Groover Is a Scam (And You're Paying For It)

How playlist submission services turned music promotion into a pay-to-play rejection factory

Let’s get one thing straight: Groover is a business built on artists’ desperation. You pay money — real money — to have playlist curators tell you why your music isn’t good enough for their 400-follower Spotify playlist. And somehow, we’ve all convinced ourselves this is normal.

The Pitch Sounds Great, Obviously

The model is simple. You upload your track, pick some playlists that match your genre, pay a few bucks per submission, and wait for curators to give you feedback. If they like it, they add you. If they don’t, well, at least you get to hear why you failed their vibe check.

Groover especially loves to market itself as the “professional” option. Real curators! Verified playlists! Guaranteed feedback within seven days! It all sounds legitimate until you realize you’re essentially paying strangers to listen to your music and then explain why they don’t care about it.

SubmitHub does the same thing but with less polish. More chaotic, more options, lower prices, same fundamental problem: you’re buying the privilege of being judged.

What Actually Happens When You Submit

Here’s the reality nobody mentions in those “How I Got 100K Streams” YouTube videos: most curators don’t give a shit about your music. They’re not sitting there with headphones on, really listening, trying to discover the next great artist. They’re clicking through submissions as fast as possible, skimming tracks, collecting their payout from Groover, and moving on.

The feedback reflects this. You get stuff like:

“Not quite what we’re looking for right now.”

“Great production but doesn’t fit our current vibe.”

“The intro is too long.”

“We already have too many tracks like this.”

One curator literally wrote “nice try” as their entire feedback. That’s it. Two words. After someone paid them to listen.

The Groover Machine

Groover has perfected the art of making artists feel like they’re doing something productive while actually just extracting money. The interface is clean. The process feels official. You can see stats and charts and percentages. It all looks so legitimate.

But strip away the UX design and here’s what you’re left with: a platform where playlist owners get paid to reject your music. That’s the business model. Artists pay to submit. Curators get paid to listen (or pretend to listen). Most submissions get rejected. Groover takes a cut. Everyone loses except Groover.

The “feedback” is supposed to be the value proposition. Like you’re getting this expert insight that’ll help you grow as an artist. But most of it is generic playlist curator speak that could apply to literally any track. “The mix could be tighter.” “The hook doesn’t grab me.” “Not standing out enough.”

Cool. Super helpful. Definitely worth the $5 per submission.

This isn’t coming from personal experience or some bitter rejection story. This is about the larger problem of how these platforms are structured to exploit artists who are just trying to get heard.

The issue isn’t that playlist curators exist or that some of them might actually be helpful. The issue is the system itself — one that profits off artists’ desperation while providing minimal value in return. It’s a model that shouldn’t exist in its current form, and artists deserve to know what they’re actually paying for before they hand over their money.

The Power Dynamic Is Broken

Here’s what really gets me: the entire system is designed to make artists feel grateful for scraps. You’re paying these people. They’re providing a service you purchased. But somehow they still act like they’re doing you a favor by listening to your track.

Curators can take the full seven days to respond. They can write one sentence. They can tell you your music “lacks commercial appeal” or “doesn’t fit the mood” or whatever vague bullshit justifies not adding you. And you just have to accept it because what else are you going to do? You already paid.

Some of them clearly don’t even listen to the whole track. You can tell from the feedback. They’ll comment on something in the first 30 seconds and then make a generic statement about the “overall vibe.” Or they’ll say something that makes it obvious they didn’t even check what genre you submitted under.

The Results Don’t Match The Investment

Let’s talk numbers because that’s what matters. Artists are spending $50, $100, $200 on these submissions. Sending their tracks to 20, 30, 40 different curators. And what do they get back?

Maybe one or two playlist adds if they’re lucky. Maybe a few hundred streams. Maybe 10 new saves. Maybe nothing at all except a bunch of feedback that basically says “your music isn’t good enough for my playlist about rainy day coffee shop vibes.”

The ROI is terrible. You could take that same money and run actual ads, hire a publicist for a few hours, pay for professional mixing, invest in artwork, literally anything else that might actually move the needle. But instead, artists keep feeding money into Groover because it feels like doing something. It feels like progress.

SubmitHub: Same Scam, Different Package

SubmitHub at least has the decency to be more honest about what it is. It’s a marketplace. A free-for-all. Anyone can sign up as a curator. Quality control is minimal. You’re submitting to blogs that haven’t posted in months, playlists with 30 followers, YouTube channels that repost everything they approve.

The advantage is it’s cheaper and faster. The disadvantage is you have even less idea what you’re getting into. At least Groover pretends to vet their curators. SubmitHub is just chaos.

But the fundamental problem is the same: you’re paying for access that doesn’t actually lead anywhere meaningful. A blog post on a site nobody reads. A playlist add that generates 12 streams. A YouTube upload that gets 47 views. These aren’t wins. These are participation trophies you paid for.

Why This Model Exists

Because artists are desperate. That’s it. That’s the whole explanation.

We’re all trying to figure out how to get heard in an oversaturated market where algorithms control everything and organic reach is dead. So when someone says “hey, for just a few bucks you can get your music in front of real curators,” it sounds reasonable. It sounds like a solution.

But it’s not a solution. It’s a tax on desperation. It’s a way for middlemen to profit off the fact that streaming platforms have made it nearly impossible for independent artists to build an audience without paying someone somewhere along the line.

Groover knows this. SubmitHub knows this. They’re not solving the problem. They’re monetizing it.

The Feedback Is Worthless Anyway

Even when you get detailed feedback, what are you supposed to do with it? One curator says your intro is too long. Another curator says they love the intro but the chorus is weak. Someone else says the whole thing is great but doesn’t fit their playlist right now.

These are just opinions. Random opinions from people who happen to run playlists. They’re not A&R reps at major labels. They’re not producers with decades of experience. They’re just people who made a Spotify playlist and decided they could charge artists to submit to it.

And even if their feedback is technically correct — even if your mix really could be tighter or your hook really could hit harder — you’re still getting rejected. The feedback doesn’t lead to placement. It’s just the consolation prize for paying to be told no.

What Artists Should Actually Do

Stop giving these platforms money. Seriously. Just stop.

If you want feedback on your music, join a Discord server with other producers. Trade tracks with people in your genre. Ask friends whose taste you trust. Hell, post on Reddit. You’ll get the same quality of feedback for free, and at least those people aren’t financially incentivized to string you along.

If you want playlist placements, focus on building actual relationships with curators. Find smaller playlists that genuinely match your sound. Message them personally. Share their playlists. Engage with their content. Be a human instead of a transaction.

And most importantly, stop believing that one playlist add is going to change everything. It won’t. Building an audience takes time, consistency, and actual connection with listeners. There’s no shortcut. There’s definitely no shortcut that costs $5 per submission.

Final Reality Check

Groover isn’t helping artists. It’s extracting money from them while providing minimal value in return. The whole paid submission model is predatory, exploiting the gap between where artists are and where they want to be.

You’re not paying for promotion. You’re paying for the chance to be rejected with a side of vague feedback. That’s the service. That’s what you’re buying.

And until artists collectively decide to stop participating in this system, platforms like Groover and SubmitHub will keep printing money while everyone else keeps hoping that maybe this next submission will be the one that finally works.

Spoiler: it won’t.