Music Xray's Blog

New Music Xray Policy Regarding The Hosting Of Industry Professional Profiles & Opportunities

Posted by Mike McCready | November 2nd, 2015 | No responses

Music Xray is a clean, transparent platform where our primary mission is to create the filtering mechanisms designed to identify commercially viable, high potential songs and talent for the industry.

Our mission is not to maximize the amount of money generated from artists who pay to submit music. In fact, our system is designed to create as much of a competition among industry professionals for the top songs and talent as there is a competition among musicians to land the best deals. It’s en efficient system that operates transparently and reputably, backed by legitimate music tech investors. And we’ve been able to achieve the adoption of so much of the industry based on this dedication to running a clean site.

Recently, there have been a slew of website cropping up with questionable reputations whose mission appears to be to maximize submission fee revenue from musicians without providing transparency for the artists, or any objective measures of an artist’s chances of getting a deal. Additionally, these sites pitch themselves to industry professionals as a way to make extra cash. And while Music Xray shares submission fees with the industry professionals who host the opportunities, our primary purpose is to help those professionals find the best music. If, as a professional, your goal on Music Xray is to make extra cash, you probably shouldn’t be on Music Xray.

The poor reputation of these other sites effects Music Xray and it makes the name brand companies reticent to have their brands listed on our site.

So effective immediately, we will be removing the profiles of industry professionals who also have profiles on certain other sites. It’s just too damaging to our reputation. We will of course offer a grace period to these professionals and we will contact them privately to notify them of this policy. But no further payouts will be made to those professionals for as long as their profile remains on the other sites – unless of course they provide evidence that their profile is on the offending sites against their will.

Additionally, there are legacy sites in this space, that have been around for years, but again those primary mission does not align with the transparent, efficient filtering system Music Xray is building. One of our challenges in the market has been to show musicians that Music Xray is different, and that our interests are aligned with the professionals and the musicians alike. There truly has not been anything like Music Xray.

We have invested much time, energy, money, and focus on insuring that Music Xray is not confused with these legacy sites and while we would not remove an industry professional from Music Xray for having their profiles on some of these other sites that we know to be legitimate, having those profiles there still creates confusion in the market, causing Music Xray to need to spend more resources to differentiate ourselves in the eyes of the musician community.

So also effective immediately, we will reduce by 30% the compensation offered to industry professionals on Music Xray who choose to not remain exclusive.

It’s important that I make the point that this is not an attempt by us to limit industry professionals in any way. It is simply the policy that makes most sense for our company to both preserve the top brands and most reputable players in the business who are genuinely interested in finding top songs and talent. Those are really the only type of professionals for whom Music Xray is meant.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us if we can clarify this policy for you or if you’d like to discuss any aspect I may not have covered here.

As always, Music Xray is committed to being the very best at what we do and to maintaining the highest levels of trust and transparency in the ecosystem.

What Does A Record Producer Do?

Posted by Mike McCready | October 19th, 2015 | No responses

What does a record producer do?

Stuart Epps tells us.

According to Wikipedia, Stuart Epps is a British record producer and audio engineer.

Since 1967, he has worked with many artists, including: Elton John, Led Zeppelin, Oasis, Twisted Sister, Bill Wyman, Kiki Dee, George Harrison, Robbie Williams, Mark Owen, Paul Weller, Cliff Richard, Bad Company, Barry White and Chris Rea.

He has contributed to many records and has been associated with many popular hard rock records by such bands as Twisted Sister, Wishbone Ash, Bad Company, Vandenberg, The Firm, Jagged Edge UK and Shooting Star.

Besides his work with Led Zeppelin, Epps has been involved in other projects with their guitarist Jimmy Page as well as on many occasions with Rolling Stone member Bill Wyman.

He now dedicates his time to producing Independent artists and nurturing new talent.

How MIPs Compete For The Top Songs & Talent On Music Xray

Posted by Mike McCready | October 8th, 2015 | No responses

It’s understood that musicians compete on Music Xray for industry opportunities, but it’s not quite as intuitive to understand how industry professionals on Music Xray compete for the top songs and talent.

While all industry professionals can use Music Xray’s advanced search tools to find songs and talent for their opportunities, the only way to guarantee they will hear and consider a particular song is to submit it directly to them. That is also the industry’s preferred method of discovering music – they want it to come right to their ears via their Music Xray inbox.

As a result, Music Xray gets a lot of requests from industry professionals to feature their opportunities more prominently on the site, or to feature the opportunity in one of our email blasts, or to promote it via our social media channels. So, I thought it was a good time to explain how we decide which opportunities get the most visibility on Music Xray and the decision making process around it.

When determining which opportunities to feature, we consider four things:

1. Attractiveness of the opportunity. Opportunities with higher dollar payouts get more visibility than opportunities with lower payouts.

