What Artists Should Know About Groover
Groover is an online platform that connects artists with playlist curators, blogs, labels, and other music professionals.
I mean, you’re not just going to shotgun out cold emails, right? RIGHT? 😅
It’s a lot like SubmitHub, which I last wrote about in 2020, but I’ll save a direct comparison for the end of the post.
For now, I’d like to walk you through my campaign for my latest single “The Serious One.”
It’s a quirky one for sure, probably more of a “grower” than a “grabber” and certainly not a “banger”! I don’t think it sounds like anyone else, which makes it hard to nail down a genre. That’s all to say I wasn’t planning to take the world by storm.
Expectations in check? Then let’s proceed…
Launching a Groover Campaign
For starters, you’ll want to flesh out your profile. The site holds your hand through the entire process, with a percentage completed indicator to make sure you don’t skip over anything.
Mine looks like so:
Once that’s done, click on the “Start a campaign” link in the header and we’re off to the races!
Now’s probably a good time to mention that Dorian Perron, the co-founder and nicest guy in the world, gave me some pointers and provided some Grooviz so I could test out the platform.
What are Grooviz, you ask? They’re the coin of the land. Sure, they could’ve just called them credits, but we’re here to have a good time, right?
I don’t know what the singular form of Grooviz is, but one of them costs €1 unless you’ve got a discount code. It just so happens that I’ve got one for you, but I’m getting ahead of myself!
The reason I bring all this up now is that this is where you enter a release date. Dorian recommended not launching the campaign to Spotify playlist curators until the track is out, because they might reject tracks without a Spotify link.
Fortunately, you can save the campaign as a draft and launch it on release day with just a few clicks.
If you’re just looking for feedback to improve your track, you can mark it as a demo. I wish more people did this because my advice as a curator (did I mention I’m a curator too?) tends to be technical and actionable. When artists actually make the changes I suggest, I’m very likely to approve their track!
Next up, tell Groover what you’re hoping to get out of the relationship. I went with only the top option, and I suspect most of you will do the same.
Normally I wouldn’t bother with influencers, but I went with the whole shebang for testing purposes.
There are other curator types available within the other two main options including labels, managers, concert bookers, publishers, and sync supervisors.
Now select a budget range. If you want to! You aren’t obligated to stick to it, but it helps Groover assemble a list of suggested curators for you.
I ended up going with 85 curators for 186 Grooviz, which was admittedly a splurge.
I could’ve upped my approval percentage by reining things in, but I wanted to properly kick the tires.
After that, Groover sifts through their inventory of curators (2264 as of this writing) to find the best matches, based on what options you selected, the language/release date, any past campaigns, and the genres you indicated in your bio.
In my case, it came up with 225:
It costs 2 Grooviz per curator to submit with the exception of Top Curators which are 4 Grooviz. Half of that goes to the curator and the other half to Groover.
Top Curators constitute less than 3% of the curators on the platform and are chosen for their “undeniable influence and the quality of the content they produce.” I’m one of them, not to brag or anything. 😅
I spent a solid two hours working through the list and made it about halfway through before I resorted to further filtering. There are many helpful ways to narrow down your choices, from geography to previous interactions on the platform.
Here’s an example of a playlist curator’s profile:
That gives you a pretty good idea of what the curator is looking for, but you can also click on “See info” to learn more about a specific playlist:
Unlike SubmitHub, Groover doesn’t provide any info on how many streams your track is likely to receive, which admittedly isn’t easy to come by. I had Chartmetric open in another tab to perform some cursory research.
The “Media Outlet” designation in particular strikes me as ambiguous. For example:
I see a 57% opportunity rate, so it seems they’re not very picky. I’m proud to report that I made the cut and was promised a blog post. Going in, I didn’t know whether to expect that, a tweet, a Facebook post, a YouTube video, or an Instagram Story.
Once you’ve completed your selections, there are just a few more steps.
You can and should enter a pitch. For better or worse, here was mine:
I suggest providing some hype-free insight into the why and how of the song. As a curator, I don’t need the artist to tell me about their “amazing vocals.”
You can write individual messages to each curator, which could potentially go a long way. I know I pay extra attention when someone uses my first name in a pitch.
After that, you’ll see a list of your selections and a few bonus recommendations before the moment of truth:
If you use my affiliate link and promotional code PASSIVEPROMOTIONVIP you’ll get a 10% discount.
And I’ll earn a small commission which will go towards future experiments! Note that the screenshot above isn’t from this campaign.
Boom, done.
