixtapes from the guy with the case on Broadway or the street vendors on St. Marks Place. I scour music sites like Soundcloud and Mixcloud and Fanburst. I shop at Bandcamp and Beatport and iTunes and go to concerts to support music I love, often quietly but sometimes not. It’s been a joy having my public hobby in life to love music.
And does anyone really care about any of that besides me? Probably not. Does it feel good to know someone, anyone, cares what I think about music? Sometimes it does, sometimes it’s the loneliest feeling in the world.
Though it may well be the case, I don’t think of myself as a person who wields any special powers over the universe or music or careers or people’s lives. If I do, it is an accident of being a music fan myself with a lifetime of experience listening. I just listen to what’s out there and try to share what’s good with people who are also out there looking. It’s not my only purpose in life, but I must get some measure of joy from it. Otherwise I’d have quit when every music blogger turned themselves into a record label or a management company or a t-shirt factory besides me.
Today, music blogs seem to becoming less and less important to the ecosystem. Ask any of the hoi polloi of indie music how to get noticed? They’ll all say “playlisting”. As I lurch towards my own reviewer/music blogger/whatever you call it antiquation, I’m not ready to give up my long-form way of showing people what’s worth hearing in music. Perhaps soon enough, I will be like all the cool kids, pleased to have mutated into an endless series of playlists traversing the Milky Way galaxy in search of a device from which to beam.
Now, I will go back to listening to submissions for a while & dream of finding a track that really goes. If I find one, it will be on loudersoft.com soon enough. Even then, it will not be about me or my “brand” or whatever. It will be, as it has always been, about the desire to spread my own love of music and share it with others who, like me, are deeply afflicted by that love. Love, as it is said, is the message.
