Demo Submission

Before contacting us about demos, please read through this page. We sincerely appreciate everyone who considers our label, but ask that you understand how our label works as well as our demo policies.

Why Work With Us?

Our Approach to Releases

Our main goal is sharing amazing music. We hope to do this using artist-friendly terms and rates. Each contract will be for an individual song or group of songs, with no further obligations to the label, and artists will retain all master rights.

While most music we release tends to be instrumental ambient, we are open to many different musical ideas and genres from diverse perspectives.

We are looking for a balance between musical integrity and commercial viability, and consider various factors when deciding to work with different artists, depending on the context.

Imaginary North strives to ensure that most revenue goes to the artists, and as a result is currently offering two revenue structures:

Structure A: (for compilation appearances plus select artist albums)

65-35 revenue split in the artist’s favour. Label services will include:

Uploading to Bandcamp and streaming services
Providing album/single/compilation art and graphic design
Support with playlist pitching on Spotify/Amazon
Inclusion on Imaginary North playlists
Promotion of compilation albums, or individual artist’s work to blogs, websites, playlists
Mastering
General support and appreciation of everything you’re doing

Bandcamp payouts will be provided twice per year at a minimum threshold of $10USD. Streaming revenues can be withdrawn monthly when signed up through distributor.

Artists will retain ownership of masters as well as all necessary copyrights.

Structure B: (for artist albums or EPs)

75-25 revenue split in the artist’s favour*. Label services will include:

Uploading to Bandcamp and streaming services
Support with playlist pitching
Inclusion on Imaginary North playlists
Promotion of compilation albums, or individual artist’s work to blogs, websites, playlists
General support and appreciation of everything you’re doing
Artist will need to provide mastered tracks
Artist will need to provide album art

Bandcamp payouts will be provided twice per year at a minimum threshold of $10USD. Streaming revenues can be withdrawn monthly when signed up through distributor.

Artists will retain ownership of masters as well as all necessary copyrights.

Submitting Albums or EPs

What We Look For

Are you intending to share your album or EP for consideration for Imaginary North? Please consider the following things:

[New!] Going forward, we will greatly prefer albums over EPs; we have found that they generally have more potential to gain traction, do better on Bandcamp, and feel generally more significant. We will still consider EPs, but our preference will be for full albums
we focus on ambient music and adjacent genres. Please listen to the releases we've done so far to consider whether your music fits along with what we've shared
we are not interested in neoclassical or any music that is too piano-dominant
we've started to see a notable increase in the amount of demos being shared with us - while flattering, it can also be overwhelming. Consider pointing to tracks on your album that we should start with; think about as well why Imaginary North would be a good fit
Our plan is to release between 6-15 individual artist albums in a year, usually planning between 6 months and a year in advance. If that timeline doesn't fit, we may not be ideal partners
We are absolutely biased towards artists from the Toronto area but do listen to music from anywhere in the world
We will absolutely prioritize listening to albums by artists who have already worked with us in different contexts, especially our compilations

We do our best to listen or consider every demo sent to us; that being said, when the genre of submission is way off (e.g., metal, trance, solo piano), we may choose not to listen at all. Where possible, we do our best to write back, but cannot guarantee a response.

Submitting to Compilations

What We Look For

Imaginary North accepts unreleased tracks by artists from anywhere in the world regardless of current popularity or experience. We are thrilled to consider your music if it fits within the parameters of the compilations we release, most of which focus on ambient.

We welcome demos for tracks to be submitted to a number of collections, including our flagship compilation Imaginary North Transmissions. See below for details about each compilation. If you would like to submit a track to a compilation, please see the bottom of the page.

We would prefer unmastered tracks in most cases - if you're unsure, you are welcome to submit both mastered and unmastered tracks.

A reminder that we can only accept songs that have not yet been released in any context. A remixed/reworked version of a previously released song is fine as long as that song has not been released on another label; that being said, new songs are preferred.

Compilations will be of different lengths depending on the complexity and contributions.

Upcoming Compilations Accepting Submissions:

Imaginary North Transmission 009 (releasing October 2024)

Imaginary North Transmission 010 (releasing early 2025)

Ready to Submit?

If You've Made It This Far...

Imaginary North accepts submissions only by email to imaginarynorth@gmail.com

In your email, please ensure you have:

your artist name
your social links
where your current music can be heard
if possible, tells us about the music - we love hearing the story of the inspiration or your creation

When sharing unreleased music, please share using a streamable/downloadable site like SoundCloud, Google Drive, or Dropbox. Please do not use WeTransfer or any site requiring us to log in to access files.

We index all incoming music and do our best to respond, though we cannot always do so.