You can track your submissions on the “My Campaigns” page, which at this point will look something like this:
Putting on my curator hat for a moment, here’s how things look on our end when we review your submission:
If a curator agrees to share your track or clicks a box indicating that the artist can contact them, you get their email address. I’m not entirely comfortable with that, but it’s not like my email address is that hard to find in the first place!
Over time you end up with a long list of email addresses, which I suggest you reserve for emergencies only:
Unlike SubmitHub, there’s no on-platform chat between artists and curators.
Curators have one week to respond to your submission or you get your Grooviz back.
My Groover Campaign Results
I received 14 approvals. Of those, 11 have shared the track so far. 56 curators declined and 15 didn’t respond.
That works out to a 20% approval rate (14 out of 70), slightly better than I typically manage on SubmitHub.
But that says more about my track and my selections than the platform.
Here’s how those shares break down:
I was added to these Spotify playlists: Synth Lovers Café (2042 followers), UKI (466 followers), Worldwide Millennial Temporada 10 (27 followers), and Postacheck (13 followers).
My track was written about on Nosso Som and SoundsGoodWebzine. The latter was a dedicated post where they gave my track a score of 7 out of 10. 🤷🏼♂️
It was in rotation on Rádio Criativa10 for 10 days, on a Sword Radio UK show, and on the Worldwide Millennial podcast.
It was shared as an Instagram post by Buzz Slayers and as a story by Lyrics & Vibes.
Finally, Independent Radio added it to a YouTube playlist.
The remaining three shares are for two blog posts and I’m guessing this Spotify playlist (173 followers).
As a result, my track went to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. 😇
Wouldn’t that be nice? In reality, the Spotify playlists have netted me about 20 streams so far and the rest is unmeasurable.
UPDATE: A few hours after publishing this post, Portal POP Mais came through with a really nice review.
Groover vs SubmitHub
That brings me to my biggest concern with Groover: you just don’t know what kind of impact a share will have.
With SubmitHub, you know precisely what you’re gunning for before you pull the trigger. For example, here’s what artists see before submitting to my playlist:
None of this relies on info I provide. It’s all cold hard data based on my history with the platform.
If I had to guess, none of the Groover curators I submitted to would have engagement scores above 5 on SubmitHub. I would’ve most likely filtered them out from the beginning!
I’ll look up the ones that approved me to check:
1 – Frecuencia Millennial
1 – Buzz Slayers
1 – Nosso Som
2 – Synth Lovers Café
4 – UKI
The rest aren’t on SubmitHub. Note that a curator’s engagement score is genre-specific. I went with “Electro Pop” because it’s widely accepted, but the score based on the genre(s) of my track could be different.
To be clear, I’m not saying these shares have no value! They certainly do, and I was pleased as punch to receive them.
But I most likely wouldn’t have submitted to those curators in the first place, with the exception of fellow synthwave musician and partner in crime Synth Lovers Café.
Those hours I spent researching Groover curators across dozens of browser tabs aren’t anywhere close to as powerful as moving a few sliders on SubmitHub.
Another nice feature on SubmitHub: if a curator doesn’t want to receive a track until release day, it’ll automatically postpone delivery until then.
SubmitHub is simply a more robust and mature platform, with loads more options and features like charts, Hot or Not, influencer-specific campaigns, and coming soon, a musician’s marketplace that will likely give Fiverr a run for its money.
If I run into a problem, I let Jason know and he typically has it fixed in days if not hours. From what I can tell, he’s working on the site all day, every day.
On the curator side, the difference is even starker. With SubmitHub, I restrict submissions to only synthwave and synthpop tracks with vocals sung in English and release dates newer than one month. That saves me from wasting my time and artists from wasting their money.
I could go on, but the fact is, I’m a SubmitHub evangelist. Others consider it the place where music goes to die.
To be fair, Groover is constantly improving too. I noticed some differences already in trying to capture screenshots for this post. They’re receptive to feedback and are in the process of addressing the issues I discuss here.
Here’s one thing that Groover arguably does better than SubmitHub: when a curator needs something before they can share your track (press release, photos, audio), you’re asked to upload them.
When other curators need the same files, Groover automatically supplies them, but you can replace them if you want:
I’ve heard from many artists that the feedback on Groover is simply nicer. It seems about the same to me, but I’ve got pretty thick skin so maybe I’m not the best judge.
Groover Conclusions and Recommendations
Is SubmitHub better than Groover? Yes. Should you still use Groover? Yes.
Groover has hundreds if not thousands of curators that you simply can’t reach on SubmitHub, with large communities in France, Italy, Germany, the UK, Brazil, Mexico, and Spain.
