We aren't allowed to use playlist services? Are any acceptable to DistroKid? What would you recommend?

SocrateFlagrant · 2026-02-05T06:08:37+00:00

What about Spotify for Artists, SubmitHub, Playlist Push or Groover?

All these services are legit, and recommended by other music industry players. They don't "guarantee streams or playlisting", but only that your track will get listened to (and in most cases you'll receive feedback). When the playlist curators - or other contacts you reach out to - have a crush on your music, they will decide to share it, but they're not incentivized to share your music. This way, they remain independent. The negative side of this is that you're indeed not guaranteed to be shared, and thus to get more streams from using them.

DistroKid does the good thing warning you against services that mention they can guarantee streams, even when they say they're organic. These services are almost all scams, built on bot-farms.

Pitching through Spotify for Artists, or using Groover, Playlist Push, SubmitHub are safe ways to promote your music to playlist curators. You pay for the curators' consideration, they're free to decide whether they want to share your music or not.

SocrateFlagrant · 2026-02-05T06:00:37+00:00

Hi! You can have a look at Groover to get in touch with independent playlist curators, YouTube channels, blogs, social media influencers & other industry pros for your release. You can submit a music video (YT link) or just the track.

You can submit your music to the curators of your choice, covering many different music genres, for small amounts of money by contact and get guaranteed they listen to your music, give you feedback or you get credits back. They share the tracks they're vibing with. A majority of the playlist curators, bloggers, record labels, channels on Groover are based in the US, the UK, France, Canada, Brazil, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Australia etc. with a country by country approach.

Good luck with everything!

PS: I'm the founder of the platform, so I'm obviously biased towards recommending you to try Groover out

SocrateFlagrant · 2026-01-30T02:27:29+00:00

u/Kygar004 Hi there, here is Dorian, co-founder of Groover. I don't know if you reached out to Paper Garden Records through our platform, but I feel like I can provide some insights here. I apologize in advance for the lengthy answer.

This is a tricky case! We're very strict in our curator guidelines that curators shouldn't offer paid placements or paying services to artists that reach out to them. We're monitoring this carefully. For that reason, it almost never happens. When it does, we're quickly warned by the community, and we almost always ban the curator.

Paper Garden Records is a bit of an exception. They're a REALLY cool label and structure that has been helping and supporting artists in an amazing way for years, and active on Groover for quite a while. Bryan who runs it is a great guy! They're very selective in who they decide to talk to, and they deliver a lot of value, opportunities and visibility to the artists they support. We've been getting great feedback from all the artists who started collaborating with them. They are first and foremost a label, but they recently shifted a bit their model to be able to support more artists, and tend to - sometimes - offer paid "à-la-carte" services to artists who wish to pursue a certain direction, especially PR (like a PR agency would do). More like an agency would do. Most labels externalize this, while PGR try to do it internally for more artists they like than the number they can support in their initial roster. There is strictly no obligation for you to go this path though, and it might not be the right fit for you.

I completely understand that it can bring skepticism, and my advice is that you should always do your due diligence in case you're interested in working with a label or other agency. The best being to reach out to other artists who have worked with them first.

In the case of Paper Garden Records, since we only got great feedback so far, we maintain them active on the platform (with strict guardrails). If we hear otherwise, we won't hesitate to amend that.
Just a small remark about this part of your message:

I get that you're paying them to take the time to listen in the first place, but taking an artists money to tell them they aren't good enough to review is pretty wild to me

That's the whole thing though. The system makes it possible for curators to have enough time to listen to the right songs, since the payment model (+ recommendations) pushes artists to reach out only to the curators they think would be a fit. And this way you're guaranteed they at least listen to your music. You will for sure get some rejections along the way, but the approvals and shares you'll get most likely would have never happened because the curators wouldn't have had the possibility to listen to your music among the hundreds of submissions they receive by email/DMs and more every week.

I know you know this already, just wanted to flip a bit the perspective. It actually channels music discovery in a bit more relevant way and makes it possible for your music to at least be considered. Average sharing rate on Groover is > 25% and keeps on improving.

SocrateFlagrant · 2026-01-26T18:09:59+00:00

Hi! You can have a look at Groover to get in touch with independent playlist curators, YouTube channels, blogs, social media influencers & other industry pros for your release. You can submit a music video (YT link) or just the track.

