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Tip of the week – Don’t be a jaded artist – Music Xray is here to help

Posted by Mike McCready | March 30th, 2010 | No responses

Tip of the week – Don’t be a jaded artist – Music Xray is here to help

We get asked a lot how Music Xray is different from all the other services out there. We know what it’s like to be jaded. We started Music Xray to solve problems for artists. So, when we get asked how we’re different this is what we say:

Music Xray does not charge any membership fees.

We do not pre-screen – you submit directly to the people listed on the site. Music Xray does not take any cut of deals you do with industry professionals.

We go out to people in the industry who typically take song submissions and we ask them what problems we can help them solve that will make it worthwhile to give priority to submissions they receive via Music Xray. We give them an easy to use platform that makes receiving, managing, listening and providing feedback much easier than dealing with a stack of CDs or an inbox full of MP3’s. We also enable them to charge a submission fee. Sometimes they feel that’s necessary in order to keep submissions down to a manageable level. Sometimes it helps compensate them for their time and attention.

As our name suggests, We enable industry professionals to see inside your music. That’s why it’s important you fill out and display as many of the modules in your song presentation pack as possible.

Another difference is that we run a completely transparent platform – also as our name suggests. If you get bad service from a professional on our site or if they are unprofessional with you, you can go to their profile page on our site and rate them and leave comments for everyone to see.

Music Xray exists to reduce the time and money it would take most artists to connect directly with the people we make available at the click of the mouse and for a fraction of the cost. Our commitment to artists is on our site and reads:

In building Music Xray our intention has been, and it always will be, to solve marketplace problems for artists.
No dream vultures. We will not permit users of our Interaction Engine to peddle false hopes to artists.
We are incorporating numerous mechanisms to ensure transparency and to encourage artist feedback.
We believe we are democratizing the ability to reach the people that can either teach you something, and/or potentially help you gain access to mass-exposure opportunities.

If you find otherwise, contact us and we will fix the problem.

But don’t take our word for it. Join out Facebook group and ask other users about their experiences with Music Xray. There are >3,000 artists there. We’re nothing if not transparent. We’re not perfect and there are a lot of features we have yet to roll out but we’re working tirelessly to improve and to take all feedback into consideration to make a really great service.

Don’t forget to join our LinkedIn group for a more business focused angle on all things music.

What Does the Facebook Like Button Mean to a Music Artist

Posted by Mike McCready | March 26th, 2010 | No responses

Once you established yourself with a Twitter following, a Facebook Fan page base, are ton of friends on MySpace(yeah I know allot of you do not like

MySpace) and all of the other social networks you probably thought, ok, now I can take a break. Thanks to the team at Facebook the answer is probably

no. Now they came up with something called the Like Button. Yes, Like, as in I like this. It is a rather simple concept and fairly simple to implement.

Here is some information released by the Wall Street Journal:

“The idea is that other Web sites will drive traffic back to Facebook.com, and in turn receive traffic from Facebook. Other sites can also offer personalized

modules, telling individual users what their Facebook friends have done on the site, such as review a restaurant.”

“The new “Like” buttons transmit data about user activity back to Facebook. If they like a band, for example, a link to the band could appear in their

interests. Since advertisers can already target ads to users’ interests, the new buttons could give advertisers more data to target ads to, but Facebook

said it isn’t currently launching any new ad-targeting products in conjunction with the service.”

“For years, he said, the Silicon Valley company has focused on tying together people on the Web, mapping out who knows whom. Now, Facebook wants to

map out connections between people and their interests, gathering more explicit information about users’ favorites in order to deliver them a more

personalized experience on Facebook and on other sites. He called it “the most transformative thing we have ever done for the Web.””

So what does all of this mean to you as a music artist? Do you need to jump on the bandwagon? Well this is your call since in some people’s opinions this

is too early to tell what impact it will have on the music artist. It could be great for the artist since friends of friends will see that they like the same band,

song or singer. They will also be able to see what their friends like and check out the new artists as they are liked by others. It might also be used in the

case where if another band is targeting your fans their band could come up as page suggestion. Is this the new crowdsourcing for the music industry?

Again, it is too early to tell.

Since we are not a single band site, although we have tens of thousands of songs on our site, we decided to go for it. We have already implemented the

like button on all of our music submission opportunities for new music artists and we have also added this on the music artists’ song presentation package

along with implementing it into their comments section. You can take a look here for MIPs and here for music artists. One nice thing is in the comments box you can automatically link your

comments to your Facebook page. Be sure to scroll down to take a look. Now that is a pretty cool feature. You can take a look at some of the ways in

which we have implemented the button to get some ideas on how to make use of it on your website.