I see it not as an alternative to SubmitHub, but as a supplement.
For now, researching curators is more work. I suggest using the “save to list” feature to bookmark impactful shares so you can retarget those curators in future campaigns.
If you decide to give Groover a shot, please support the site by using my affiliate link. 😘
Promotional code PASSIVEPROMOTIONVIP gets you a 10% discount (here’s how to apply it).
Have you tried Groover? Have something to say about SubmitHub? Share your thoughts and results in the comments!
Great insights. Thank you
My pleasure Noah!
I have used both sites and will say that Submithub does it far, far better. Submithub is far more user-friendly and less glitchy, submissions cost slightly less and you can have a dialogue with media outlets on Submithub (which you cannot do on Groover, which makes things very tedious indeed). There are a LOT of so-called media outlets etc. that are not worth the time or the money on Groover, because Groover doesn’t seem to have much of vetting system and it doesn’t appear to be getting any better at that. And, finally, so many outlets put themselves into categories on Groover that they don’t belong in i.e. a playlist curator placing themselves on the ‘radio list’ or ‘media list’ which is a problem when you are trying to carry out a very targeted campaign. Because of this, you end up wasting a lot of money on Groover overall. Groover has been around long enough to have fine-tuned their website and ironed out all their glitches and yet they choose not to and still remain subpar to Submithub. The one thing they have going for them is the broad range of contacts they have. Unfortunately many of them are junk, or the ‘promises’ to share never happen and it’s so tedious to have to contact the media outlet via email instead of the platform when following up. A great deal of contacts on Grover will not end up sharing your release whereas Submithub will give you a mechanism to follow up or they will reimburse you.
If my last three shares don’t happen soon, I may be in the exact position you describe! Most likely, I won’t bother following up at all.
I agree that curators are held way more accountable on SubmitHub, and any weaknesses are visible right on the submissions page.
You probably noticed I didn’t compare pricing. SubmitHub pricing ranges from 1-3 credits and Groover is mostly 2 Grooviz with the occasional 4.
My guess is that SubmitHub is cheaper in most cases, but it depends on your selections. And that’s before getting into discount codes and package prices!
Hey Brian,
I’m a longtime reader of your blog, first time commenter…. I’d like to thank you for all the informative and inspiring blog posts – I read ’em all as soon as they come out!
First off, FANTASTIC example of a song pitch! Interesting, funny, no cliches… Really well done, and shows me I I have to raise my game and write much better song pitches!
My experience with Groover: higher acceptance rate, but like you pointed out, minimal impact from the placements. And, similar to Gemma, I found that the curators had tagged themselves with far too many genres, and so I found that I wasted a lot of budget with my first campaign as a result. Yes, I could have checked out each playlist individually, but time is money, and it ultimately became more efficient to just use the filters. However – now I can easily target the curators that accepted previous releases, which is a quick no-brainer.
Good to know that the email address that is shared is done automatically by the system. When I first encountered that, I was surprised and thought the curator wanted to start a dialog. Oh, foolish boy! 🙂
One thing I’m curious about – have you ever promoted a song with either platform that was NOT a new release? If so, how did that go?
Thanks again!
Hey Brock,
Thanks for making the jump from reader to commenter, and for the kind words on my song pitch! Sadly it wasn’t good enough to get me on a Spotify Editorial playlist. 😉
This was only my second campaign on Groover, and both tracks were new. Looking over my long and storied history on SubmitHub, it looks to be the same.
That said, I’ve had artists pitch me tracks that are years old! Until Jason fixed the bug that allowed them to, that is. My playlist is for new releases only, with the newest at the top.
I could see myself possibly re-pitching an old single once the album comes out.
This is awesome, thank you!
Thanks Jon!
Hi Brian!
Very timely post; I just did my first Groover campaign as an alternative to SubmitHub having had ZERO luck on SH. Same with Groover! Not a bite!
It was the same kind of champagne rejections (where they say something nice but then find something odd to reject it for). But I am also partly to blame because I choose curators based on what their bios said they were looking for and most of them came back and said it was the wrong mood for their playlists, so my error was selecting them on face value based on their bio and not doing a more in-depth research.
I was gutted to have wasted my credits on the wrong submissions (it was a new service so I didn’t know its ins and outs), but it’s a learning curve. I would try it again at some point but I suspect I would fare just as badly as I do on SH cos for some reason, no one likes my music despite my best efforts, or rather, they like it a little bit but not enough!!!
To be honest, I think I am reaching the point of just downing tools… I honestly can’t give anymore of myself and find myself tripping up on the marketing part because it’s getting more and more and more saturated as an indie market, and harder and harder and harder to get past the gatekeepers.