2. Proximity to the decision maker. We give higher visibility to opportunities where the industry professional who lists the opportunity is the decision maker, works on the decision maker’s team directly, or has some involvement in the final decision. If the industry professional will be pitching the selected songs and acts to someone else for consideration, the opportunity will get less visibility.

3. Past success with Music Xray artists. Industry professionals who can point to past success stories with Music Xray musicians will receive higher visibility for their opportunity listings on Music Xray.

4. Submission fee price. All else being equal, we give more visibility to opportunities with lower submission fees.

Here’s why.

Let’s say there are two nearly identical sync license opportunities listed on Music Xray. Let’s say both are looking for romantic love songs. Let’s say both are for big movies. Let’s say both have a $50,000 payout and let’s say both of the listing professionals are the final decision makers in the process. But opportunity A has a submission fee of $10 while opportunity B has a submission fee of $20.

Why is it better for Music Xray to give more visibility to opportunity A?

Keep in mind that Music Xray’s job is to be a filter for the industry. We help the industry find the needles in the haystack. But, we can only find the needles in the portion of the haystack we can access. With a $20 submission fee, fewer musicians will put their music into our system, meaning we might miss some great music. Or, perhaps the musician only had $20 to spend on Music Xray that week. From a filtering perspective, we would rather they be able to take two shots for that amount rather than one – and we’d prefer to have two songs come onto the platform rather than one.

Another way to look at it is that the industry professional with the $10 submission fee is essentially telling Music Xray that they are willing to do more screening at a lower cost than the professional with the $20 fee. All else being equal, both the musician and Music Xray are getting more value from the professional with the lower fee.

By creating an eco-system where competition on both sides is key, we’re able to keep costs low and efficiency high.

Music Xray’s Twenty Submission Rule Of Thumb

Posted by Mike McCready | September 6th, 2015 | 2 Responses

As a user, you of course can decide how many industry submissions to make and to whom. However, keep the following in mind:

If you have great music, don’t give up too soon!

Music Xray’s Selection Prediction Indicates a song’s likelihood of being selected for by the industry an opportunity on Music Xray. It is based on the assumption that a song will be submitted to at least 20 opportunities.
Even the best music gets rejected multiple times before sync deals are landed.

You know that, and if you don’t, check out the rejection letters at the bottom of this post.

While Music Xray can optimize your chances of having a song selected or landing a deal for your band, Music Xray doesn’t necessarily change the nature of the music business. More often than not, music is rejected. The music that gets selected was also initially rejected. It’s true in nearly every case. It is simply unreasonable to expect your song or band to land the deal you’re seeking without giving that song a reasonable chance.

Many musicians, with music that is deserving of a deal get frustrated too early. One or two labels and a couple of supervisors turn them down and they give up. And while we would love to provide you with a prediction score based on only 5 to 6 submissions – the fact is only a small amount of music gets selected after so few industry professionals hearing it. In order to provide any predictive accuracy, our system assumes the song will be shown to at least 20 professionals. To understand more about how we come up with the predictions, click here.

Twenty submisions may seem like a lot, but it’s important to put it into perspective. Never before in the history of the music business could anyone get their music in front of 20 real opportunities for anywhere close to the cost on Music Xray – both in terms of time and money. Even the methods that to you may feel free (like networking on Facebook & LinkedIn to find the opportunities) is very costly those methods don’t get all the other added benefits of Music Xray. Click here for some more perspective on that. Click here to understand some of the full benefits of Music Xray.

Click here to understand the traditional costs of getting your music heard.

Music Xray is a music industry filter, and by helping the industry identify the needles in the haystack we’re providing the best service possible to emerging artists, songwriters, producers, and musicians in general. Because we focus on being the best filter, Music Xray has many many MANY times the industry engagement of all the other sites that claim to do for musicians what Music Xray does.

So use negative feedback, ratings and Selection Prediction scores to make adjustments to your music and your submissions strategy. But if the reaction is positive, don’t give up too soon.

A rejection letter sent to Madonna

A rejection letter sent to Paul Hewson (aka Bono of U2).

NEW FEATURE ANNOUNCEMENT: Hookblast

Posted by Mike McCready | July 23rd, 2015 | 10 Responses

We’re very excited to announce the launch of our latest feature, hookblast.

Hookblast enables artists to bracket the hook (up to 45 seconds) in their songs to make it really easy for industry professionals to go straight to it. We believe this will mean more industry engagement due to a more satisfying listening experience for them. We think it will also increase the number of deals done via the site and the number of songs / acts selected for opportunities overall.

Check out the informal announcement below.

The Music Xray Infographic – Finding The Needles In The Haystack

Posted by Mike McCready | July 12th, 2015 | No responses

The Key To Understanding Music Xray is Understanding “Diagnostics”

Posted by Mike McCready | June 27th, 2015 | 27 Responses

Music Xray’s primary job is to find the needles in the haystack. A needle is any song or act deserving of being selected for any opportunity throughout the industry. Diagnostics insures we gather the information to enable us to do our best.

