Music Xray's Blog - Connect Directly With Top Industry Professionals

Tip of the Week: Ask Questions When You Submit Your Music

Posted by Mike McCready | September 9th, 2010 | No responses

This week we’re rolling out some new features that enable seamless, threaded conversations between artists and industry professionals.

Because it is now easier for industry professionals to respond and create open dialogs with artists, you can provoke this by asking specific questions with each submission.

Give it a shot and see how it goes. Keep in mind that not all professionals guarantee feedback and may not engage in conversations even when asked specific questions. Nevertheless, by making it easier and by creating an environment that makes interactions rewarding we expect to see more relationships develop.

Be sure to join our Facebook page to network and share experiences.

Be sure to join our LinkedIn group for a more business focussed discussion of opportunities for songs, artists and other careers in music.

Tip of the Week: Getting Access to Top Opportunities & Music Industry Professionals

Posted by Mike McCready | September 3rd, 2010 | No responses

We all think it would be great if we could just upload our songs, make a nice looking page and then wait to be discovered. Unfortunately, that almost never happens. It’s up to you to insure your music is heard by the right people. Accessing the “right” people has always been tricky. Even knowing who the right person is doesn’t often help since many music companies don’t even accept unsolicited material (until now).

Before Music Xray launched, if you were a performing act trying to break out, you could expect to spend years and a lot of money playing gigs, touring and trying to generate enough buzz to get the attention of someone in the business who can help you get to the next level. You could expect to attend events and gatherings where you network, build relationships and hope to make a solid connection or two. Even though you must also conduct online networking, it can be slow and very time consuming.

Music Xray doesn’t guarantee you will get signed or that you will place your music in a revenue-generating deal. That depends on you and your music. But, we do guarantee you will get access to top industry people and real opportunities at the click of a mouse and for a fraction of the cost it would require via any other means.

Music Xray levels the playing field when it comes to “access” and provides you with a guaranteed way to rely more on how good you are and less on who you know.

Be sure to join our Facebook page to network and share experiences.

Be sure to join our LinkedIn group for a more business focussed discussion of opportunities for songs, artists and other careers in music.

Tip of the Week: For best results on Music Xray, fill out all the information in your song presentation packs

Posted by Mike McCready | August 26th, 2010 | No responses

Our Song Presentation packs are called “Music Xrays” and they enable music industry professionals to see all the relevant information about you and your songs.

Notice that the song search bar at the top of almost every page of our site enables people to search for songs based on song lyrics? It only works if you’ve entered your lyrics in the song lyrics module for each of you songs.

The same is true for every other module. If you don’t include your email address in the License module no one who stumbles upon your song will know how to reach you.

Did you know that you can group your songs together, re-order them and make them look however you want with our new EPKs? Take a look at a good example of one here.

Be sure to join our Facebook page to network and share experiences.

Be sure to join our LinkedIn group for a more business focussed discussion of opportunities for songs, artists and other careers in music.

Tip of the Week: Upload your entire catalog. We alert you every time someone seeks music like yours – for free

Posted by Mike McCready | August 17th, 2010 | No responses

Music Xray does some awesome things but one of the coolest is that we alert you if an opportunity for your music come up.

If you upload music for free today, you’ll get an email alert by tomorrow telling you if anyone is currently seeking music like yours. But you may also get another email next week or next month telling you of a new opportunity we’ve detected for you.

As long as your song remains in our database (until you remove it) we will continue to alert you whenever we detect a potential opportunity for your music. Who knows what we’ll come up with next? Find out by uploading your music.

It’s a free service. You can upload as many tracks as you like. No catches.

Be sure to join our Facebook page to network and share experiences.

Be sure to join our LinkedIn group for a more business focussed discussion of opportunities for songs, artists and other careers in music.

To the left is a photo of the PR Newswire news wicker in Times Square announcing the launch of Music Xray’s new song to opportunity matching service.

Tip of the Week: What Do You Get At Music Xray?

Posted by Mike McCready | August 10th, 2010 | No responses

What do artists get at Music Xray?

Good question. We’re glad you asked.

These are some of the features Music Xray offers acts, songwriters & music rights holders:

No membership fee. Just sign up and you’re in.
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Free automatic song to opportunity (S2O) matching
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Hundreds of song submission opportunities from major and independent labels, Hollywood Movie studios, advertising agencies, radio stations, music blogs, TV Shows and much more
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Song critiques, advice & career coaching from top industry veterans
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A weekly email alerting you to new opportunities posted to the site
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An email alert any time an industry professional is seeking music with your song’s characteristics
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Free song & EPK creation and hosting
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Make your songs look like this and your EPKs look like this and share them with everyone
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Free “Next Big Sound” tracking of all your performance stats/metrics across all social networks, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Last.fm and more

Be sure to join our Facebook page to network and share experiences.