I know you are both artist and curator so you have the view of both sides of the coin when it comes to why and how curators choose certain songs (we had this debate on another post!!!).
And once again I applaud you for how hard you have worked and how much you have achieved since I started reading your blog. You remain a true inspiration to us!
I’ll let you know the results of a second Groover campaign and stop feeling sorry for myself now!!!!
Hi Paula!
Sorry to hear you struck out. I wouldn’t blame you for taking curators at face value! I try to be as transparent as possible and spell out precisely what I will and won’t accept, and I expect others to do the same.
That’s not to say you shouldn’t, for example, look at what’s actually on their playlist. But beyond a certain point, there’s no way to know whether or not they’ll be receptive to your music.
I know it’s tough, but I’d take a good hard look at the critiques and see if there aren’t any consistent themes that you can address with future tracks. For the vast majority of curators, it really does come down to the quality of the music.
Most of the time when a track isn’t going to work, I know it in the first 10 seconds. Being able to explain why is a skill in itself, and many of us aren’t very good at it, especially when English is a second language as it is for many on Groover.
The important thing is making the music you want to make, as well as you possibly can. Keep doing that and I’m confident you’ll find an audience for it!
thanks… you are right about a lot of curators on Groover being non-English speakers…
I am really not sure what it is. My tracks are annually semi-finalists at the big songwriting competitions and are all professionally produced; there are no consistent comments regarding why no one likes them/me (!) and comments are always nice with a ‘but’.
I know I am not the best in the world, but I also know that I am not the worse!
It could also be that (like yourself) I don’t plaster myself on social media and go for over exposure? Esp as a female, there is an expectation to look and behave in a certain way to be attractive = to attract attention/listeners, although, of course, the curators are listening to music and probably not swayed by this element as the public is (wanting to consume their artists in a visual way)
I will keep reading your blogs; keep trying your recommendations and hope that the next time I comment on a service it is for me to say ‘this went great!’ (we live in hope).
Looking forward to your next discovery!
Yep, there’s always a “but”! But… that’s probably a good thing. It means they opened up with something positive.
I’m skeptical that social media has anything to do with it. When I’m curating, I have no idea what kind of social media presence the artist has, though I’ll occasionally click through to follow them on Instagram.
Taking a quick tour of your latest album, I wonder if genre/community is the issue. I’m hearing straight up pop/rock, right down the middle. It has a sort of timeless quality, but the flip side of that is that it could’ve been released 20 years ago. There’s nothing particularly distinctive about the arrangements, which means the vocals and songwriting need to be world class to stand out.
There’s a question of relevancy. Why you? Why now? What scene are you a part of? Who are the other big names in your scene that you can collaborate with (too bad Spotify didn’t give you a Fans Also Like)? Who are your fans and where do they hang out online? What is your genre aesthetic?
I don’t have answers and I suspect you don’t either. With no niche, it’s hard to get any sort of foothold. IMHO you need some sort of angle.
My music isn’t a perfect fit for the synthwave community, but I’m still an active participant. I’m familiar with the artists, podcasts, radio shows, playlists, YouTube channels, and aesthetic.
Something to think about! I hope I didn’t offend in any way.
Of course no offence! Thanks for taking the time to listen and comment!
I don’t have a clue whose fans to target and that probably is a big reason for the floundering!!!
All noted… I’ll keep fighting the good fight.
Great and very detailed review as usual, Brian.
Thank you so much for sharing your experience and knowledge. It’s hugely valuable.
My pleasure Philip!
Hi Brian, thanks for the incredibly informative campaign breakdown and as I think other commenters have eloquently addressed most of the issue’s raised with platforms like Submithub, Groover and Musosoup (perhaps the most questionable from my own experience) I just wanted to quickly comment about the track used in the campaign. You were being unnecessarily understated and modest about “The Serious One” which is a great track. This is a little contentious and I’m sure I’ll be in the minority (as I usually am ) but I actually prefer it to some of your other tracks over the last few years as it harks back to the halcyon days of Color Theory… “more synthpop than synthwave”. Strong lyric, great vocal melody and it’s nice to hear your voice in it’s lower register… Right that will be $2 please! Joking aside, I just wanted to give you plaudits for a great song that may be overlooked in your current canon of work.. props to you m8y! Neil (Indelible Scars)
That’s very kind you Neil! I think you’re Top Curator material! 😉
I agree that’s it more of a “classic” sound for me. Back in the old days, I used to describe my music as “like Depeche Mode with classical piano.” My piano parts gradually got simpler and then mostly disappeared. Which is kind of a head-scratcher, because you’d think I’d want to play to my strengths and I’m first and foremost a pianist.
