This month we want to tell you how to create one or more artist accounts under your industry professional account.

Why would you want one?

Well, it will enable you to manage your own catalog of music which you may be trying to place into license and sync deals, and you can also market test your music with a new set of features we developed called Diagnostics. There are already a few major labels using Diagnostics and they are finding that the results correlate closely to focus group and market testing they’re doing that costs them thousands of dollars – whereas with Diagnostics it only costs $10 per song and I’m going to show you a way to get it for free.

Another reason you may want to have one or more artist accounts is if you run a label with multiple artists or you manage multiple artists and you want to control their Music Xray accounts for them. Those artists would also be able to log into those accounts independently if you gave them the credentials. They would not have to log into your industry professional account to get to their own account.

Before we go any further, let me tell you about Diagnostics. Remember, this is the service that you can use to market test your own music. You’ll see how it appeals to other industry professionals and to a test pool of fans. Diagnostics is especially insightful when you get Diagnostics for two or more songs – like when you’re trying to decide which is your strongest single. You’ll be able to see which song acquires fans most easily.

(Link to diagnostics explained in email)

Also, with an artist account, you can submit music to other industry professionals. That music will be flagged to other professionals as having been submitted from a fellow professional. You won’t have to follow up, hound them, etc and you know it will be heard and that you will receive a response. Additionally, you can run fan targeting campaigns and thereby help your artists get started building a real fan base of real people. People you can contact and add to newsletters and other fan management programs.

To open an artist account, simply go to account and then to artist accounts. That opens a new page where you can click the green button to open an artist account and follow the instructions from there. Once you have one or more artist account created, you’ll see you’ll be able to toggle back and forth between your accounts in the upper left corner of the site.

Lastly, I mentioned you can get the services basically for free. Here’s how. You go back to artist accounts and simply transfer balance you’ve earned as an industry professional to the artist account where you want to spend that money. The artist account now has a balance it can use to buy Diagnostics, submissions, fan targeting campaigns etc.

If for nothing else but to see what the artist experience of Music Xray is, you should have an artist account.

Lastly… DO NOT FORGET about collective ratings. This is Music Xray’s killer feature for industry professionals.

Once you’ve attended to your submissions for the day, click “collective ratings”.

Once you’re there, adjust the filters as you please. I suggest setting them to see all the songs that have been heard and rated by at least 5 other industry professionals… in the past month (or day), and that are consistently getting an average of 4 out of 5 stars on all the criteria.

Then go over to the left and start listening. This is how you go in each day and scrape the cream off the top. It is replete with gems!!

Find something you like and want to contact the artist to do a deal? Just click “view EPK”. Then click the button to start a conversation with the artist.

Once your done, all communication with that artist can be found back on your dashboard in these folders called “new message” and Open conversations”.

When you’re done with each conversation, be sure to close each one. Otherwise it will be hard to keep track of them.