What is Diagnostics? Diagnostics is a one-time per song purchase that costs $10 and must be purchased for each song that is submitted directly to any opportunity or any industry professional on the site. Once Diagnostics has been purchased for a song it becomes “Diagnostics Exempt” and may be submitted to an unlimited number of opportunities without ever being required to purchase Diagnostics again.

Diagnostics serves two purposes:

1. It tells you where your music stands compared to other music that may be competing for similar opportunities. It generates recommended next steps based on the industry and fan reaction. And perhaps most importantly, it shows you the likelihood your music will be selected for an opportunity via the site, assuming you employ a best-practices submission strategy.

2. It tells the industry where your music stands and how to find it. Because Diagnostics enables us to gather enough information about your music to make it easily searchable for industry professionals in our industry-only search & discovery engine called Needlestack. This increases the chances your music has of being discovered by industry professionals who conduct searches for music with specific characteristics, such as high production quality, interesting hooks, mood, topic, etc.

We cover both purposes in detail below.

Purpose 1: To tell you where your music stands…

See the key for each item below the graphic:

A. The number of professionals who have heard and rated this song (at least 5 professionals rate the song upon your first submission – serious professionals from among our over 1500 professional users currently seeking songs and talent, so if the song blows one of them away, a deal or relationship may ensue and often does).

B. The average of the ratings received from industry professionals.

C. Where the song stands among all other songs that have been rated on Music Xray (hundreds of thousands).

D. The percentage of potential fans who after hearing the song for the first time became a direct fan (which provides that fan’s email address and Facebook profile link to the musician). As part of your first transaction with us, we send the song to a pool of 20 potential fans we’ve identified based on the fan’s music taste. We have a pool of tens of thousands of fans (and growing fast) who have signed up on Music Xray to discover new bands and songs.

E. Typically, we target potential fans from that pool for you (when there’s a match between the song and the fan’s taste profile) for $0.33 per fan. If 100% of those fans convert to direct fans of yours, the cost per acquired fan would be $0.33, but at a 35% conversion rate, that cost is $0.92 per acquired fan. A 35% conversion rate is not bad at all! The cost reflected here is what real contactable fans will likely cost you if you were to continue targeting fans on Music Xray. It’s up to you to decide what is acceptable to pay per acquired fan, based on your ability to monetize their fan base.

F. Based on the information in A. B. C. D. & E., we tell you the likelihood your song will be selected for an opportunity on the site. To reach this result, Music Xray uses machine learning algorithms and statistical probability calculations. It also requires the artist to employ a “best practices submission strategy”. To learn what that is and how we calculate the results, click here.

G. Based on the information in A. B. C. D. & E., we provide recommended next steps for submissions to opportunities and the industry professionals behind them. If the results are not encouraging, we recommend not to submit the song to further opportunities and sometimes we recommend you get song help improving the song. We make many top industry professionals on the site available to offer song critiques and career coaching.

H. Based on the information in A. B. C. D. & E., we provide recommended next steps for fan acquisition. If the data is not encouraging, we often recommend not continuing using the song to acquire fans.

I. This is the song activity chart that tells you what is happening with your song on the site at any time. Did you acquire a new fan? Was your song heard by an industry professional? Was your song displayed in a search result etc.

Purpose 2: To make your music searchable for the industry…

Music Xray offers industry professionals access to a sophisticated search engine called Needlestack Music Search.

Every day professionals use this search engine to find the best new music on the site. They usually do this by first seeking certain characteristics such as mood or a certain lyric phrase, or bpm – which are things you enter as meta data for your song. But then they filter for quality, so they look for songs that at least a few industry professionals have heard and that obtain good ratings on things like composition, productions, and hit potential. Each professional can decide which attributes are important and adjust the filters accordingly to find they songs that match their criteria.

Most professionals set the filters in Needlestack to display only the songs that have been heard by at least 5 industry professionals.

In other words, if your song hasn’t been heard by at least 5 professionals, it is unlikely to be found. That’s why Diagnostics obtains 5 industry ratings immediately for your song, upon your first transaction on the site. And this is showing results. About half the deals between artists and the industry on Music Xray occur due to Needlestack music search.

Below is an image of Needlestack. Notice the search criteria settings. This particular search is showing:

All the energetic pop songs sung by females with a BPM range between 10 and 300 that in the past month have been heard by at least 5 industry professionals and that have received average ratings of at least 4 out of 5 stars on all criteria (composition, production, arrangement, performance, and hit potential.

Show me all the energetic pop songs sung by females with a BPM range between 10 and 300 that have been heard by at least 5 industry professionals in the past week and that get an average rating of 4 out of 5 stars on all criteria.

