Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Invite the musicians you know before someone else does!

 

Musicians should have at least one person on their team responsible for turning their efforts into a business.

 

It’s not just about securing deals and fans. It’s about making sure those actions create an ongoing revenue stream.

 

Being creative, writing music, recording, & playing gigs requires a lot of time and effort. To really boost your career, find a good manager (start here), a good coach (start here), or a good producer who can help you begin to see yourself as a business.

 

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We have something pretty exciting to tell you. It’s kind of a big deal and possibly not everyone will “get it” at first because it’s just a small change to how Music Xray already works. But this really changes everything for so many musicians, songwriters and song owners.

As you know, Music Xray has some clever technology-driven A&R tools – more than anyone else – but the magic ingredient is the collective filtering power of the hundreds of industry professionals who use Music Xray every day to discover new songs and talent.

In a matter of days, Music Xray is going to start telling you how industry professionals are rating your music. It’s going to work like this: if any one of your songs has been submitted to professionals and rated by them at least five times, we’re going to email you to tell you the song’s average ratings.

Look at it like this. After your first few submissions, you will know how your song is being received by the professionals you’re submitting to. Even if your song has not been selected by a professional for an opportunity, it doesn’t mean they haven’t loved your music. So now, you will know.

That means, if your ratings are high – you should continue to submit. It’s probably just a matter of time. Plus, industry professionals can also see high rated songs on the site even if those songs have not been directly submitted to them. In other words, if your song is well considered by industry professionals who have received and heard your song, we’re making it visible to many industry professionals who have not heard it.

If your initial ratings are low, you will know that perhaps continued investment in the track is not warranted. Instead, you may want to consider submitting it to one of hundreds of professionals who are on the site for the sole purpose of giving you honest professional song critiques and career coaching – eventually helping you to make adjustments to your music or your submission strategy so you can go back and get deals.

Music Xray becomes a reliable predictor of commercial success and the primary tool to help musicians achieve that success!

It isn’t news that the past decade has brought tumultuous change to the music industry. Advances have primarily impacted the way music is accessed, distributed and paid for. But, few companies in our sector have harnessed technology to its full extent to optimize their business processes.

While most music companies have incorporated data mining and social trending statistics into their discovery processes, the fundamental way the industry sources new songs and talent has remained unchanged. Isn’t it time we re-think how we conduct A&R?

 

We think of A&R as the process by which we find and help create great musical products. In reality, A&R’s primary business function is to reduce risk by identifying or creating highly compelling product and managing promotion efforts to reduce the likelihood of failure in the marketplace. So, in terms of risk reduction, traditional A&R was only adequate when the business climate afforded companies the luxury of having occasional successes compensate for far more frequent flops. In today’s new music business, narrower margins, smaller budgets and fragmented audiences require a more efficient approach than primary reliance on golden ears and talented gut instincts. Additional and supplemental tools are needed to create success more often than failure, or at the very least, improve success rates to a more manageable level.

Music Xray provides a series of tools to industry professionals to help them identify high potential songs and acts. Each tool works a bit differently and highlights different types of success potential. Today, we thought we’d tell you about one of them…

Collective A&R Statistics

You may not know that every time an industry professional receives one of your songs, they rate it. They give it a score for its composition, arrangement, production, performance and hit potential.

Songs that are submitted a number of times to various professionals on the site begin accumulating multiple ratings, all from professionals who make their living with their ears.

Each day, professionals can log into their account and view the collective ratings. They can view songs that have received high ratings across the board from multiple professionals. They can also choose to view songs that have been rated highly on composition but that maybe did not score well on production or performance. The songwriting might be excellent and while the rough demo recording might not turn any heads at radio it could easily get the attention of the manager of a celebrity act. Alternatively, “hit potential” may not be important to a music supervisor seeking a quality Jazz song. So, that supervisor can adjust his or her search to highlight songs that are consistently getting good ratings on other criteria but that may have scored low as a potential hit song.

This tool enables Music Xray to display your music to professionals to whom you never even submitted a song. Some Music Xray artists have been contacted by industry professionals they never would have thought would have an interest in their music. The key to making this tool work for you is to submit your best songs to more professionals so that it can accumulate ratings.

We currently do not reflect the ratings back to you, the musicians however, we are working on a way to do this in the near future.

At Music Xray, we are committed to creating the best environment for musicians and industry professionals to interact in ways that are rewarding for both parties and to generating the greatest number of potential paths to success for each song.

As a bit of an anecdote, these are today’s highest trending songs at industry A&R (with consistently high ratings across all measured criteria). In other words, these are a few of the songs getting the most attention on the platform right at this red hot moment:

Currently trending at Industry A&R

See You Tonight by Kotadama

 

First Move by The Branded

 

Impossible by Diamante

 

Oh No by Derrty Zo

 

Call Me Crazy by Gliffics

 

When You Come Home by Lynx ft Mystery Lady

 

With over 3500 songs and acts selected for opportunities in the past 6 months, there are a lot of big ones to talk about including major label signings, major motion picture placements and even a few we’ve been told we can’t mention. But today we want to send a special congratulations to Justin Honaman.

Atlanta-based Honaman submitted his song “Saturday In The South” to Alex Torrez of Torrez Music Group in Nashville. Alex invited him to Music City to work on some rewrites and last year the song was used by CBS Sports as a lead in to SEC football games.

 

 

 

This year, the song has been re-recorded by mega-star Tracy Lawrence and picked up by FOX Sports. Here’s an excerpt from the official press release:

“Thirteen million football fans will soon hear a new theme from multi-platinum recording artist Tracy Lawrence as FOX Sports South and SportSouth launch their biggest college football kickoff campaign in the networks’ history, showcasing the song “Saturday In The South.”

Lawrence’s “Saturday In The South” debuts Thursday, September 1, and will be the music centerpiece for the FOX Sports and SportSouth college football campaigns. The networks will broadcast over 70 games from the SEC, ACC, Conference USA, Big 12 and Pac-12 and the weekly college football shows SEC Gridiron LIVE and The NEW College Football Show during the season.”

 

See the FOX Sports promo video by clicking here.

Be sure to check out some of the other success stories here.

Are you new to Music Xray? Click here to get the musician’s guide to Music Xray or click here to see a video explanation.

 

 



When professionals don’t respond to their submissions (rare but it happens), Music Xray issues a refund and suspends the account of the industry professional.

We don’t like to do it and first, we do what we can to insure your music is heard. But, inactive professional accounts are not permitted on Music Xray.

And do we ever give the music professionals a second chance? Yes, but we are even more strict with them the second time around to ensure that your music is heard since that is our guarantee to you.

Did you read that headline? Do a double-take. It’s for real!

Accounts are free.

Actually, we give you $4 just for opening one.

Plus, we enable you to conduct a free focus group on one of your songs with up to 25 participants.

Plus, all the other great stuff on Music Xray, like getting directly in touch with the music industry decision-makers, getting deals and YOU KEEP ALL YOUR RIGHTS.

Yeah, it’s pretty awesome!

Get an email each week with new opportunities by signing up for free here.

Be sure to check out some of the success stories here, like the one from Solardaze, who has signed his third contract via Music Xray.

Are you new to Music Xray? Click here to get the musician’s guide to Music Xray or click here to see a video explanation.