I'm interested in interning for Sub Pop. Do you have internships available?
Sub Pop loves, loves, loves its interns and we do our best to provide a fun and educationally rewarding experience. Send your resume to us at internship@subpop.com. Here's a pro tip: please name your resume files with your name. Files simply called "resume" tend to get lost.
What is your demo policy? How do I submit my music?
If you would like us to hear your music, please, share it to our email account at demos@subpop.com. PLEASE DO NOT SEND AUDIO FILES TO THIS ADDRESS, simply send links to your audio hosted elsewhere on the cyberweb. In an effort to discourage physical waste and overflowing email inboxes, this will now be the only way in which Sub Pop will accept unsolicited demos.
Please don’t call or email to follow up; if we want to reach you, we will. It is extremely rare that a band gets signed on the strengths of a demo alone so our best advice to you is to keep playing out, build a fan base, tour, and get your name out there; these are the things that will bring label representatives to your shows and this is what will help you get a record deal. Good luck!
PS – This is not the place to leave a comment with a link to your band’s Facebook page. Aside from having very little chance to attract our attention, the links can mess up the comments section on the front page of the website. Which just means that we have to delete them.
Please see the “best advice” above, it really is sage! Thanks.
I'd love to work for Sub Pop, do you have any positions available?
Unfortunately, Sub Pop is currently overflowing with employees. But fear not! Send us a resume to info@subpop.com, and we'll keep it on file, in case a vacancy happens. We appreciate your interest in working at Sub Pop. We love what we do and we're glad you do, too.
Film Festivals/Student Music Licensing
For starters, I’d like to invite you to read this article written by Bart Day for a quick and simple primer on how licensing works. After that, I’d like you to read this one on the Stanford Universities Libraries site regarding the actual rules for fair use. (PRO TIP: Read the whole thing.)
A one year, worldwide festivals only sync license for a Sub Pop artist will run you $1500 total, half of which goes to pay for the publishing rights you’ll need to license, and the other half of which goes to Sub Pop to pay for the master recording rights. Sub Pop can only license the master use rights to you (unless you are requesting a band we publish as well), so you will also need to contact the band’s publisher or management to fully clear the use. I want to stress that this fee is for Film Festivals and/or non-commercial uses only, and it does not automatically include online rights of any kind.
If you’d like to request a festival license please send an email to licensing@subpop.com and include as much information about your project as possible including the rights and terms requested, film budget, music budget, etc. Most bands will want to view the scene in question so it helps to send a password protected link to view the scene with your initial request.
Can I use [name of song released by Sub Pop] in my podcast?
For your non-commercial podcast, you may use of any of the tracks we offer for free download from our website. A convenient place to retrieve the 20 most recently offered freely download-able tracks from Sub Pop is through our digital sampler, available here and updated monthly.
This use is revocable at any time, for any reason, by us. In the meantime, have at it!