Be sure to join our LinkedIn group for a more business focussed discussion of opportunities for songs, artists and other careers in music.

Tip of the Week: Get some money back from us

Posted by Mike McCready | August 2nd, 2010 | No responses

Word of Music Xray is spreading fast.

More than 100,000 artists, songwriters and music rights holders now receive this email. More industry professionals are signing up every day to accept submissions via our state-of-the-art A&R platform and deals are being done left and right. But this is still the ground floor and since you were here first we thought you might enjoy sharing in our growth and making a little coin – which you can either pocket or apply to submissions on Music Xray.

Here’s how it works:

We think you’ll agree that at this pace most artists will hear about Music Xray sooner or later so if you invite them before someone else does or before they hear about Music Xray on their own you will get a cut of any transactions in which they participate on Music Xray – forever.

When you are logged in you will see a button on your dashboard that says, “Invite Artists”. You then enter the email addresses of your artist contacts and send the invites. When your contacts click on the link in the email they will be tracked as having been invited by you. As transactions occur you will see your balance accumulate in an account meter on your dashboard.

Another way to get credit for inviting people is to use your affiliate code when you tweet or post anything about Music Xray.

You will find you affiliate code under “Settings” when you’re logged in. It looks something like this:

?afid=55f8e620e868012c5dc81231390a1e12

Just copy and paste your affiliate code to the end of any Music Xray URL and anyone who clicks on it will be tracked and credited to you when they open an account. So for example,

http://www.musicxray.com/profiles/538

becomes

http://www.musicxray.com/profiles/538?afid=55f8e620e868012c5dc81231390a1e12

Most URL shortening services will preserve your affiliate codes so feel free to use them.

Be sure to join our Facebook page to network and share experiences.

Be sure to join our LinkedIn group for a more business focussed discussion of opportunities for songs, artists and other careers in music.

Tip of the Week – Check out the new site upgrades

Posted by Mike McCready | July 27th, 2010 | No responses

Here at Music Xray we are constantly taking your feedback into consideration and making improvements to the service, the interface and the look & feel of the site.

This week we have rolled out a number of upgrades that represent a significant stride forward. We hope you’ll check them out and continue to give us feedback.

Be sure to join our Facebook page to network and share experiences.

Be sure to join our LinkedIn group for a more business focussed discussion of opportunities for songs, artists and other careers in music.

Tip of the Week – Build Relationships with Industry Professionals

Posted by Mike McCready | July 20th, 2010 | No responses

Music Xray enables you to get directly in touch with decision makers in the music industry at the click of a mouse.

Be sure to build a relationship with them by leaving feedback on their profile page. You can also send them a note with your submission and you can fill out all of the modules of your Music Xray (song presentation pack). All of these things increase the likelihood you’ll engage a professional and build a meaningful professional relationship.

Be sure to join our Facebook page to network and share experiences.

Be sure to join our LinkedIn group for a more business focussed discussion of opportunities for songs, artists and other careers in music.

Tip of the Week – Artists & MIPs Seeing S2O Pay Off

Posted by Mike McCready | July 13th, 2010 | No responses

Tip of the Week – Artists & MIPs Seeing S2O Pay Off

By now you’re probably aware of Music Xray’s new Song to Opportunity matching service that launched in beta in early June. If not, you can read about it here.

After several weeks of testing some results are starting to roll in. For example, industry professional Ken Spellman has recently added nine artists to his radio station’s playlist based on artists’ songs being matched to what Ken was seeking.

We’re gathering additional S2O success cases but initial indications are that industry professionals using S2O are getting much more relevant submissions and are indeed offering deals and granting exposure opportunities to Music Xray artists.

Be sure to join our Facebook page to network and share experiences.

Be sure to join our LinkedIn group for a more business focussed discussion of opportunities for songs, artists and other careers in music.

Tip of the Week – Not Getting Deals? Ask an Expert Why

Posted by Mike McCready | July 7th, 2010 | No responses

Tip of the Week – Not Getting Deals? Ask an Expert Why.

Professional Song Critiques and career coaching are a great way to get real, honest and unbiased feedback on your music’s commercial viability.

If you’ve been submitting for opportunities and you’re not getting the results you had hoped you can ask a music industry veteran why.

Doing so will help you hone both your music and the way you pitch it to the industry.

Be sure to join our Facebook page to network and share experiences.

Be sure to join our LinkedIn group for a more business focussed discussion of opportunities for songs, artists and other careers in music.