The Music Xray Blog
technology enhanced identification of high potential songs & talent
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Special Announcement: Let’s blow Jay’s doors off with great singles!! He’s signing!!

Posted by Mike McCready | October 8th, 2011 | No responses

Jay Frank, former Yahoo Music executive and former MTV executive officially launches today a SINGLES ONLY label. Send him your best singles today exclusively through Music Xray.

With a focus on artist-friendly deals, smart marketing budgets, and deep industry connections, DigSin artists are positioned for greatness with more flexibility than other labels

DigSin is a singles label that uses new, targeted digital marketing techniques to build audiences. Founded by Jay Frank, author of the top digital songwriting book Futurehit.DNA, DigSin finds the best songs by the best new artists that are well suited for a career launch around their very best songs!

Share our tweets and posts and win promo-codes & other prizes

Posted by Mike McCready | October 5th, 2011 | No responses


 

Follow us on Twitter and join our Facebook page.

Then, during the month of October, retweet our tweets and share our posts. Each retweet or share will enter your name into the hat. The more you retweet and share the more times your name goes in.

At the end of the month, we’re going to give away 100 promocodes and a few other prizes via random drawing. You can win more than once.

 

This promotion is valid for the following accounts:

 

Music Xray on Twitter

 

Mike McCready (Co-founder & CEO) on Twitter

 

Music Xray on Facebook

 

 

Dave’s Music Corner – Make Every Second Count

Posted by Mike McCready | October 1st, 2011 | 2 Responses

 

Music Xray Blog #1
“Dave’s Music Corner”
“Make Every Second Count”

Hello members.

This is David Snow, producer and owner of Little Hipster Music.
Thank you for submitting wonderful music to my company, it has been a pleasure to meet and talk to all of you.
Here begins my first installment of “Dave’s Music Corner”
We’ll start simple and move on to more and more advanced concepts in future blogs..
In this column, blog etc, I will attempt to give you all some advise from a “Producer and A&R perspective” so that your presentations and music can have the greatest chance of succeeding.
This first column could be called: “Make Every Second Count”
You should be aware of the fact that, as a producer or A&R person, or even an agent booking a gig, time is very short and valuable. Though you put weeks and months into your music, though you personally know every note and know that your guitar solo in song three or vocal high note in song two, are INCREDIBLE, you may have but few seconds to impress an A&R person, Producer or agent.
It seems that many artists are overly optimistic that a Producer or A&R person will take the time to fish out the little gems in your EPK and or submissions. I wish this were true. But in reality, you may only have seconds to impress.
MAKE EVERY SECOND COUNT!!
Having received what must be thousands of submissions from artists by now, I have noticed a few consistent errors in presentation that I’d like to address to you all.
The main AVOIDABLE mistakes I see are incorrect song ordering on an EPK and intros that are either too long or boring.
I’d like to give you two rules to start off with:
1) Put your best song and production first.
2) Keep your intros short or if not, make sure they are absolutely amazing.
First of all, please please put your best song and production first in your EPK.
This may seem like a “no-brainer” to many of you, and I too would have thought so, but
in phone conversations with artists, I have often been asked to “listen to song # 3”, being promised that “song #3 is our hit”. If it is the hit, why is it all the way back to the 3rd position in the list?, (or even later sometimes).
At most, and agent or A&R rep will only have time to listen to the first three songs, IF they like the 1st. And if song #1 doesn’t catch his/her attention, each subsequent song heard will be met with more and more doubt about the group or artist.
What industry and A&R reps do when looking over an EPK is immediately listen to the FIRST SONG. Make it your BEST song. If you are not sure, poll your friends and family asking for honest criticism.
A&R reps are in a tremendous hurry. The first song will make or break you, even the first few seconds or notes are important.
This brings me to another mistake I have noticed. The first song might be a great song, but if it’s intro is too long, mixed badly, or not as good as the song, you are hurting your chances. Keep your intro either 1) Short..or 2) Absolutely amazing!!!
It literally can be a 5 sec make or break ball game for your music so, make every second count.
Lead with your best song. Make sure the intro isn’t too long and is interesting.
Hope that helps, stay tuned for more blogs.
I look forward to hearing from you all.
Please feel free to submit your music to: http://www.musicxray.com/interactions/2682/submissions/new
Good luck to you all,
David Snow

http://www.musicxray.com/profiles/1966

 

 

What the music industry is listening to today: the power of 21st century A&R

Posted by Mike McCready | September 26th, 2011 | 2 Responses

Music Xray provides a series of tools to industry professionals to help them identify high potential songs and acts. Each tool works a bit differently and highlights different types of success potential. Today, we thought we’d tell you about one of them…

Collective A&R Statistics

You may not know that every time an industry professional receives one of your songs, they rate it. They give it a score for its composition, arrangement, production, performance and hit potential.

Songs that are submitted a number of times to various professionals on the site begin accumulating multiple ratings, all from professionals who make their living with their ears.

