Imagine this: you’ve just finished creating your latest track: it’s a lovely piano track that you’ve created with the utmost dedication and passion. It took days to compose it, record everything and mix and you’re finally releasing it to the public.
After release, you decide that you want to try and promote it around and by doing a quick research, you find out about a website called “Submithub” claiming their goal is to connect musicians and curators of every kind, be them playlists, YouTubers, influencers, and so on… so you think: “well why not, it’d be cool if I had my track on some nice channel so people can hear it!”, and sign in.
You buy some credits, then start a search for all playlists on the channel that accepts music created with a piano: you select a few, and send your track to them.
After a little while, you get a response from one of those playlist letting you know that your piano track, which you sent to a playlist accepting piano music, was rejected because, well… it is too “piano-heavy“. There’s too much piano in it.
This answer confuses you a lot so, since that curator actually left open the chance of chatting with him, you decide to get in touch to understand what is going on, and what he tells you is something similar to this: “Well yeah, I do accept music created with a piano, but I believe that music created with a piano is not necessarily piano-heavy. I mean, there can be tons of piano music that is not “Piano heavy”, so yeah I accept piano music, but only when it does not rely on the piano…“
I believe that the vast majority of people now, reading this story, will be thinking that this does not make any sense at all and that something like this could never happen, but let me tell you: it did, today I will be narrating the whole story using all the screenshots I have, and trust me: it is a lot worse than you are thinking right now.
…and in the end, I hope you’ll be the one to answer the question “Is Submithub Against Musicians?” in the comments.
THE PROTAGONISTS
As per every story, it is important to understand who the protagonists are:
The first protagonist is me, Luca, a Music Producer (well, I do my best) for our main eLxAr project and other side ones I love dedicating my time to.
The second protagonist is a curator going by the name Lukasz Sier, owner of the “NEW RETRO WAVE HQ” playlist on Spotify.
After this, we have the entire submithub team of whom I’ll show the screenshots and names in due time.
And now for everything that happened, let’s raise the curtains.
The Story
In my quest to try and promote our music a bit, I have been a submithub user for months now, if not more, and one of the curators I got in touch with the most during this time, was none other than Lukasz Sier.
His playlist, NEW RETRO WAVE HQ, claimed to accept both synthpop and synthwave music and as such I would send him music from both our eLxAr project, which’s a bit more geared towards the synthpop style, having vocals from our Alex, and The Magic Portal project, that’s an instrumental synthwave/chillwave project.
Everything was ok, the relationship was fine, and I never had the impression this person could have an hidden agenda or that he could not be trusted, so he quickly became one of my favourite curators to invest on.
This up until March of 2024 when I sent his way a song from our eLxAr project titled “GAME OF LOVE“, only to see it rejected with this motivation.
I was a little confused by this rejection, after all I had sent him tracks very similar to this one for months now without an issue, but only now he decided that a track, in order to be accepted, should not “rely” on vocals.
At this point, before talking about what happened then, I think it is important to understand the definition of different music genres.
What is Synthpop?
If we make a research about the definition of “Synth Pop” we will find out that the genre is defined on websites such as Wikipedia, as: “a music genre that first became prominent in the late 1970s and features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument“
Now, I do not think that there’s anyone reading this blog who is so ignorant as to not understand simple grammar and even I, not being an English native speaker, understand that this definition only means that, as far as the instruments used in the songs go, synthesizers are prominent.
So yeah, we’re talking about a genre of music that uses synthesizers as instruments, way more than they use, for example, piano, violins, or trumpets as instruments. So what about the vocals?
There’s actually nothing said about the usage of vocals in synthpop tracks but, if we keep reading the page, we will find out that groups such as Alphaville, A-Ah, Pet Shop Boys or Kraftwerk, are considered to be some of the highest representative of the genre.
Submithub itself, as I write this blog post, as an example of the genre, uses the song “Blinding Lights” from The Weeknd. A very vocal heavy track.
The line connecting all of the songs considered to be great synthpop songs is, as such, very simple: not only they use synthesizers as their primary source of instrumental sound, but everything is always topped by vocals.
As such, we can say that, until reality keeps being real, synthpop is by definition a very vocal-heavy genre of music using synthesizers as the primary source of sound for the instrumental part.
The vocal aspect of synthpop is, in fact, so relevant in the music community, that any track is heavy on the synths but lacking vocals, or having very little vocals, is known for being part of the synthwave genre, or in some cases of the ambient genre.
