The Music Xray Blog
technology enhanced identification of high potential songs & talent
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New Initiative: We will pay you to listen to music!

Posted by Mike McCready | November 17th, 2010 | No responses

 

Music Xray needs focus group members who love music and who are willing to share their opinions & feedback.
If you are already signed up as an artist at Music Xray, just log into your account and click the “Focus Groups” tab on your dashboard.
If you are not an artist (or a music industry professional) but love music and want to be a part of focus groups, just sign up by clicking the link in the upper left corner of Music Xray and then once you are logged in, select to create a an account “as a fan” and fill out the question form.
Within a few weeks you’ll start getting focus group alerts with instructions for how to listen and get paid.

 

Music Xray is sponsoring the 6th Annual Florida Entertainment Summit. Click to find out more

Posted by Mike McCready | November 9th, 2010 | No responses

Invite other artists and songwriters to try Music Xray and earn some cash!

Have you ever wondered why you have an accounting display on your artist dashboard (see left)?

It’s so we can pay you. But first you have to click that other button that says, “Invite Artists”.

We pay you for every transaction someone you invite participates in.

If you love Music Xray and want to make some cash, please tell everyone.

Introducing Stealth Opportunities

Posted by Mike McCready | November 2nd, 2010 | No responses

As you can imagine, when industry professionals make it publicly known they are seeking songs for an attractive opportunity they expose themselves to being emailed, called and contacted directly by hundreds of rights holders (you know who you are… and so do we – and that’s a “no no”). It is one of the reasons many industry professionals do not accept unsolicited material.

For some of our industry users, this has become unsustainable. To insure Music Xray continues to have the best opportunities for you, we’re introducing stealth opportunities.

What is a stealth opportunity?

Stealth opportunities are not listed on the site nor in our emails and we block search engines from indexing them. The only way to find them is by having your songs matched to them through our S2O service.

1.

You upload your songs for free from the home page of Music Xray.
2.

You will receive an email for each of your songs letting you know which professionals are seeking songs like yours.
3.

Some of those opportunities may be stealth opportunities – which otherwise are not listed on the site and are only available to those whose songs have “matched”.

This method helps the professionals remain under the radar yet still able to accept songs that are close to what they are seeking.

There’s never been a better reason to make full use of Music Xray’s FREE ground-breaking automatic song to opportunity matching system.

For those who have already uploaded or imported their music, you will receive S2O digests and alerts which will also include stealth opportunities. There is no need to upload your music again.

Tip of the Week: Understand the Music Xray equation and never wonder if the industry is seeking music like yours

Posted by Mike McCready | October 24th, 2010 | No responses

Upload or import your music for free. We tell you each week who is seeking music like yours and show you where you can submit it. That’s free too! As a result, you will always know who is seeking music like yours. Look at how simple it is:

Music artist paid opportunities for success

Tip of the Week: Download for free the new artist & songwriter guide to Music Xray.

Posted by Mike McCready | October 19th, 2010 | No responses

Just click here to download the pdf of the fourth quarter 2010 edition of the artist & songwriter guide to Music Xray.

Always make sure you have the latest edition.

Music Xray Will Seek a New CEO

Posted by Mike McCready | October 14th, 2010 | 1 Response

I have already initiated the search process to replace myself as CEO of Music Xray. It’s time. I’m not going anywhere. I will remain as chairman and will continue in a key executive roll after the hand-off.

We’ve obtained much of the funding we need to get the job done and while I’m confident we can do it with our current team, I believe Music Xray could use the skills of a seasoned entrepreneur/executive in this space who has previously taken a company from our current stage through a successful exit. There are a few in my network to whom I’m reaching out and we’re also meeting new people. There’s no rush but sooner is better than later given all we have to do in 2011.

We launched our new site out of beta on January 20, 2010 at MIDEM and since then Music Xray has grown very quickly. As an example, our opportunity emails were reaching about 12,000 artists in January. Today, just ten months later, that number approaches 200,000. Traffic and revenue have been growing too and we’ve gone from a team of three to a team of 12 people – soon to be more.

