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technology enhanced identification of high potential songs & talent
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Access to Capital: Introducing the First Music Investment Fund on Music Xray

Posted by Mike McCready | May 9th, 2011 | 2 Responses

 

Investors, such as Deer In Headlights Music Group, are taking notice that Music Xray’s 21st century A&R tools reduce risk and increase probability of high returns when it comes to making investments in music.

A new fund will be making small ($30k to $50k) investments over the coming months in bands & acts sourced and de-risked via Music Xray.

To be elegible for these funds, industry professionals must have sourced their project on Music Xray, present data (such as results from Music Xray’s stats page, Music Xray focus group results and other information) to support the potential of a viable business opportunity that will begin to generate returns within 6 months.

If you are an industry professional with an open dropbox on Music Xray
, have sourced your project via Music Xray and are interested in seeking funding for your project(s), please email us at musicinvestments@musicxray.com. Include a link to the act you are working with on Music Xray and a brief outline of the project. We will reply to further the conversation.

If you are not using Music Xray to conduct at least part of your A&R activities you are missing out on free use of the most advanced A&R tools ever assembled and now, access to capital.
Some facts and data about Music Xray:

First the facts:
  • Music Xray is the music industry’s only dedicated A&R platform.
  • It’s free for industry professionals to use.
  • The company is venture backed.
  • It harnesses the latest technology to the benefit of those who seek new songs & talent.
  • It enables the industry to open the doors of opportunity to artists everywhere while eliminating much of the hassle of separating the wheat from the chaff.
  • It’s transparent and fair – making the A&R process more about how good an artist is and less about whom they know (or who they can reach on their own or of whom they can request a favor). In other words, Music Xray is professional.
  • It guarantees artists get heard by those they submit to within a reasonable amount of time (unheard of in this business).

Now the data:
  • More than 1250 songs have been selected for real industry opportunities on Music Xray in the past 90 days alone!
  • These deals include placement in major Hollywood movie soundtracks, major TV network theme songs, major and cable network series placement, reality show auditions and placement, label deals, radio station playlist adds, magazine features, blog features, publishing deals, management deals, production deals and sample deals.
  • Over 1200 industry professionals now use Music Xray to conduct at least some of their A&R activities. Among these professionals are top Hollywood music supervisors, major & indie label A&Rs, radio stations, influential music bloggers…
  • The industry’s ONLY song to opportunity matching system (S2O) has created an effective way of delivering a high percentage of relevant music to the professionals’ in-box without restricting outliers and creative innovation from reaching their ears.
  • Music Xray’s back-end statistics (Collective A&R) has itself produced deals between artists and industry professionals by highlighting high-potential songs that have been well-rated by multiple industry professionals yet remained unsigned.

 

Music Xray is Re-defining the A&R Process. Here are The Facts and The Data:

Posted by Mike McCready | April 14th, 2011 | No responses

 

First the facts:

• Music Xray is the music industry’s only dedicated A&R platform.

• It’s free for industry professionals to use.

• The company is venture backed.

• It harnesses the latest technology to the benefit of those who seek new songs & talent.

• It enables the industry to open the doors of opportunity to artists everywhere while eliminating much of the hassle of separating the wheat from the chaff.

• It’s transparent and fair – making the A&R process more about how good an artist is and less about whom they know (or who they can reach on their own or of whom they can request a favor). In other words, Music Xray is professional.

· It guarantees artists get heard by those they submit to within a reasonable amount of time (unheard of in this business).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now the data:

• More than 850 songs have been selected for real industry opportunities in the past 60 days alone!

These deals include placement in major Hollywood movie soundtracks, major TV network theme songs, major and cable network series placement, reality show auditions and placement, radio station playlist adds, label deals, magazine features, blog features, publishing deals, management deals, production deals and sample deals.

• Over 1200 industry professionals now use Music Xray to conduct at least some of their A&R activities. Among these professionals are top Hollywood music supervisors, major & indie label A&Rs, radio stations, influential music bloggers…

• The industry’s ONLY song to opportunity matching system (S2O) has created an effective way of delivering a high percentage of relevant music to the professionals’ in-box without restricting outliers and creative innovation from reaching their ears.

• Music Xray’s back-end statistics (Collective A&R) has itself produced deals between artists and industry professionals by highlighting high-potential songs that have been well-rated by multiple industry professionals yet remained unsigned. Here are a few examples:

 

Dear Diary – Mary Sarah (rated consistently high by 47 professionals)

Stop Messin With My Mind – written by Marissa DiBlassio (rated consistently high by 14 professionals)

• Tastes Like Sugar – The Strike Nineteens (rated consistently high by 11 professionals)

See You Tonight – Kotadama (rated consistently high by 16 professionals)

One in a Million – Amanda Blush (rated consistently high by 7 professionals)

 

Music Xray is featuring a submission and a free focus group when you open an account (which is also free, by the way).