I actually went as far as to go and ask other musicians what they consider to be synthpop and what they consider to be synthwave, and the unanimous response was: “synthpop has vocals, synthwave is instrumental”.
As such, refusing a synthpop track because it has vocals, is exactly the same as refusing a piano track using the excuse of it being made with a piano.
This said, let’s keep narrating the story.
Careful, someone might consider you a scammer
After the rejection, considering I had songs that sounded super similar to this new one accepted in the past, I decided to get in touch with the curator to try and understand what was going on, and this was the exchange.
As you can see, I’ve tried to understand his point, giving him the benefit of the doubt, but I also suggested he would take off the “synthpop” genre from his accepted genres precisely because, if he did not but kept refusing vocal heavy tracks, he’d be eventually be labeled as a scammer.
Prooving that he knew very well that I had a point there, he also admitted that “he was thinking about it“, but was not sure, because in his opinion there would be some synthpop tracks that would not rely on vocals.
This is, how we just saw above, kind of false but, even if it was true, it’s very dangerous territory to step on because it literally opens up everything to unfair subjectivism instead of objectivism.
Let me make an example here to explain what I mean:
Imagine walking in a mall and seeing a sign stating that there’s a contest for who can cook a good pizza margherita.
You have to pay an entry fee but if your pizza is liked by the owner of the mall, who is the judge, he’ll let you open up a stand in the mall itself where people will eat your pizza margarita and you’ll be paid for every person that gets a bite.
You love creating pizza margherita so you sign in, you pay your entry fee and cook.
Now let’s define what a pizza margherita is, and being from Italy and a huge lover of pizzas, not to mention having worked in the kitchen of a pizzeria too in the past, I’m definitely entitled in defining it.
The pizza margherita is a kind of pizza that relies on two main ingredients: tomato sauce as the base and mozzarella cheese and fresh basil on top. To keep it simple.
Then I know there are places outside of Italy where it does not have the basil, but we can all agree that the chees on top is definitly relevant.
So you cook your pizza, present it to the judge, and his answer is: “nope, there’s mozzarella cheese on this pizza margherita. I believe that pizza margherita should not rely on mozzarella cheese on top, I believe it should be all tomato sauce and nothing more”.
It is your right not to want cheese on your pizza, but if that is the case then you do not ask for a Margherita in the first place, cause the cheese on top defines a pizza as a Margherita.
Translated: it is your right not to want vocal-heavy tracks in your own playlist, but if that is the case you should not ask people to pay you to consider vocal-heavy tracks.
This is what I suggested when I told him to take off the synthpop genre from his requests.
Five Months Later...
Even if I did not agree with what he was doing, I believe it is not fair to judge people badly without giving them a chance to think, and reason about what they’re doing, and perhaps prove they are acting in good faith, and as such I decided not to send him any more vocal songs for a while, waiting for the “right one” to submit, seeing how he’d behave after taking this decision.
The right time then came around the 16th of August, with the release of our album “DEMONS“, including the title song “Demons”. A song that’s synthpop, it has vocals, but is also VERY vocal heavy, with 2 different synth basslines, 4 different synth patterns throughout the song, tons of synth “ear-candies”, and 2 different synth pads, not to mention the final energetic synth solo.
If there’s one song we released this year that is “synth-heavy” is this one and as such, I’ve decided to test his “good faith” by submitting it. I went on submit hub, I made sure he still had the “synthpop” genre between the genres he was accepting and used my credits to send the song his way.
It happens all the time that a song gets refused. Damn: I have some producer/curator’s friends, people with whom I am in a good relationship, refusing songs because they did not like a melody, the vibe, or whatever. As said, everyone is entitled to their own tastes and luckily, if needed, I will be able to bring proof of having songs refused without “bitching” about it, proving that what is going on right now is not about the refusal of a song, but about something else, and I will name that “something else” in a second.
Even if I do find it normal and acceptable that someone would refuse a song due to disliking it, I do not find it acceptable, for someone who gets paid to judge “synthpop songs” that are, by definition, vocal-heavy song, to refuse by stating that they are “vocal-heavy”.
But this is the answer it got.
Let’s get this straight: we have a person who is getting paid for a service. That service is to listen and judge a song of a genre that he himself asks for, based on the song quality and the way it “fit” into his playlist. This person requests “synthpop”, a vocal-heavy genre of electronic music, as one of the genres he is getting paid to fairly judge but, as proven by what he himself stated on chat, has no intention from the very get-go, of judging a synthpop song basing his judgment on synthpop characteristics.
