How To Make Better Submissions

In case you haven’t noticed, we have been launching a ton of new tools and features lately:  Ratings and Reviews, Pick-O-Meter, our It Works section, and (just last week!) a revamped “my submissions” section. We launched these tools with your feedback, so now the questions are: How can you use them? What’s the best way to use them?  They are still relatively new so every single use for them has yet to be discovered, but here is what I found seems to work best.

When starting a submission to one of our listings on Sonicbids, first find something that fits your genre and relative location (if your looking for live/location based stuff).  For this I would use the good ole “advanced search” tool which you can use to filter out all the stuff that doesn’t apply to you.

From there you can pick something that sounds interesting and check out the listing. Now here is where we provide a lot of new info. At the top of the page you will notice a Pick-o-Meter and an overall Rating.  The Pick-o-Meter will display the promoters overall choosiness or selectivity in comparison to other listings in that category, (so licensing gigs are compared to other licensing gigs, festivals are compared to other festivals, etc). Nothing will display if it’s their first listing on our site because they haven’t picked anyone yet.  But this can be a good tool to decide what your chances are.  For example, if you’re just putting together a group and you’ve only played a couple gigs in your area, I wouldn’t recommend you submit to someone that’s the “Most Picky” on the Pick-o-Meter.

Next to that is a rating system that is collection of feedback from all artists who have been selected. This is great feedback from your peers who have worked with the gig that can tell if it’s a good fit for you.  If the listing has a rating, scroll to the bottom of the page and you will notice all the feedback is listed there.  I recommend reading each comment and deciding for yourself if their feedback is warranted or applicable to you.  You can even vote on the review itself and let the community know what is a “helpful” review and what is “not helpful”.

In the “At a Glance Info” there is a link to the promoters name. By clicking on that link you will be taken to a promoters profile page on our “It Works” section that will show you every listing they ever had open on Sonicbids, and what artists were picked for them.  You can even take it a step farther by clicking on the band name to see their profile with a link to their EPK. You can check out a few EPKs and get a solid idea on what types of bands get picked for it and whether or not you sound like them or at the same level in terms of your career. If you’re not sure about something you even message other selected bands to see if it is a worthwhile experience.   As an added bonus you can even see what other things those artists were picked for which is a great lead generation for you.

With that info, you can really target down your submissions to make sure you are getting the most return on your investment. The research will take a few more minutes for sure, but its worth the time to make sure you are getting the most out of your submission dollars.