Prices as of November 2026. Competitor prices and facts are as reported by the sources cited in this post; UpcomingSounds prices are the platform's published rules.

A free first submission is one of the fairest offers in music promotion: try us once, judge us on what comes back, then decide. That is the sourced core of Letssubmit — direct submissions to professional curation, with the first one free. If you are searching for a Letssubmit alternative, you have probably already used that free submission. The question you are really asking is what the second submission — and the tenth, and the campaign behind a full release — should look like, and what it should cost.

This guide answers that honestly. It credits the free first submission as the genuine win it is. It names the structural trade-off of the model that follows it: per-submission pricing, with the actual prices unpublished in any source our research could verify. And it sets out the alternative on UpcomingSounds — one flat campaign instead of a meter running per submission — including where UpcomingSounds honestly loses.

What Letssubmit is, fairly stated

Letssubmit is a submission service for direct professional curation. Instead of a managed campaign run for you, you submit your music directly to curators — the professional-curation route, artist to curator, through the service.

Two facts about it are properly sourced. First, the first submission is free, listed as such on DropTrack's free-curators list — a third-party list, not just Letssubmit's own marketing. Second, Letssubmit is cited in the field's guides to submission services; it is a recognised name in the roundups artists actually read when they compare options, not an unknown one-page site.

Beyond that, the sourced picture stops — and this guide stops with it. Our research found no verified public pricing for submissions after the free first one, no verified catalogue size, and no verified published rules on who listens, for how long, what happens on a non-response, or whether any credit expires. Every one of those cells in the comparison table below reads, because inventing a competitor's prices to win an argument is exactly what an honest guide must not do.

What can be said fairly is this: the model is per-submission. The free first submission proves the door is open; after it, each submission is its own transaction. That shape — not any invented price — is what this comparison is really about.

Where Letssubmit honestly wins

• The first submission is free. A genuine, third-party-listed free entry. UpcomingSounds has no free tier at all — our campaigns start at 45 USC — so on the very first step, Letssubmit is cheaper than us by definition. Use the free submission. Judge the response. That is what it is for.
• Direct professional curation. The pitch is not a blast to an undifferentiated pool; it is direct submission to professional curation. Artists who want to choose their targets one by one, curator by curator, will recognise that as a deliberate, hands-on model.
• It is a cited, established name in the guides. Letssubmit appears in the field's own roundups of submission services. In a market full of names that appear and vanish, being cited by the guides artists trust is a real, if modest, credential.

Taken together, Letssubmit's honest win is the try-before-you-pay doorway into a direct-submission workflow. Nothing in this article pretends that doorway counts for nothing — for a first release, it may be exactly the right first step.

The trade-offs to weigh

• Free covers exactly one submission. One free submission tells you the mechanics work. It does not run a release. The moment you have a second track, a second curator target, or a second week of a campaign, you are in the paid part of the model — and that is where the sourced facts run out.
• The model after the free first one is per-submission. Each submission is a separate purchase. Per-submission models have a known arithmetic: the cost of a serious round is the price per submission multiplied by the number of curators you need to reach, and it grows silently, one small transaction at a time, with no single moment where you agreed a total campaign budget. On UpcomingSounds that total is agreed up front, as one flat tier.
• The per-submission price itself is unpublished in our research. Pricing is. An artist literally cannot budget a Letssubmit campaign from public sources — cannot compare ten submissions there against one flat campaign elsewhere — because the number needed for the comparison is not published where our research could verify it. Whatever the price turns out to be, the absence of a publishable price is itself a trade-off for anyone planning a release on a fixed budget.
• No sourced rules on listening, refunds or expiry. Does a professional curator listen to the whole track before deciding? What happens if a submission goes unanswered — is it refunded, and when? Does any balance expire? Letssubmit's sourced material and the guides citing it do not say, so this guide marks all of it. Those rules are not fine print; on a per-submission model they decide what a round of silence costs you.

None of this makes Letssubmit dishonest. It makes it a service whose doorway is clear and whose interior pricing and rules are not published in a verifiable form. Artists search for an alternative when they want the whole journey priced and ruled before they start it.

The alternative: UpcomingSounds

UpcomingSounds replaces the per-submission meter with a single campaign whose price and rules are published before you pay anything.

Affordable campaigns like no other platform, with premium coverage because curators listen first.

• One flat campaign price, four published tiers. Campaigns cost 45, 60, 80 or 100 USC (1 USC = £1) and run for a full 45 days. You choose the tier that fits the release, and that is the budget — not a per-submission count that grows as you go.
• Verified curators listen first. Every curator is verified, and verified curators listen first — the whole track — before any offer is made. The listening step is the published rule, not a hope.
• You approve every offer. Credits move only when you have seen a curator's offer and accepted it. Nothing is charged without your yes, and no submission quietly consumes your balance in the background.
• Automatic refunds on unanswered offers. An offer nobody answers is automatically refunded after 12 days. No ticket, no chasing, no archaeology through a submission history.
• Credits never expire. If this release is not the one, the balance waits for the next one.
• Verified Coverage, priced openly. Verified Coverage runs from 5 to 900 USC, published in the open — the opposite of a price you only discover after the free first step.
• Curators paid on a published schedule. Payouts run every Friday (minimum payout 100 USC, or 50 USC for Pro), and Curator Pro is £19/mo · £190/yr. Published payout rules are why curators here have a reason to listen properly and respond.