Over the same period, we’ve gone from hosting a few dozen opportunities to hosting thousands. Top music industry professionals at major and independent labels use Music Xray to source songs and talent and so do music supervisors, celebrity artists, advertising agencies, music bloggers, journalists, producers and more. Just about anyone who conducts A&R as part of their business is finding that Music Xray’s enhanced A&R tools help them get the job done faster and more efficiently. It also helps them lower costs while reducing risk when it comes time to invest in the music and talent they find.

Any interested candidates should contact me directly mike(at)mikemccready(dot)com.

 

Tip of the Week: Music Xray is hiring…

Posted by Mike McCready | October 12th, 2010 | No responses

OK, our newsletter might not be the most optimal place to tell you we’re hiring a couple developers but you never know from where the next superstar will emerge.

We’re seeking experienced Ruby on Rails developers. You can be based anywhere but if things go well for the fist few months we’d like you to be willing to re-locate to the Boston or New York area.

Here’s what we’re seeking:

understand object-oriented design and development 
4+ years programming experience 
2+ years RoR 
strong CSS, XHTML, AJAX, JSON and Javascript skills 
understand and deploy Agile development practices 
familiarity and experience with Amazon’s web services 
must be local to the Boston area 
self starter, excellent communication skills, team player, detail and results oriented, etc. 
Bonus skills:

objective-c 
prior startup experience

Interested parties should contact jeff (at) musicxray (dot) com

Import Your Music from MySpace, Reverb Nation, Sonic Bids and Many More

Posted by Mike McCready | September 24th, 2010 | 1 Response

Tip of the Week: Music Xray Can Now Import Your Music From the Sites Listed Below For Free & We’ll Match Your Songs to Opportunities – Also for Free!

Import Music Logos

We thought you’d appreciate it if we made it dead simple to get all your music into Music Xray without the hassle of uploading. Once your music is in our database it will be automatically matched to opportunities – now and whenever in the future a match is detected. Here are the steps:

  1. Log in or open a free account here.
  2. Click the button on the dashboard that says, “Import Music”
  3. Enter your profile URLs from as many sites where you host your music for online streaming.
  4. We do the rest and you will receive email alerts every time any of your songs are matched to opportunities with our new song to opportunity matching system which you can read about here.

Tip of the Week: Do You Have What It Takes? Find Out For Free!

Posted by Mike McCready | September 14th, 2010 | No responses

Music Xray is dedicated to helping musicians advance their careers. We’ve already created the fastest and most affordable way to reach top industry professionals and to be guaranteed consideration and feedback. To think that under a year ago artists still had to send their music into the void…

As much as we harp on the truth that due to the changes in the music business over the past decade,if you don’t invest in your career no one else will – we also know that sometimes the stars align and things just happen.

This week we want to put special emphasis on the fact that there are a growing number of 100% free submission opportunities on our site. These are offered by professionals who want to give back or who are eager to provide you with real and honest feedback – sometimes in exchange only for the opportunity to tell you about other services they offer. We believe there’s no harm in that as long as you’re getting real value up front.

We want Music Xray to be the first place you go with your music.
Here’s what you can do for free on Music Xray:

Upload your music and get an immediate email letting you know if anyone is currently seeking music like yours.

Create awesome EPKs and Song Presentation Packs (called Music Xrays).

Submit your music to free opportunities & get qualified feedback.

Be sure to join our Facebook page to network and share experiences.

Be sure to join our LinkedIn group for a more business focussed discussion of opportunities for songs, artists and other careers in music.

Tip of the Week: Ask Questions When You Submit Your Music

Posted by Mike McCready | September 9th, 2010 | No responses

This week we’re rolling out some new features that enable seamless, threaded conversations between artists and industry professionals.

Because it is now easier for industry professionals to respond and create open dialogs with artists, you can provoke this by asking specific questions with each submission.

Give it a shot and see how it goes. Keep in mind that not all professionals guarantee feedback and may not engage in conversations even when asked specific questions. Nevertheless, by making it easier and by creating an environment that makes interactions rewarding we expect to see more relationships develop.

Be sure to join our Facebook page to network and share experiences.

Be sure to join our LinkedIn group for a more business focussed discussion of opportunities for songs, artists and other careers in music.