You upload your original music here.
We analyze the acoustic properties and mathematical patterns in your music.
We send you an email telling you if any industry professionals are currently seeking a song like yours. (What? How does that work?)
For as long as your songs remain in our database (forever unless you remove it) we will alert you any time any professional is seeking songs with characteristics similar to your songs.
Put as many songs in the database as you’d like. It’s free.
Subscribe to the new Song Cat A&R Podcast to hear great Music Xray songs and discussion about the music business.

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

Upload any song for free by clicking here.

feedback welcome

Subscribe to the new Song Cat A&R Podcast to hear great Music Xray songs and discussion about the music business.

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

Music Xray is an A&R platform that helps people who professionally receive songs manage and make sense of them easier than ever before.

By creating a state-of-the-art, efficient and organized A&R Platform that the music industry can use for free, we enable many of the industry’s top companies and talent buyers to make themselves directly available to artists, songwriters, song owners and performers via song drop boxes. Even companies that previously did not accept unsolicited material have found that Music Xray enables them to open their doors. The platform is also a facilitator of communication and conversations between artists and industry professionals that makes the interactions rewarding for both parties.

Additionally, Music Xray has made it easier for top producers, coaches and even artists themselves to offer song critiquing and career coaching services, (sometimes for free), making Music Xray the easiest and fastest way to get advice, education and insights about music and the music business.

Subscribe to the new Song Cat A&R Podcast to hear great Music Xray songs and discussion about the music business.

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

We’ve all heard the old stories about the artist who submitted their song to someone in the music business and never heard back. Then, at some point in

the future they heard their song on the radio as a smash hit recorded by someone else and the whole thing ended up in a contentious lawsuit or simply

never got resolved. These days, some artists believe that when they put their songs “out there” they run the risk of it spreading virally and millions of

people will end up listening to the song but the artist never will never see a dime.

As in every industry, the music industry has its share of unscrupulous people so I’ll never go as far as to say that this won’t ever happen again but in my

opinion, the potential rewards of getting your songs heard far outweigh the risks. Here are four points that illustrate why:

• There are now over a million songs being created and digitally distributed EACH YEAR. There is no lack of great music and smash hits out there and an

  industry professional would rather do legitimate business with a willing artist than to steal a song. There’s just too much hassle involved in stealing a song

  and in today’s digital age. It’s pretty easy for an artist to prove a song is theirs.

• If you don’t get your song in front of the right people you have no shot. There are plenty of artists out there who understand that hiding their music is

  only going to lead to never getting a deal. In other words, competition is robust and if you don’t get your songs in front of the right people there are

  plenty of other artists who will.

• Right or wrong, most music business professionals believe that there is no song or artist that can’t be replaced. That is to say, no matter how good you

  are or no matter how good your song is it really doesn’t make sense for a music business professional to try to “steal” it from you. Why get embroiled in

  contention with an artist and damage your own reputation in the business when it’s so easy to find artists with great songs willing to do deals?

• Mass exposure gives you a better chance of achieving fame or reaching a deal than obscurity does. That is to say, if you are lucky enough to put a song

  out there and to have it take off virally you will do really well. The currency of the digital age is attention. If you get people’s attention you have a better

  chance of converting it into income than if you languish in obscurity. Unless you are a writer of hit songs with a proven track record, a network of

  contacts waiting for your next creation and top artists beating down your door for your songs you need to do whatever you can to establish yourself.

  Having one of your songs go viral will help you establish that.

There is one last issue you should understand. Most music professionals and companies will not accept music submissions if the music they receive is not publicly visible and streamable somewhere. There are a lot of complex legal issues surrounding this but explained briefly; industry professionals and their companies do not want to be put in the position of perhaps being the only people to have ever heard your music. If they were and someone were to copy your music, they could be liable. Industry professionals would prefer to never hear your music than to be put in that position. Therefore, one of the requirements of submitting music via Music Xray is that the music is streamable from the site. This is explained clearly in our terms of service. If you’re not comfortable with it, please don’t use Music Xray.

But again, there are lots of other reasons (see above) why making your music available is in your best interest.

Check out this article on The Huffington Post:

It covers some of the new opportunities and paths to success now open to artists in the emerging new music business landscape.

“… after years of drought, we may now be moving into the best time to be a musical act in decades, if not ever. A time when there is less incentive than ever before for any business person to prey upon the aspirations and naivety of artists and a time when artists can hire their own business teams and be off to the races.

“I am certain that we will see some very creative ways in which artists will become famous. There will be more paths to success than we’ve ever seen. I don’t claim to foresee them all but here’s one replicable way I think it can be done.”

Subscribe to the new Song Cat A&R Podcast to hear great Music Xray songs and discussion about the music business.

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

1. Get feedback on your songs from qualified industry professionals.

2. Submit your songs for roster consideration, song placements and much more.

3. Use your song presentation packs to promote your songs across the web while putting their best foot forward.

Subscribe to the new Song Cat A&R Podcast to hear great Music Xray songs and discussion about the music business.

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

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

Use the TuneCore module to sell your songs right from your Music Xray Song Presentation Pack.

See an example here: http://present.musicxray.com/xrays/1659/public

Once you’ve decided that getting some expert feedback on your song is a good idea you then need to decide who is the right person to ask and how to access them.

As a rule of thumb, you should try to seek out the services of someone who has been successful in the market with similar music to your own. I would suggest going with a songwriter or a producer. My next choice would be an accomplished A&R person. These are the three kinds of people who have been successful because they write, record or find the best songs. So, they certainly know one when they hear one or are in the business of polishing good songs to make them great.

I find that crowd sourcing (playing the music for a focus group of music fans) and asking your non-songwriting friends and family is not the best idea. Fans tend to hear good production and can imagine hearing your song on the radio but they aren’t objective when it comes to whether or not the song is compelling. Friends and family are invested (at least emotionally) in you and they cannot be objective.

Furthermore, keep in mind that songs catch fire in the market by a lot of people hearing the song in situations when they aren’t actively listening (while shopping, driving, during ads, in the background at restaurants etc). You can’t easily re-create those situations but professionals who have been successful time and time again really know what a hit song is all about. Of course, my company is in the business of enabling artists to interact directly with music industry professionals so I’d be remiss not to point you here for some of the best in the business.