Each day, professionals can log into their account and view the collective ratings. They can view songs that have received high ratings across the board from multiple professionals. They can also choose to view songs that have been rated highly on composition but that maybe did not score well on production or performance. The songwriting might be excellent and while the rough demo recording might not turn any heads at radio it could easily get the attention of the manager of a celebrity act. Alternatively, “hit potential” may not be important to a music supervisor seeking a quality Jazz song. So, that supervisor can adjust his or her search to highlight songs that are consistently getting good ratings on other criteria but that may have scored low as a potential hit song.

This tool enables Music Xray to display your music to professionals to whom you never even submitted a song. Some Music Xray artists have been contacted by industry professionals they never would have thought would have an interest in their music. The key to making this tool work for you is to submit your best songs to more professionals so that it can accumulate ratings.

We currently do not reflect the ratings back to you, the musicians however, we are working on a way to do this in the near future.

At Music Xray, we are committed to creating the best environment for musicians and industry professionals to interact in ways that are rewarding for both parties and to generating the greatest number of potential paths to success for each song.

As a bit of an anecdote, these are today’s highest trending songs at industry A&R (with consistently high ratings across all measured criteria). In other words, these are a few of the songs getting the most attention on the platform right at this red hot moment:

Currently trending at Industry A&R

Have questions about Music Xray, how it works and why?

Posted by Mike McCready | September 26th, 2011 | No responses

 

 

The music industry is changing quickly and with it so is the A&R / music supervisor model.

We know there are question you have that need answers. That’s why we’ve created this video. It addresses many of the frequently asked questions and concerns.

View the video

Three Music Xray Songs Placed in Upcoming Spike Lee Movie

Posted by Mike McCready | September 20th, 2011 | 1 Response

 

Three songs were selected by Charlie Mac for the the new Spike Lee film called, “You’re Nobody ‘Til Somebody Kills You”!

It’s an action packed, gritty story of two New York City homicide detectives that are forced into the high-stakes world of the hip hop industry. A complex web of murder, sex, money and music unfolds as the homicide detectives track a serial killer with an appetite for some of hip hop’s biggest stars.

 

Read more success stories here.

What if you knew what the music industry hears and likes?

Posted by Mike McCready | September 15th, 2011 | 1 Response

 

What if you could know which new music is “trending” among top music industry A&R professionals?

How valuable would it be to your music business if you could see, in real time, which songs and acts are being heard and liked by your music industry peers?

If you are among the 1300 industry professionals who use Music Xray for free to conduct their A&R, you already have that information at your fingertips.

In the past 6 months over 3500 songs and acts have been selected for opportunities via Music Xray.

If you are an industry professional, consider opening a free Music Xray professional account. You’ll join the ranks of major and independent labels, Hollywood music supervisors, publishers, producers, radio stations and more…

Here are some of this afternoon’s top trending songs:

 

Psycho by Taylor Bright

See You Tonight by Kotadama

 

Carry The Weight by Krystale

 

Impossible by Diamante

 

Magical Night by Linda Basso

 

Invite the musicians you know before someone else does!

Posted by Mike McCready | September 13th, 2011 | No responses

 

 

You probably already know about Music Xray’s referral program where we pay you when people you refer to Music Xray conduct transactions.

 

Music Xray is growing quickly. Refer the musicians you know before someone else does.

Tracy Lawrence records and FOX Sports features a song discovered on Music Xray! Congratulations Justin Honaman!

Posted by Mike McCready | September 7th, 2011 | No responses

 

With over 3500 songs and acts selected for opportunities in the past 6 months, there are a lot of big ones to talk about including major label signings, major motion picture placements and even a few we’ve been told we can’t mention. But today we want to send a special congratulations to Justin Honaman.

Atlanta-based Honaman submitted his song “Saturday In The South” to Alex Torrez of Torrez Music Group in Nashville. Alex invited him to Music City to work on some rewrites and last year the song was used by CBS Sports as a lead in to SEC football games.

 

 

 

This year, the song has been re-recorded by mega-star Tracy Lawrence and picked up by FOX Sports. Here’s an excerpt from the official press release:

“Thirteen million football fans will soon hear a new theme from multi-platinum recording artist Tracy Lawrence as FOX Sports South and SportSouth launch their biggest college football kickoff campaign in the networks’ history, showcasing the song “Saturday In The South.”

Lawrence’s “Saturday In The South” debuts Thursday, September 1, and will be the music centerpiece for the FOX Sports and SportSouth college football campaigns. The networks will broadcast over 70 games from the SEC, ACC, Conference USA, Big 12 and Pac-12 and the weekly college football shows SEC Gridiron LIVE and The NEW College Football Show during the season.”

 

See the FOX Sports promo video by clicking here.

Be sure to check out some of the other success stories here.

Are you new to Music Xray? Click here to get the musician’s guide to Music Xray or click here to see a video explanation.

 

What Happens When Industry Professionals Don’t Respond?

Posted by Mike McCready | September 2nd, 2011 | No responses

 



When professionals don’t respond to their submissions (rare but it happens), Music Xray issues a refund and suspends the account of the industry professional.

We don’t like to do it and first, we do what we can to insure your music is heard. But, inactive professional accounts are not permitted on Music Xray.

And do we ever give the music professionals a second chance? Yes, but we are even more strict with them the second time around to ensure that your music is heard since that is our guarantee to you.