Posted by Mike McCready | March 22nd, 2011 | No responses

When you open an account on Music Xray, you are automatically given a free credit (plus a free focus group worth $25 for your music).  Your credit makes any one of these submission opportunities completely free! Be sure to scroll all the way through. There are three pages of them.

We’ve developed a good service that brings top industry professionals to the table and enables them to open the doors of opportunity to independent musicians everywhere. While far from perfect, Music Xray is getting great feedback from artists and industry professionals alike and we’re continuously improving.

 

Check us out. It’s on us!

Music Xray at South by Southwest!

Posted by Mike McCready | March 18th, 2011 | No responses

 

Although our booth wasn’t blurry in real life, we were at South by Southwest (SxSW) this week introducing Music Xray to thousands of musicians and people from the interactive and music industries.
Music Xray at SxSw

We were even interviewed by a camera crew from a program that originates in Wales (UK) and we talked about Music Xray’s business model.

To see that video click here.

 

The Truth About Submission Fees on Music Xray and The Charities They Help Support

Posted by Mike McCready | March 17th, 2011 | No responses

As a former struggling musician who saved up every time I had to buy guitar strings, I get that the term “starving artist” didn’t coin itself. So, that begs the question; why would I start a business that requires artists to pay for yet one more thing?

The truth is, we tried making the service completely free and figured we’d find one way or another to keep the lights on like so many web based businesses. But early on, we realized it wasn’t working. The industry professionals were overwhelmed, couldn’t keep up with their submissions and stopped logging in. Without the professionals on the site taking submissions all we had was another artist-facing website that couldn’t fulfill its promises.

I’d rather eat poo than be the operator of one of those sites!

We soon figured out that charging a small fee ($4) tended to keep the riff raff out. Those who were unwilling to invest a little bit of change in getting their music heard by industry decision-makers also seemed to be the ones jamming up the system for everyone else. Suddenly, the industry professionals were engaged again. Yes, they were getting fewer submissions but the quality of the submissions was higher. We then enabled the industry professionals to increase or decrease the fee as needed to regulate the inflow of submissions. If they were receiving too many songs, they could increase the fee to slow things down.

The fees are usually pretty reasonable. Not unlike the amount you’d spend sending a CD and presentation kit through the mail in the old days (and never hearing back or even knowing that it arrived). On Music Xray, in exchange for your coin you are guaranteed that the professional listens and provides feedback. Even in the case of rejection you are told why.

Our job here at Music Xray is to keep the industry professionals engaged and interested so that the doors of opportunity remain open and the business is more about how good you are and less about who you know. Charities

The fees collected on Music Xray keep our lights on and perhaps enable some of the professionals to afford an extra drink or two (and who wouldn’t buy someone a drink in exchange for some professional attention to their music?). None of the professionals sees Music Xray submission fees as a primary source of income. It’s extra pocket change at best and many of them funnel the money to various charities we have on the site like Save The Children Fund, Musicares, Songs of Love and others. I bet you didn’t know that.

This isn’t new. We’ve been enabling industry professionals to divert their money to charity for over a year. Honestly, not all of them send their money to charities. In fact, a lot don’t but we’re seeing increasing numbers of them do it. At some point we may display a badge on the profile pages of those that send their fees to charity. For now, we just quietly suggest it as an option and it seems to be working.

I just thought this was all worth explaining.

Don’t be Out-competed in the New Music Industry!

Posted by Mike McCready | March 8th, 2011 | 4 Responses

Art to playIt’s this simple.

If you think you should not have to expend resources getting your music heard by the gatekeepers of opportunity you will simply be out-competed by artists who understand the way the music business has changed over the past few years.
We’re providing a way forward.

Musicians can no longer expect to create a great product and to then be discovered by happenstance (not to say that was a very good system in the past either). They especially cannot expect industry professionals to give their time away for free to listen to and evaluate their music when there are so many unsigned artists out there requesting their time and attention.

Read more & comment See how to reach top industry pros for free

How to Use your Music Xray Affiliate Code to Make Money!

Posted by Mike McCready | March 7th, 2011 | 32 Responses

If you have an account of any type on Music Xray, you have an affiliate code. Log in, go to your account settings and you will see your affiliate code on the right side of the page.

If you add your affiliate code to the end of any Music Xray URL, anyone who clicks on it will be tracked as having reached Music Xray through you. Even if they leave the site without signing up and then come back a month later, they will still be tagged as someone you referred. You get paid 15% of our margin for every transaction the person you referred conducts on Music Xray – FOREVER. Not just the first transaction but rather every transaction for as long as they have an account on the site.

