Music Promotion Criteria

Thank you again for taking the time to submit your music to us, we truly appreciate you and what the Lord is doing in your life. We are often asked "what sort of criteria do y'all use to determine what to promote and what not to promote?" It made sense to us to create this article to talk through that a little bit so that you the artist know where we stand on things. 

First things first, the music we promote must be Christ-centered, we refuse to budge here. This does not mean that every song has to follow some specific pattern but rather it should be clear that your music is for and about Jesus. It could range from a clear testimonial of all God has done and been doing in your life to a song straight out of the Bible. The key here is that it is clear that you are a believer and seek to honor God with your music.  We do have a Statement of Faith as well as our Core Values, you can review them here to see what we believe. 

The secondary issues are not nearly as important as the first one but they are important none the less. As believers we should strive for excellence in all we do as we seek to represent Jesus. At Tentmaker we take professionalism very seriously so how you introduce yourself to us matters. 

Simply put, we are looking for music that is well written, sounds good (doesn't have to be the best sound in the world but it should be more than just a recording on your phone), the lyrics are God honoring and it is clear to us that you take yourself serious as an artist. If we are going to promote you on our site it is a reflection on us as an entity and so we really do seek to take the time to find the best in up and coming Christian music. We have several people that listen to submissions before a final decision is made and so please know that if we decide not to promote your music it is because we didn't think it fit the criteria we have laid out. 

The reality is that most of the criteria we have is subjective, the only one that is primarily objective is whether it is clear or not that this person is a Christian artist. With that, it is hard to really breakdown what we think a good verses bad song is, this is why we have several people listen to a song and we determine if we think it is good enough to hold it's own on our site. If we don't promote your music it doesn't mean you are a bad musician or that we have rejected you as a person, it simply means it's not what we are looking for. If you feel that we got it wrong or wanted to talk through why we didn't accept your submission for promotion we are always open to chat (just be sure to include a link to the song/album in question for reference). We want to see artists grow in their walk with Jesus and in their music and so we are happy to have this conversation. 

Thank you for taking a minute to look this over, if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask them. 

In Christ, 

The Tentmaker Music Team