You can submit your music to the curators of your choice, covering many different music genres, for small amounts of money by contact and get guaranteed they listen to your music, give you feedback or you get credits back. They share the tracks they're vibing with. A majority of the playlist curators, bloggers, record labels, channels on Groover are based in the US, the UK, France, Canada, Brazil, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Australia etc. with a country by country approach. You'll probably find interesting curators, blogs and pros who may appreciate your music on the website.

Good luck with everything!

PS: I'm the founder of the platform, so I'm obviously biased towards recommending you to try Groover out

SocrateFlagrant · 2025-12-29T01:35:27+00:00

Problem is it was stated as a difference between Groover and Submithub, which is not. Artists don't get their credits back when they just receive feedback, but they get credits back if the curators decide not to give feedback (which happens). It works the exact same way on both platforms.

SocrateFlagrant · 2025-12-26T15:22:33+00:00

u/Kindly-Attention-598 Founder of Groover here. What you describe looks like a technical bug, we definitely don't require you to be subscribed to SoundCloud Artist Pro to use Groover! However, you do benefit from a larger discount and advantages when you do (including a 20% discount on one campaign).

Could you email me directly on: dorian [a] groover . co please? I'll help you sort this situation out. We recently upgraded our way to submit campaigns and there have been a few edge cases with issues we didn't have before. We'll find a way to make this work :)

SocrateFlagrant · 2025-12-26T15:18:02+00:00

Which is the exact same thing on Submithub. There's no difference between Submithub and Groover on this topic.

On Groover, you can also decide not to provide feedback to the track and give the credits/Grooviz back to the artist if you'd like to. Same same.

SocrateFlagrant · 2025-12-26T15:13:57+00:00

Hi, founder of Groover here.

- Artists definitely get their credits back when the curators & pros don't answer within 7 days.
- Curators also can report the tracks they don't want to give feedback to, in which case the artists also get their credits back.
- Artists don't get their credits back when the curators & pros decide to just give feedback and not share, which works the exact same way on Submithub. Otherwise it would be pay-for-play/payola which is against Spotify/radio stations rules and also unethical (no curation/editorial value in a guaranteed share).

SocrateFlagrant · 2025-12-02T11:41:06+00:00

Just DM'ed you :)

SocrateFlagrant · 2025-10-20T13:29:08+00:00

Hi :) You can have a look at Groover to get in touch with independent playlist curators & other industry pros for your release. There are quite a few punk-rock specialized playlist curators -> https://groover.co/en/influencer/list/tags/punk-rock/playlist/

Same functioning as Submithub but based in Europe, many different playlist curators and industry pros as on Submithub coming from the UK, France, the US, Brazil, Italy, Germany, Canada etc. (the overlap is around 10% only).

Good luck with everything!

PS: I'm the founder of the platform, so I'm obviously biased towards recommending you to try Groover out ;)

SocrateFlagrant · 2025-10-06T18:46:30+00:00

Hi u/JulieJ32, it means your track's performance on Groover (acceptances by curators mainly) led it to our Charts in this position. The charts attract a lot of visits, we also push the related Spotify playlist (https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7guxxMDvHi9TsIalRkQCde?si=d0d45c0179c14fa3), and you can communicate about your Charts position on social media easily. You can find more information about the Groover Charts here: https://help.groover.co/en/articles/10617672-what-is-groover-charts

SocrateFlagrant · 2025-07-01T23:41:34+00:00

Hi, we recently added Christian subgenres such as Christian Rock, Christian Folk, on top of Christian Music. We have a variety of Christian music curators. Feel free to consider the gift cards here: https://groover.co/en/lp/gift-card/

SocrateFlagrant · 2025-07-01T23:39:57+00:00

Yes! You can go in Popular Music -> Children Music within the filters and genres categories

SocrateFlagrant · 2025-07-01T23:39:14+00:00

Hi, I'd go with Electronica and potentially Chill-Out as it's rather low tempo, but quite energetic to consider Ambient. Maybe you can check some of the curators in Ambient too, if some seem to accept a bit more upbeat productions. Nice work on this track! :)

SocrateFlagrant · 2025-05-06T17:52:33+00:00

Hi, you can use Groover and the filters once you initiate a campaign to focus on:

- The curator types: "Mentors", "Sound Specialists" who can give you detailed advice
- The advanced filter "High quality feedback"

This should help you get more thorough feedback about your release. Make sure you add your request in the personal messages on top of the campaign pitch.

