What’s more, it’s free. The only thing we require from our industry professional users is that you attend to every submission you receive within 30 days of receiving it. If you fall behind and submissions languish unattended in your drop box for 45 days or more, we’ll likely be suspending (shutting down) your account and locking you out.

It doesn’t have to happen. We give you the tools to regulate the pace of submissions. If you’re getting so many that you can’t keep up, you can raise your submission fee. If you’re getting too few, you can decrease it.

We will make exceptions. For example, if you’re going on an extended vacation or if you’re on maternity leave, we’ll work with you. You can also deactivate your drop box without having your account suspended. To do that, just attend to all the pending submissions and then set your drop box to expire on today’s date or any date you desire. That will mean that you will not receive any more submissions until you re-open the drop box (or create a new one) and your account will remain open.

Music Xray’s musician and songwriter users depend on the fact that every submission they make will be heard and attended to by the people to whom they submit their music. If you aren’t keeping up, we must remove you and cut off your access to our A&R tools.

Unattended open drop boxes on Music Xray are not allowed.

So, I want to be clear about this. You should not spend a penny more than the value Music Xray provides to your career.

As you know, each time one of your tracks has been rated by five industry professionals (which requires that you submit the track at least five times) we show you the average of the ratings. We don’t delay showing you the ratings as part of some strategy to get you to submit each song five times. It’s just that the average of any number of ratings below five is not statistically significant and doesn’t provide reliable information.

We can’t show you each individual rating. If we did, the ratings would be less sincere because the professionals who rate the songs would know that their individual ratings are public. As much as we’d like that fact to not influence the scores, it does.

So, here’s the thing: we’ve been collecting song ratings from industry professionals for years and we reflect those results back to the community of professionals. More on how that works here. We simply decided that it might be useful to you if we showed those ratings to you. So, we worked out a way that we could do that without singling out any individual professional who rated a song. We don’t charge you anything additional to see the ratings. Consider it a bit of a bonus.

But then we realized that the ratings themselves are predictive in nature. That is, we can observe that most songs that receive high ratings do end up landing the type of deal they’re pursuing sooner or later. Often, it’s just a matter of persistence and having a good submissions strategy – which most often just means not submitting to opportunities that aren’t a good fit for your music. I don’t think anyone should submit solely for the purpose of acquiring a rating (unless you’re submitting specifically to get some career coaching or a song critique – in which case, getting the feedback is the whole purpose of the submission).

Given that the scores are predictive, we realized that one of the best ways to use Music Xray is to actually submit all the music you have to as many opportunities as it takes to accumulate five ratings for each song. In the process, you may get a deal for a few of those songs right away. It happens all the time. But if not, you can use the ratings you get back to decide which songs you want to continue submitting and which songs are probably not worthy of your continued investment.

Either way, you and your team have to decide how much you should invest in getting your career to the next level. At what point is it not worth it? You also music consider the fact that every deal you don’t land, someone else does. Competition is tough and in order to not be out-competed in the new music business, you have to use tools, like those provided by Music Xray, in a way that increases your chances and gives you an edge.

But the differentiating factor about Music Xray is an incredible team who are both good at their jobs and passionate about the work we do. Music Xray is the farthest thing from a one man show and is far from being “my” company. The company is privately held by a cadre of the senior team, co-founder shareholders, investors and early friends and family.

Every day, CTO Jeff Durand and his team work to keep the site purring along while building out new features and keeping it all scalable. Bert Hartmann, our COO manages a very professional team of 18 software testers and customer service and support staff. Those are the real assets at Music Xray. I’m just the guy doing some of the business deals and generating awareness.

Sure, the great deal ratio is due in large part to the great A&R tools Music Xray provides to industry professionals to help them quickly and easily identify the music they are seeking but it’s also partially due to Music Xray’s modest submission fees.

What?

Yes, it’s true. Submission fees, as small as they are, require musicians to filter their own music and submit only the songs they believe are the best for each opportunity. When musicians don’t over-submit, the industry professionals are less overwhelmed and the quality of what they hear on Music Xray is significantly higher than almost anywhere else. That keeps the industry professionals more engaged on Music Xray.

Less competition:

Then, there are the musicians who have not yet understood how the changes in the music industry of the past decade have changed the A&R process. Many do not believe – based purely on principle – that they should have to pay anything at all to have their music considered by the industry. They do not realize that even the ways of the past that seemed free were not free and did not come with guarantees their music would be heard and considered.