Whatever your choice is keep in mind that Facebook is outpacing everyone else so you should pay attention to what they are doing. Understanding how

this new feature will impact your band will be similar in some cases but yet there might be some slight differences depending on the music artist or band.

One of the best things to do is read up and see how others are making use of this feature

Tip of the week – More of what you should know about Music Xray

Posted by Mike McCready | March 23rd, 2010 | No responses

In the age of social media it’s not what you say about yourself. It’s what others say about you. While we’re far from perfect and still have a lot of features to roll out, we wanted to share some of the great things we’ve read recently:

“Music Xray is just an absolutely awesome concept, and I’ve used it extensively, and with good results! You can’t say that about many of the similar type of services/sites that’s for sure. Good on ya! =) I’ve spent a lot of money for ZERO in other situations, and I won’t name names here, but suffice it to say that my experience with Music Xray has nothing to compete with. You have blown them all out of the water and made room for the true artists and the people that want to find them. Again I thank you guys for all your very hard work and abilities at connecting. That’s truly the key, connecting.” – Paul Grenier an artist via our Facebook fan page. Hear his music here.

…

“[Music Xray is] purely professional, the way a real business platform should be run and it’s a service that actually works.

Instead of turning up your nose with a preconception that this is just another “big” idea with no results as with other “fly by night” internet companies, think again. In fact, Music Xray is one of the best business concepts for today’s musicians seeking help from today’s music industry.” – Posted by Michael J, an industry professional who uses Music Xray to source music for his “The Great Unknowns Presents” podcast which has over 50,000 subscribers.

…

Music Xray does not pre-screen. You get to submit and interact directly with the people listed on the site.

The following is our commitment to artists:

In building Music Xray our intention has been, and it always will be, to solve marketplace problems for artists.
No dream vultures. We will not permit professionals on our site to peddle false hopes.
We have incorporated numerous mechanisms to ensure transparency and to encourage artist feedback.
We believe we are democratizing the ability to reach the people that can either teach you something, and/or help you gain access to mass-exposure opportunities.
If you find otherwise, contact us and we will fix the problem.

Don’t forget to join our LinkedIn group for a more business focused angle on all things music.

Tip of the Week – What you should know about Music Xray

Posted by Mike McCready | March 16th, 2010 | No responses

Music Xray hosts the largest pool of opportunities for recorded music on the web.

Music Xray does not pre-screen. You get to submit and interact directly with the people listed on the site.

The following is our commitment to artists:

In building Music Xray our intention has been, and it always will be, to solve marketplace problems for artists.
No dream vultures. We will not professionals on our site to peddle false hopes.
We have incorporated numerous mechanisms to ensure transparency and to encourage artist feedback.
We believe we are democratizing the ability to reach the people that can either teach you something, and/or help you gain access to mass-exposure opportunities.
If you find otherwise, contact us and we will fix the problem.

Don’t forget to join our LinkedIn group for a more business focused angle on all things music.

Tip of the week – Join our LinkedIn Group for a more business focused angle on music industry networking

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

Music Xray is where music and business meet. On our LinkedIn group we’ll post opportunities but we’ll also discuss how to best interact with the industry professionals you meet on Music Xray. Click here to see the group.

Tip of the Week – Fill out your Music Xray Song Presentation Pack to put your best foot forward

Posted by Mike McCready | March 3rd, 2010 | No responses

You can either create a free song presentation pack first and then browse opportunities and submit it to those you like or you can browse opportunities and then upload an MP3 of your music during the submission process. If you choose the latter, be on the lookout for an email from us immediately after you submit. The email will tell you how to log in and make your song look better than ever while providing the industry professionals with all the information they need to make decisions about you and your work.

Music Xray helps you create sleek presentation packages so you put your best foot forward while providing valuable information about you song. These presentation packages are FREE. They are also embeddable into other sites. They have their own url so it’s easy to direct fans and friends right to your song.

We enable you to display your song’s number of Twitter mentions, number of blog mentions, number of peer to peer traders and much more.

Industry professionals can also see your lyrics, read your bio, view any pre-set license terms, watch your’ videos and we enable you to conduct song surveys to easily find out what friends and fans think of your music.

The result is that by submitting your song to industry pros through Music Xray you give your music a degree of professionalism you just can’t get anywhere else at any cost. And with Music Xray it’s free!