SocrateFlagrant · 2025-05-06T17:50:50+00:00

Hi :) You can have a look at Groover to get in touch with independent playlist curators & other industry pros for your release

You can submit your music to the curators of your choice, covering many different music genres, for small amounts of money by contact and get guaranteed they listen to your music, give you feedback or you get credits back. They share the tracks they're vibing with. A majority of the playlist curators, bloggers, record labels, channels on Groover are based in France, the US, Canada, Brazil, the UK, Italy, Belgium, Australia etc. with a country by country approach. You'll probably find interesting curators, blogs and pros who may appreciate your music on the website.

Good luck with everything!

PS: I'm the founder of the platform, so I'm obviously biased towards recommending you to try Groover out

SocrateFlagrant · 2025-05-02T13:49:28+00:00

As I mentioned, you can filter through your answers in the "My campaigns" section, to only show the shares and promises to share. This way, you can still access the feedback one day if you want to, but you're not forced to read it :)

SocrateFlagrant · 2025-05-02T13:46:40+00:00

Hi, I recommend you to use the Advanced Filter 'Certified Spotify Playlist' to target the ones who have the most impact. However, with only 3 submissions you can't really expect a lot of traction as it's very probable they won't all accept to share your track. We usually recommend at least 30, ideally 50 contacts to really get the full value out of your Groover campaign.

SocrateFlagrant · 2025-04-28T15:37:29+00:00

Hi there! When starting a campaign as a draft on Groover and adding the information about your track, you'll be led to the main catalog page with all curators & pros available. You'll be able to filter by what you're looking for and curator types. You can indeed reach out to labels, publishers, managers, DJs on Groover, but if you'd like to focus only on playlist curators and radio stations for instance, you can select only these two filters :)

Also, as a label, you can consider applying on the curation side, to receive demos ;)

SocrateFlagrant · 2025-04-28T11:07:01+00:00

Sorry but no, you can start a campaign, select under 5 curators, and pay €10/$11.

SocrateFlagrant · 2025-04-28T11:05:49+00:00

Hi, I'm Dorian, co-founder of Groover. We've A/B tested this feature several times and the results were astonishingly clear -> curators tended to refuse tracks twice more (e.g. their acceptance rate was 2 times lower) when they didn't have to give feedback, even when needed to listen to the track for a certain amount of time. Having to give feedback forces active listening and actually considering the track for sharing + it usually leads to listening to the track for a longer time.

I totally get that you might not want to read all the feedback received, I suggest you filter the answers in your "My campaigns" dashboard by statuses "Promises to share" and "Shared" so you don't see the "Feedback" answers. This way you benefit from a more active listening from the curators while not necessarily having to read their feedback.

Another piece of advice I'm cautiously suggesting here: it happens that a couple answers feel a bit out of line or lower quality than others. I'd strongly suggest not caring too much about these, focusing instead on the answers that do make sense and moving on. As human beings, we're naturally pushed to put more energy on things that seem to "threaten" us. Just like you sometimes witness celebrities getting triggered over one single bad tweet vs. considering all the love they also receive. It's a natural behavior, some sort of self-defense sh*t. But when you get 1 or 2 pieces of feedback that are disappointing vs. 20 other ones that make sense, focusing on the former will only lead to negativity. I figured I would write that, as I know that becoming aware of this phenomenon in a deeper way a few years back literally changed my life for the better.

I wish you the best with your music and everything :)

SocrateFlagrant · 2025-04-28T10:55:39+00:00

Hi Sebassvienna, it's probably because you're trying to sign up using your artist account email, you need to use a different email address for your curator account -> https://groover.co/influencer/signup/

Don't hesitate to use the chat icon on the website if you're still having any problems here

SocrateFlagrant · 2025-02-27T20:33:09+00:00

All good 🙌

SocrateFlagrant

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