That’s kinda if you have someone who knows he wants to eat a pizza marinara, without cheese, but tells people to send his way all the pizza Margherita they have just to refuse them all stating that, well… he wanted a marinara from the very beginning.
Just like a pizza Margherita is defined by the ingredients of tomato sauce and cheese and the marinara is defined by the fact it does not have cheese on so if you want a pizza that’s just tomato and no cheese, there is a specific name for it, and it’s “MARINARA”, if someone asks for synthpop music that is not vocal heavy and is centered only on synths, then it has a specific name, and the name is “SYNTHWAVE”.
Cause as we said before, SYNTHPOP is the vocal side, and SYNTHWAVE is the instrumental side.
As such, what is going on, is that someone gets paid for a service, judging synthpop songs as synthpop songs, that he freely admitted in chat he’s not willing to provide because the only thing he wants to receive is synthwave, that gets money and then refuses the vast majority of songs he himself requested, based on the characteristics of the genre he requested.
What I also believe is that the situation is made even worse by the fact that he knows very well what he is doing here, proven by the fact that he accepts BOTH synthwave and synthpop and, as such, he admits to knowing the differences in between the two different genres, not to mention the fact that he admitted to knowing it would probably be the case of taking the synthpop genre away when I mentioned it to him the first time, proving that he knows FULL WELL, that there would be problems by leaving that genre in.
As such, we can’t even try and think that everything is done with good faith, cause it’s already proven that there is no good faith in these actions and that the only thing that is going on, is that someone wants to get the money of synthpop artists, without giving anything in return to those synthpop artists.
There is a very specific name for someone who deliberately says to be offering a service, is getting paid for a service, but has no intention AT ALL, in providing that service, and that word is “FRAUD”.
And here the submithub team come into the picture
After this happened I was disgusted and the very first thing I did was reach out to Lukasz to let him know that if he keeps acting like this, than he HAS TO take synthpop out from his accepted genre.
Fair isn’t it? If you do not want synthpop songs, just do not request to be payed for judging synthpop songs.
Here was his answer.
The first thing that is to be noticed here, is how delusional this person has become in the lie he tells himself about synthpop not being a vocal track. Ever heard that liars tell themselves so many lies that they end up believing them? Here you have a prime example.
The second thing to notice is how, in his mind, everything is solved if I’d just stop “sending him vocal tracks”, cause of course if I stop sending him vocal tracks, that will prevent tons of other synthpop artists from getting scammed of their money by him falsely stating to be accepting synthpop tracks.
The third thing, the most important one here, is his stating that he “often accepts synthpop tracks with vocals, ” which will be proven to be a lie by the submit hub team itself in very little.
Since there has been NO WAY, of making him understand that to be an honest person he’d have to take that genre off, probably because the money he’s making by getting and refusing synthpop tracks is way too nice to give up, In my naivety I decided to get in touch directly with the submit hub support team, sending screenshots over and asking they do something about this scam that is rating artists on their website.
The first thing that happened is that they stated they’d get in touch with the guy.
The second thing that happened is that the Submithub team, namely JAMI, replied with this:
So basically, the answer from the submithub support team to the fact that someone not only is scamming musicians on their websites but also openly admitted to scamming musicians on their website is divided into two parts:
ONE: everything is fine as he agreed to be more careful with his wording.
Which I imagine going somehow like this:
Jami: hey, I’ve seen some screenshots that prove you’re scamming artists, Is that true?
Lukasz: yeah true, so?
Jami: Nothing, feel free to keep doing what you’re doing, just please do not be such an idiot again as to openly admit that you’re doing it, cause that would create problems.
Lukasz: oh all right, I’ll be more careful with my wording.
Jami: Cool, thank you. all is fine now.
TWO: just don’t send him music anymore.
I already answered before by stating that my not sending him music anymore, does not solve the problem of other artists getting scammed of their money by this guy.
So yeah, as it seems no luck there, fraudulent practices seem to be fine on the submithub website, with the submithub team actively defending them instead of punishing them, which is honestly quite outrageous.
But of course, it did not end there cause as I said we still have to reach the point were that last phrase about him accepting many tracks with vocals would be proven false by submithun themselves.
The Grand Finale?