Selection Prediction On Music Xray

Posted by Mike McCready | June 26th, 2015 | 3 Responses

See the video announcement!

We’ve come up with predictive data model that is over 90% accurate. That is to say, if we tell you your song is 84% likely to be selected for an opportunity on Music Xray, we say that with over 92% confidence.

Explained briefly, the Selection Prediction calculation presumes a song will be submitted to at least 20 opportunities on Music Xray and that the submissions will be done intelligently and realistically. That means, our calculations presume, for example, that rock songs will not be submitted to opportunities seeking EDM, female singers won’t be submitted to opportunities seeking male vocalists, etc. It also presumes submissions will go to a variety of opportunity types.

Keep in mind that labels sign only a few bands per year, whereas music supervisors license many songs per month. Submitters shouldn’t make only “long shot” submissions but rather take aim at a variety of opportunity types.

Selection predictions are based on a number of calculations and high scores are not a guarantee of a track to be selected. Low scores do not mean a track will not be selected. In fact, we’ve seen tracks selected for opportunities that according to our data would have only had a 10% chance. Selection Prediction scores are meant to help you decide which of your songs should get more of your time & effort when it comes to pursuing opportunities.

Variables that shift and that depend on the submitter include a ‘best practices’ submission strategy and continuously shifting market variables such as the number of available opportunities that are appropriate for the track.

We re-calculate every few weeks so that the probability of a song being selected reflects the current state of the variables mentioned above.

Continue reading for more information…

Music Xray observes every touch-point between many of the industry’s top
professionals and the songs and acts they react to every day. We’ve been doing it for over 5 years and in that time we’ve accumulated a lot of data.

We’ve observed things such as:

The average number of songs each professional tends to hear before selecting one for their opportunities.
The minimum ratings on criteria such a composition, production, arrangement, performance, and hit potential that selected songs have received.
The correlation between the ratings songs are given by professionals and the likelihood a song will be selected for an opportunity at all.
The average number of “intelligent” submissions required for songs receiving specific ratings to be selected for an opportunity.

How we compute the percentage

We’ve plugged our data into Amazon’s Machine Learning platform and we’ve been able to make some very interesting and accurate predictions about a song’s potential performance on Music Xray.

By observing:

Your songs ratings
Your songs genre
Music Industry Professional acceptance and rejection rates

We’ve come up with predictive data model that is over 90% accurate. That is to say, if we tell you your song is 84% likely to be selected for an opportunity on Music Xray, we say that with over 90% confidence.

Best Practices Submission Strategy:

Of course, it all depends on the submitter employing a “best practices” submission strategy. Submitters who do this will outcompete those who do not and thereby increase their song’s chances of garnering a selection.

A best practices submission strategy can largely be accomplished by applying common sense:

Don’t submit your song to opportunities seeking songs in different genres from your song.
Always fill out the meta-data for your songs including lyrics, artist bio, an image, etc…
Don’t take unrealistic shots. For example, don’t submit to a major label unless you’re confident you have what it takes to get on their roster – they don’t sign many acts and the ones they do tend to have significant traction.

The best way to make sure you follow a best practices strategy is to buy and read this book, published by former Columbia Records executive and hit song writer, Norman Dolph.

It’s short and to the point and it will save you a lot of time, money, and
frustration. It will help you out-compete those who choose not to read it.

Why might the likelihood change over time?

Music Xray is a dynamic site. These are some of the things that could change the likelihood your song may be selected:

New songs entering the site with especially strong ratings or especially weak ratings change the competitive landscape, making it easier or harder for your song to be selected.
An increase or decrease in the number of professionals seeking songs like yours. Fewer opportunities will increase the competition for the opportunities.
The selection rates of professionals with the opportunities (sync license opportunities tend to select many more songs/acts than record labels, which may only sign a few acts per year.

Interview With Music Xray CEO Mike McCready On The Jimmy Lloyd Songwriter Showcase

Posted by Mike McCready | May 2nd, 2015 | 3 Responses

Jimmy Lloyd asks Mike McCready the tough questions.

Episode 31 – Segment 3 – Jimmy Lloyd interviews Mike McCready – The Jimmy Lloyd Songwriter Showcase from www.jimmylloyd.com on Vimeo.

Mike’s response to your valuable feedback

Posted by Mike McCready | March 9th, 2015 | 36 Responses

Earlier this month, I reached out to musicians who had joined Music Xray but who had never used the site. I asked them if at the time they signed-up we had been able to show them a video like this, would that have been more compelling.

The feedback and response was fantastic and some users expressed their reasons they hadn’t yet tried Music Xray. There were a few common themes so I thought I’d address those. I’m sure there are others out there who have these same concerns but haven’t told us.

I hope this helps shed light on what we’re trying to do.