AN UPDATE ON THE HI54 MUSIC SUBMISSION PROCESS (AUTUMN 2019)
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PLEASE NOTE - this blog post no longer talks about the current HI54 Music Submission Process — like the one you can always find over at: hi54.blog/submit — but I leave the post up on the blahg for context as to what the submission process was before switching to whatever the current submission process is. So, unless you want some backstory about how the submission process has evolved/devolved, you can either click the link I mentioned above or hit the purple button below:•
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Back in October 2019, I started renting out a small suite in our apartment building as a ‘HI54/95EH’ temporary office, and… I gotta say, it’s been pretty nice to have a dedicated space to stretch out (also, the small suite needs work done in the kitchen before it can be rented out proper to someone else, so it’s not super expensive + we needed to not have my “office” be in the “living room” of our one bedroom apartment next door, so it’s a nice fit for a few months + I can still connect to our apartment wifi signal).
But paying for office space so you can better work on projects that don’t really earn money comes with some negatives too (for obvious example, rent outgoings have gone up), so I have been trying to be more mindful about where my time/energy goes & SWEET JESUS a whole lot of it was getting lost to dealing with the never-ending influx of music submissions. So much so that quote-unquote “more important” work was always getting left to boil dry on the back burner.
Say “submit!”, Say “Submit!”
Even though I had started only accepting submissions on Submithub (and can now send a quick canned email response to deal with any email submission backlog/guilt), and even though I quickly enacted ‘Weekend Mode’ to make sure my Submithub queue was only open 4 days a week, the amount of musical “plz check this out” to deal with on a weekly basis loop still managed to be way more than it logically made sense for a one person team to continuously spend time on (for example, I received 20,000 submissions in my first 15 months on Submithub).
The reality is: A LOT of people are releasing music (whatever big number you think it is, it is waaaay more than that & don’t even get me started on all the albums released in the past that are available to discover for the first time) and if you happen to have a blog that shares music, every single one of those people (if they happen upon your contact info) would very much appreciate if you could take a few minutes to listen to their art and tell them what you think (or, even better, tell other people that you personally recommend it).
Which is maybe why I resonated with this tweet a few weeks ago (even though some people got upset about it as some people are known to do on Twitter):
Of course, having people send you their music is also one of the nice things about having a music blog. Especially when you get stuff from people you can tell genuinely like what you do (although, that can sometimes make it harder if your stupid subjective ears refuse to give a co-sign on the music itself). But, more often than not, when you have a music blog you kinda just become a personified BCC contact to a lot of people. And that’s fine & to be expected. You can’t control who sends you music and you can’t expect everyone to give a shit about your shitty blog before sending you something — the whole thing is a depressing crapshoot on the other side for artists and labels too, so I totally get the ‘blanket approach’ that often gets utilized when sending music submissions out (and even if not everybody is using the ‘blanket approach’, more than enough people are, so now everybody is buried under the same pile of blankets).
If receiving submissions wasn’t such an important discovery/connection tool for a music blog, the obvious solution would be to just stop accepting any music submissions, full stop — y’know, just go back to the origin days when you’d browse internet bins looking for stuff to take back and share on your tumblr because nobody knew who you were so nobody sent you anything directly — but not taking ANY music submissions just feels like the first step to boarding up the doors and giving up on the music blog altogether. And, unfortunately, I still like a lot of the parts that go along with having a blog that shares music.
there’s gotta be a compromise
After closing my Submithub submission queue to take a week long break back in September 2019 and then deciding to extend that break another week after I got back so I could focus on some non-music-blog work, it really started to sink in just how sneakily draining (both in literal time & in emotional/mental space) having a never-ending pile of music submissions to deal with every week is. Turns out infinite music submissions make for an easy procrastination outlet at best, and a depressing existential burden at worse.
So, with that realization in mind, and with the increase of IRL rent kicked in on the 1st of October ‘19, I started experimenting with closing my Submithub queue for a full ten days before opening it again for another four. And I’ll be damned if the blog/work/life balance hasn’t felt a whole lot more balanced these past couple months.
Not only does this ‘4-on, 10-off’ submission restriction get my “hey plz check this out” requests down to a more reasonable monthly amount for one human to have to deal with, but making the change has also freed up more time to check out music in ways that are not tied directly to who sends me music directly (which, due to limited time/energy is kinda what happens to your ‘new music’ listening habits when you have a music blog with no submission queue restrictions — that or you just start ignoring people on a level that starts manifesting as a literal cloud of guilt that haunts your every waking moment, which is also bad).
Most importantly, I have more time/energy to actually stay focused and make progress on things I need to work on outside of dealing with music submissions. Because I have to do other things besides just look for music to consider including in digital mix tapes / mix cds (for example, I also have to make those things — and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I’ve been getting new Mixcloud mixes out the door consistently *on a weekly basis* for the first time since forever).
I’ve also been working on building a collaborative community site for the small mountain town we live in (although, especially with COVID obliterating the need for a community events calendar, I’ve been doing some rethinking about how I spend my time on that) + I’m still trying to figure out if there is something with this MounTown Radio idea that I seem to like more than other people in the mountain town we live in.
And also other things.
TL;DR: the extra time/energy has been nice and it’s been noticeable.
In conclusion
There’s a chance I might try switching my submission queues ‘4 days open -10 days closed’ split to having my submission queue open for 2 days every week instead, but I also think there might be something extra nice about having a full 10 days to unplug from being sidetracked from new music submissions.
So, if you want to submit music for HI54 consideration, my Submithub queue will be open every 2nd Sunday to Wednesday iteration (if it is currently closed, Submithub has a feature where you can mark yourself to be notified once my queue is open again)…
…and apologies for any inconveniences (but I can only listen to so much stuff before it starts negatively affecting other areas).
But, also, I still get sent A LOT of submissions even when I’m only open for 4 days at a time — for example, Sunday April 26th 2020 to Wednesday April 29th 2020 I was sent 495 submissions, so…
Or you can check out some other HI54 Submithub posts ⇊