Where we honestly lose to Letssubmit: it lets you start for free, and we do not. UpcomingSounds has no free tier, we are smaller and newer, and we publish no scale numbers. If your next step must cost nothing, take Letssubmit's free first submission with our blessing. If you are past the free first step and want the rest of the journey priced, ruled and refunded in writing before you pay — that is the room we built.

Try the alternative: Start a campaign from 45 USC

Letssubmit vs UpcomingSounds

• Price / minimum — Letssubmit: First submission free (sourced, DropTrack list); pricing after that · UpcomingSounds: Campaigns 45–100 USC (1 USC = £1), flat tiers 45 / 60 / 80 / 100
• What you get — Letssubmit: Direct submissions to professional curation, per submission · UpcomingSounds: Campaign to verified curators + Verified Coverage (5–900 USC)
• Refund rule — Letssubmit: Not published in the sources we reviewed · UpcomingSounds: Unanswered offers auto-refunded after 12 days; you approve every offer before credits move
• Who listens / verifies — Letssubmit: Professional curators; listen and verification rules · UpcomingSounds: Verified curators only, listening first (whole track)
• Do credits expire? — Letssubmit: Not published in the sources we reviewed · UpcomingSounds: Never expire
• Campaign length — Letssubmit: Per submission; no sourced campaign window · UpcomingSounds: 45 days

Not just promotion

Submission services, even good ones, tend to treat each track as a fresh transaction — and small services come and go, taking their submission histories with them. An artist's presence should not reset every time a form is sent or a service changes hands. On UpcomingSounds, the submissions sit inside something that persists: a lasting artist page, track pages in the platform's music catalog at /music that remain in place between releases, findable when the catalog opens publicly, and a coverage record on the artist's profile that accumulates instead of evaporating. The dashboard keeps campaigns, offers and coverage together, so a second release starts from the presence the first one built — not from an empty form. One submission is an event. A profile, a catalog and a record are a career asset, and they should belong to the artist, not to the lifespan of any single submission service.

Frequently asked questions

Is Letssubmit really free? The first submission is free — that is the sourced fact, listed on DropTrack's free-curators list. After that first submission, the model is per-submission, and its pricing is: our research found no verified public price list. UpcomingSounds is not free at any stage; campaigns are 45, 60, 80 or 100 USC.

How much does Letssubmit cost after the free submission? That is. No verified public pricing for paid Letssubmit submissions could be sourced for this guide, and we will not guess a competitor's prices. What can be compared is the shape: per-submission charging versus one flat UpcomingSounds campaign of 45–100 USC for 45 days.

What is the best Letssubmit alternative? If you have not used the free first submission yet, the sensible next step may be Letssubmit itself — it costs nothing. If you have used it and want a full release campaign with published prices, verified curators who listen first, offers you approve before credits move, and automatic refunds, UpcomingSounds is the alternative built for that.

Does Letssubmit guarantee a curator listens to my track? No sourced rule on listening could be verified for this guide, so that is. On UpcomingSounds the rule is published: verified curators listen first, the whole track, before any offer is made.

What happens if a Letssubmit submission goes unanswered? No sourced refund or non-response rule could be verified, so that is. On UpcomingSounds, an unanswered offer is automatically refunded after 12 days, and you approve every offer before credits move, so silence never spends your balance.

Can I run a whole release, not just one submission? On UpcomingSounds, yes — one flat campaign runs 45 days, and Verified Coverage is priced openly from 5 to 900 USC alongside it. Letssubmit's sourced model is direct per-submission curation; a campaign product is.

Other alternatives worth knowing

Letssubmit and UpcomingSounds are not the whole field. Every other competitor an artist comparing honestly should know:

• SubmitHub — the largest submission marketplace in our research: per-submission credits, fast responses, and feedback you pay for whether it is a yes or a no. Head-to-head: SubmitHub alternative.
• Groover — per-professional pricing, strong in Europe, reaching labels and media as well as playlists. Head-to-head: Groover alternative.
• Playlist Push — playlists only, at a $280 minimum campaign. Head-to-head: Playlist Push alternative.
• DailyPlaylists — a large playlist-submission marketplace with a free tier. Head-to-head: DailyPlaylists alternative.
• GreaseRelease — a free form pitching about 5 named curators. Head-to-head: GreaseRelease alternative.
• SoundCampaign — managed playlist pitching. Head-to-head: SoundCampaign alternative.

Every one of them is dealt with, in the same terms, in the hub: All music promotion services compared

Read the other head-to-heads: All music promotion services compared · SubmitHub alternative · Groover alternative · Playlist Push alternative

Sources, dating and corrections

Competitor prices, limits and rules on this page were checked in November 2026 against the competitor's own published pages or the third-party sources named in the text. Prices and terms change — check the competitor's own site before you buy. This page is published by UpcomingSounds, a competitor: the judgements on it (including any "best fit" wording) are our opinion; the factual claims are the sourced ones. If we have a price, rule or model fact wrong or out of date, send the source link through this site's contact route and we will correct the page and update its checked date.