I believe that’s the lowest I’ve ever sung on a track and while I still feel insecure about it, I’m reassured that it works for you!
Haha.. perhaps I’m not in the minority, as I’ve just noticed “The Serious One” is doing really well… and so it should. 😉
Alright, Brian!
We’re FINALLY at a place where we want to take advantage of some of your passive promotion wizardry and will give this Groover a try. We’re releasing both a bass-only project (under Tony Webb), and will be releasing a new funk/world album for our main act, Bourgeoisie Paper Jam, on April 14. We need to make sure that it is NOT like trees falling in the forest, so we’re shaking a few trees that we hadn’t worried about before…..
Also, overwhelmingly, the recommendation from our 11 one-on-one music supervisor and sync licensing mentor sessions is that we need to create a DISCO profile (with all the meta date locked in), so we’ll be working on that this week as well.
Needless to say, for both of these platforms, we will be using your affiliate codes.
Again, thanks for all you do to inspire fellow D.I.Y. Rock Stars, like us, to take music promotion into our own hands. We appreciate you!
Whoa, both releases on the same day? Sounds like you’ve got your work cut out for you!
It’s only been a month or so, but I’m hooked on DISCO. They’ve got an auto-scanning thing that can apply metadata for you, so you don’t have to come up with all those sync tags yourself (though you can probably do a better job).
Thanks for using my referral links! I look forward to hearing about your promo journey, and especially your sync licensing journey. I’m sure I could pick up a few tips from you there!
Hey Brian!
I’ve been coming to your site for years and truly appreciate all you do! Because of your site, I’ve had success with playlistblaster and many other things. This is my first time commenting as well. I’ve been using groover and have enjoyed it. I’ve landed on several playlists and had a few writeups.
I haven’t used submithub in a while because the feedback was at times really mean and some of the reviewers seemed to have an air about themselves. i see a huge difference in how people respond to you on Groover. Maybe i just need thicker skin too but i’ll give submit hub a try again
Thanks for making the leap Jay! I’m happy to hear my musings have proven useful.
You’re definitely not alone in feeling that Groover curators are nicer. SubmitHub added an option to receive non-critical feedback in the past year or so. Personally I find it hard to explain why I’m declining the track without being critical, but that’s certainly a way to avoid the worst of it!
Hey Brian !
Im so glad I found this discussion as Ive been asked by Groover to be a curator….Im interested to chat about a few pints in more detail if thats possible ?
You can find me through any of these links, I really hope to hear from you.
https://linktr.ee/newmusicreview
Hey Tim, I can see from your Linktree that you’ve already signed on as a curator. I don’t think there’s much to it beyond what I’ve described, but you’ll know firsthand once you start receiving submissions!
Thanks for the great information, Brian. Very timely as my distributor is pushing a promotion to sign up with Groover. The resultant Google search is how I found your site, which I have now bookmarked :). I read your article on SubmitHub and will probably give that platform a try.
From your remarks here, it seems that Groover might have a more European focus, and I got that impression from their website. I have one song in French, so maybe that might be more suited to Groover.
Your advice to Apostola struck a chord as I also struggle to assign a well-defined genre to my music. Folky, melodic rock with a heavy dose of humor is hard to pitch LOL.
Three cheers for Google! Yes, I’d definitely give SubmitHub a shot. I generally start there and if a track performs really well, I’ll hit up prior approvals on Groover. Then again, I don’t have any songs in French! You should definitely promote that one on Groover!
Been searching for this info, came across the blog on Google,thanks for this,which do you think I could use for emo/rap type music’s similar to juice wrld/trippie redd/lil yachty/sofaygo type music
I’m not well versed in the genre, so I suppose my standard advice would apply. I’d start with SubmitHub and then Groover if you’ve had some success and want more outlets for your music.
Hey Brian appreciate your dedication to sharing info/strategies on promoting one’s music. So, are these sites(Submit & Groover) only for electronic music, Hip Hop or Rap?
I’m a melodic, guitar driven artist(think REM, Tom Petty..etc..etc) Additionally, I got a little tripped up over the category term “new release” as my recorded material is from awhile back. Would I be wasting my time & money trying my luck on either of these platforms?
Thanks in advance,
Jono
Great to hear from you Jono!
No, you wouldn’t be wasting your time. Both sites cover most genres, and you can submit old releases, though new releases would likely perform better.
On SubmitHub, I only accept releases less than a month old, but my playlist focuses on new releases specifically.