Your earnings are reflected in your account balance which you’ll see on your dashboard when logged in.

If you don’t want to bother customizing an email and tacking your affiliate ID on the end of URLs, you can just click one of the buttons within your account to invite artists, fans or industry professionals and an email is automatically sent to them with your affiliate ID already included. BUT, if you want to do it, it works like this (see below for ideas on how to most effectively use affiliate ID’s):

Grab any URL from the site that you think someone might be interested in. For example, let’s say you know someone who might have a perfect song for Trace Adkins. At the time of this writing, Torrez Music Group is conducting a search for such a song and the drop box is found at this URL: http://www.musicxray.com/profiles/626. HOWEVER, if you want to get credit for sending someone to that URL, you should tack your affiliate code onto the end of it and instead send them a URL that looks like this:

http://www.musicxray.com/profiles/626?afid=55f8e620e868012c5dc81231390a1e12

Be sure to use your own affiliate code and not mine or I’ll get the credit instead of you. Also, notice that between the end of the URL and your affiliate code you have to put “?afid=”. That’s just telling our system that the numbers that follow are the affiliate code and not something else. You can see how that’s explained on your settings page and in the image above.

Also, note that you do not have to send people long ugly URLs. You can simply embed that long URL into a link like in the following example:

…..

Hey Bill, I saw that Trace Adkins is seeking music and I thought you might want to send him one of your songs. Click here.

…..

You will notice that the link I embedded in the words “click here” includes my affiliate code.

Here are some other ideas for how you can make this work for you.

Send your contacts to the special offer page

If you’d just like to get people started on Music Xray you can simply send them to the special offer page located here: http://www.musicxray.com/new-artist-account (just be sure to tack your affiliate code on the end of that URL and you’re good to go. You’ll notice that we have a no-brainer deal for anyone considering starting with Music Xray. All new accounts get:

  1. Free Uploading and/or importing of all their original music.
  2. Free matching of their songs to real industry opportunities.
  3. A free focus group on their music (we will pay up to 25 respondents for feedback on their music).
  4. A free $8 credit to get them started (enough for two submissions to major labels).
  5. Guaranteed feedback on every submission.
  6. Guaranteed response time or their money back.

Start your own newsletter

Feel free to start your own weekly (monthly, daily, whatever) music opportunity newsletter and send it to musicians you know, post to your MySpace or Facebook accounts and whatnot.

Post opportunities on your blog, band site, Facebook, tweet them or post them in the comments section of sites you visit (when relevant)

If you have a site with decent traffic and you’d like us to curate a special rss feed of opportunities with your affiliate link already embedded, we can do so. Just contact us at support@musicxray.com and we’ll get you started.

Have Music Xray send a fancy schmancy email to your contacts

If you have more than 500 contacts you’d like to tell about Music Xray, we can create a special and very professional email for you with a selection of some of the most attractive opportunities together with a special offer for those just creating new accounts now. That email might look something like this (but it would have your affiliate code embedded into all the links).

Get started using your affiliate codes now!



REMINDER: Redeem your free focus group by March 15th!

Posted by Mike McCready | March 2nd, 2011 | 6 Responses

free focus groupMusic Xray has given everyone the ability to conduct a free focus group on your music. We pay 25 randomly selected music fans to listen to your song and provide some feedback.

You must redeem this free focus group before March 15th when the offer expires.

Focus groups are a quick way to get feedback from a real audience, to learn which target audience is most receptive to your music and to double check your instincts regarding a song’s potential and it’s appeal.

 

Music Xray is giving everyone a free focus group. Make sure you get it started before March 15th as we plan to discontinue to offer.

 

 

Advance Opportunities on our Facebook Page

Posted by Mike McCready | March 2nd, 2011 | No responses

Be sure to follow Music Xray on Facebook where occasionally we post advance notice for opportunities or time-limited submission opportunities due to short time-frames that A&R executives and music supervisors face.

You can also interact with other Music Xray users to exchange information and experiences to help you use Music Xray to its full potential.

Visit our Facebook page click the “Like” button once you’re there..

Remember: Participate in Focus Groups and Invite Fans!

Posted by Mike McCready | February 25th, 2011 | No responses

Music Xray is building a database of music fans. When you invite fans, we pay you more for the focus groups in which you participate. We pay you even more again when those you invite actually sign-up with a fan account.

Just log in to your artist account and click the button that invites fans. Enter the email address (or import the addresses) of those you’d like to invite and click the button.

The more fans we collectively bring to the site, the richer the experience will be for everyone!

 

Log in to invite fans