After there was no chance of getting even a tiny little bit of justice from the submithub team, what I’ve decided to do is start writing about it on our blog, hoping that the people involved would see reason and understand how wrongly they were behaving, so I wrote this blog post about genre scamming on submithub, hiding all of the names which are now publicly available in this, more complete, post.
One of the points I made in that post, was that for these people it would be extremely easy to fool the submithub team by accepting maybe one song in a while, just so they can say “Look, I do accept one see?”, while refusing all of the rest, so figure how hilarious it was for me when trying all they could to defend Lukasz (because, once again, defending the victims of fraudulent activities is not something they seem to be interested in doing, but they put all their effort into justifying the scammer trying not to make him look as a scammer, they answered me in public, in a comment, with the statistics of the songs Lukasz actually accepted into his playlist!
Well yeah, I admit this with no problem at all: when I happen to stumble upon people who scam and exploit other people, I get frustrated.
I mean… this whole project exists to tackle these issues by using art. Our latest album DEMONS is LITERALLY an accusation album against all the exploitation and manipulative techniques perpetrated against people these past years.
I’ll go even deeper by saying that “frustration” in the face of unfairness, scams, theft, and all other things such as these, should be one of the most common feelings of a good-hearted person, together with maybe a bit of anger or disgust, so my question to the submithub team would be: why aren’t you since this is happening on your platform?
Apart from this, Let’s do some math and of course it’s going to be “incomplete” math, because the data we have is incomplete, but it is just to provide an example and the end result, even tho it may vary, it may vary of maybe 1-2%.
The submithub team states that this guy, during the WHOLE duration of his presence as a curator on their website, has accepted around 15% of synthpop submissions, of which “some” are without vocals.
Considering that synthpop without vocals is not synthpop but SYNTHWAVE, I wonder how much we should decrease that percentage. We also know that in 11 days, he accepted “three synthpop tracks, of which one had vocals, and two had not”.
We can now start thinking that the relationship between vocals and not vocals tracks is 1 in 3, and as such we can take that 15%, and turn it into a 5%.
From this 5%, we also have to consider that this guy is refusing vocal tracks because of vocals only from 6 months after years of accepting them, and that 15%, is likely based on the whole acceptance rating.
This means that, if we’re lucky, this guy who clearly stated that he “accepts many vocal tracks” in his playlist, actually arrived at a point with him accepting maybe in between 0,5% to 1.5% of vocal tracks that he gets paid to review.
Turning it into “money”, I am not sure how much a submithub credit is worth, but I know it’s usually paid around 1 euro per 1 credit. knowing that the percentage of acceptance of this person is around 1% and that he requires 4 credits for every submission, we could state that he actually accepts one song for every 400 euros he gets, not knowing how much of those, of course, are retained by the curator, and how much is retained by the submithub platform (if they do keep some for themselves) and we already have proof, because Lukasz himself wrote it in chat, that he does not refuse songs based on the quality of the song, but because “they have vocals”, while judging a genre that is reliant on, well… vocals.
This is precisely what I was saying in my previous blog post when I stated that it was super easy to make a fool of the submithub team, cause the only thing needed was to accept one song once in a while, exactly as he is doing.
And do not think that making those math calculations wrong would actually change anything. Even if it was 15% of accepted vocal tracks, and even if I had totally mistaken the whole math there, the simple fact that the other 85% were refused not because of the quality of the song, but because they had vocals on, would still make this a fraud.
The only thing I can say here is “GOOD JOB” to both Lukasz Sier and the whole submithub team! I’m always amazed by how people manage to make fools out of themselves, but you did a really splendid job with it.
So... is submithub against musicians?
In this blog post I’ve written everything related to this situation or well, everything that I felt was totally relevant to it.
I believe that a honest person, the moment they decide not to want vocal tracks anymore, would take off the request for synthpop knowing that the vast majority of tracks they’d get, would be vocal heavy.
Would have been easy. would have been the end of it. But it wasn’t done and, apart from all the self-told lies, the only possible reason here is that by doing so, the earnings from the submissions would be a lot lower.
The submithub team, taken notice of the situation, could have requested this change, but they instead decided to spend all of their energies into trying to defend a fraud that was openly admitted by the curator himself in chat.
The only thing I hope now is that, by reading this article, they will finally see reason and that I will not be forced to start translating this into youtube videos to share all around the net.
Now it’s your turn to answer the big question: is submithub against musicians? Or is it not?
Will be reading you all in the comments,
All the best,
Luca
