Want to get a preliminary glimpse of Diagnostics? Here’s the scoop:

Sometimes people want to how Music Xray is different from other companies. Here’s the scoop:

Sometimes Facebook does not have enough information about your music tastes for us to be able to know which music we should send you. When that happens, fans can enter their taste information manually (and change it as often as they please).

To do so, please follow the information in this short instructional video:

We’re going to be rolling out some new features and we’d like to tell you about them.

Our new Music Xray Diagnostics will help you track your progress toward success and if a song is likely to have a tough time getting a deal we’ll let you know right up front because no one wants to just spin their wheels and not get anywhere.

In short, we want to insure no one spends more time, effort, and money pursuing deals than is absolutely necessary. At the same time, we wouldn’t want anyone to give up right before they’re likely to see success. Diagnostics is like a GPS for your music because it tells you where the song stands, how many submissions it’s likely to take before a deal is secured, and how powerful a song is in helping you attract fans.

Which is your best song? Now you can know. Which one is most compelling to potential fans upon their first listen? Now you can know. How does your song stack up against others? Now you can know.

Starting in a few weeks, this is what you’ll see. Read below for an explanation…

You will see where the song stands.

We’ll show you how your song is perceived by the industry and how its rating compare to all the other songs on the site.

Next, we’ll show you the average number of times songs that were rated similar submitted before being selected for an opportunity. From now on, you’ll know what the path to getting a deal for your song looks like.

We also show you the song’s fan appeal and whether it’s good, fair, or not so good. You’ll know exactly what new fans are costing you to acquire using this song – and of course you’ll always know how many potential fans we’ve pre-identified for you.

Then, we show you an activity chart which is updated daily. Each day you will know if your song is dormant, pacing or if it is advancing your career, based around the attention and activity it is receiving on the site, and you’ll always know what you can do to improve the results for this song.

We’ll be back soon with all the details about how this will work and how to access this information in your account.

In the meantime, if you like what we’re doing here at Music Xray, please like this post on Facebook, tweet about it and leave us any feedback (positive or otherwise) below. Here are some current opportunities on the site.

Whew… that’s a long headline but it does say what this is.

We’re working with SoundCloud this week to draw attention to the Music Xray App in the SoundCloud App gallery.

Activating the app places you in a pool from which 10 musicians will be chosen for private audition slots for NBC’s The Voice. Upon activation, your SoundCloud track library is analyzed with acoustic analysis software and automatically matched to real industry opportunities. Then, we put you in touch with the decision makers behind each opportunity and we guarantee they listen and respond. Seriously!

Finally, a level playing field where it doesn’t matter who you know. All that matter are your talent, skill, and your artistic appeal.

Starting today and until the 21st of December, everyone who activates the app will be from among those chosen for several slots for private auditions for The Voice in January and February in various cities across the United States.

All you have to do is activate the app to be eligible.

And if by chance you’re a current Music Xray user without a SoundCloud account, what are you waiting for? Music Xray works best with SoundCloud.

Activate the Music Xray App in the SoundCloud App gallery right now.

Today we looked at a few of the recent singles released this week by major artists and stacked them up against some Music Xray artists. You can compare yourself too, as we’ll explain below.

The major artist songs are ones that are likely to be hits within their genres in the coming weeks but currently haven’t been heard by a massive audience. So, we ran a small Fan Match campaign for each of them to see how potential fans within each target audience will react.

Think of a Fan Match campaign as a highly sophisticated Focus Group. But in this kind of focus group, we’re actually trying to turn the participants into genuine fans of the music we play for them.

We send each song to an audience of 45 to 60 people (a sub group of our large fan pool), different audiences for each song. Each audience is targeted based on their taste. In other words, they like similar artists to the one they are hearing.

After hearing the song, the audience member has the choice to do nothing, in which case they just go away. They heard the song and weren’t impressed enough to engage. Or, they can choose to click a button that indicates they like the song enough to want to join that artist’s mailing list. In that case, they are considered an “acquired fan”.

We calculate the ratio of people who heard the song and did nothing vs people who heard the song and joined the artist as an official fan.

Music Xray charges the artist $0.33 for each potential fan who hears the song.

So, if the artist acquires one of every two potential fans, the cost per fan acquisition would be $0.66. That would be an excellent result, by the way.

In other words, for the 66 cents, the artist is getting the email address of the fan and a link to the fan’s own Facebook profile. The artist’s “cost per fan acquisition” is $0.66.

So, when we play your new song to your intended audience and you acquire fans more cheaply than Toby Keith acquires fans when he plays his new song to his intended audience… that says something.

That information should have weight when artists and labels make decisions about which music to promote. This kind of test enables very different artists to be compared as apples to apples and may provide important information about which songs / artists are able to penetrate their intended markets with less resistance.

In other words, which artist / songs are better investments?

(Learn how to launch your own Fan Match campaign here).

We ran a campaign for the new 50 Cent single that features Adam Levine and Eminem. We targeted already existing fans of 50 Cent, Eminem, and Maroon 5 (in a Fan Match campaign, you get to target fans of other acts – so if you think Barry Manilow’s fans would really dig you, then you can target people who like Barry Manilow). The result? 50 Cent’s name is about 21 cents shy. He should consider changing his name to 71 Cent because that’s what each fan is costing him. That’s a pretty good rate but we’ve seen better.

Then, we ran Toby Keith’s new single, “Hope On The Rocks” and we targeted fans of Toby Keith, Keith Urban, and Garth Brooks. Toby’s new single acquired fans at $0.73 per fan. Not bad at all.

Granted, both of those campaigns are stil in progress so the results are still preliminary but we know from experience that these numbers will likely be very similar when the campaign completes and has been heard by all 60 targeted people. But let’s compare those results that to a few completed campaigns for independent artists. Check this out; this Music Xray artist targeted fans of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones with his song “Shoebox Full of God” which acquired fans at $0.48.

In other words, Paul Turner is more compelling to his target audience than either 50 Cent or Toby Keith are to theirs!

Our Fan Match product is off the hook!

Every few weeks we’ll post the results of some major artist singles so you can calibrate gauge and compare your market appeal against major artists.

Here are some other acts on the site with completed campaigns who have fared quite well compared to the two superstar acts at the top of this post.

The important thing to note; not all of these songs are exceptionally remarkable. But, they resonate with their intended audiences and through Fan Match, you can reach the intended audience and engage the fans.