Those later adopters, who remove themselves from the equation, create a smaller pool of competition for the early adopters – and therefore more deals.

Greater competition outside of Music Xray:

If 3500 deals were done on Music Xray, it stands to reason that there were 3500 fewer deals available outside of Music Xray – meaning that it’s getting increasingly difficult to find deals elsewhere and that’s to say nothing of the increasing challenge of breaking through the noise and clutter to distinguish yourself and your music.

Remember, there are literally millions of emerging musicians and millions of new songs created and posted online every year. There is no way the industry can filter through all that music to find what they are seeking “out there in the wild”. That’s why Music Xray is changing the game and small submission fees are one of the reasons it works.

SoundCloud to manage all Music Xray audio

June, 22 2011 – New York / Berlin

Over 1200 music industry professionals use Music Xray to discover high-potential songs and emerging talent, a task referred to as A&R (artist and repertoire). The site’s 21st Century A&R™ tools have helped the industry select over 2200 songs and acts for opportunities just since February. Among these placements are major and indie label signings, major motion picture song placements, network television inclusions, the licensing of songs for advertising campaigns, radio play-listing and publishing deals.

One of the key drivers of these selections is Music Xray’s Song-to-Opportunity Matching feature, called S2O:

Industry professionals upload songs that sound and feel like the type of music they’d like to have submitted to them. S2O analyzes the acoustic properties of those “seed” songs and matches them to available songs with similar characteristics that musicians have uploaded for free to Music Xray’s servers. Song owners are alerted any time a match is detected and given the opportunity to submit their music to be considered for the opportunity.

Today, Music Xray announces the release of two new apps in the SoundCloud App Gallery. Both apps will automatically match a SoundCloud user’s music to industry opportunities on Music Xray.

• The “Full” app enables SoundCloud users to create a Music Xray account, link it to their SoundCloud account and then receive opportunity alerts via email.

• The “Lite” app will deliver the opportunity alerts to the comment section of the song that has been matched and does not require the SoundCloud user to create a Music Xray account until they decide to submit a song to an industry professional for consideration.

Additionally, Music Xray will also enable new users of the site to automatically link their pre-existing SoundCloud account to Music Xray and thereby avoid having to upload their music tracks yet again. This is the first phase of Music Xray’s shift to have SoundCloud manage all audio across its A&R platform.

Alexander Ljung, founder and CEO of SoundCloud said, “Music Xray is an innovative company that is changing the game of how industry professionals identify new songs and talent. We’re excited to add another compelling app to our gallery and to make this service available to our five million sound creators.”

“SoundCloud has emerged as the de facto platform for anyone to create and share sound and is one of the most exciting companies in the world right now.” Added Mike McCready, co-founder and CEO of Music Xray, “This is a natural and very synergistic partnership that enables us to concentrate on what we do better than anyone else – connecting musicians with opportunities and professionals – while benefiting from what SoundCloud does better than anyone else – everything audio-related.”

Release of Music Xray’s API

Music Xray is also announcing the release of its S2O API, which will enable any company to automatically match their users’ music to opportunities on Music Xray. Integrations with several partners are already underway and will be announced separately.

*****
About Music Xray
Music Xray is the world’s only dedicated online A&R platform. It emerged from beta in January of 2010 and is designed for music industry professionals to make the process of sourcing emerging musical talent and high-potential songs more efficient and less risky. At the same time, it enables the industry to open the doors of opportunity to independent musicians and songwriters everywhere. For more information, visit http://musicxray.com

About SoundCloud
SoundCloud, launched in 2008 by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, is an audio platform that enables anyone to create, record, promote and share their sounds on the web, in a simple, accessible and feature-rich way. SoundCloud allows sound creators to instantly record audio; upload large files; share them publicly and privately; embed sound across websites and blogs; receive detailed analytics, plus feedback from the community directly onto their waveform player. For more information go to: http://soundcloud.com

A new fund will be making small ($30k to $50k) investments over the coming months in bands & acts sourced and de-risked via Music Xray.

To be elegible for these funds, industry professionals must have sourced their project on Music Xray, present data (such as results from Music Xray’s stats page, Music Xray focus group results and other information) to support the potential of a viable business opportunity that will begin to generate returns within 6 months.

If you are an industry professional with an open dropbox on Music Xray, have sourced your project via Music Xray and are interested in seeking funding for your project(s), please email us at musicinvestments@musicxray.com. Include a link to the act you are working with on Music Xray and a brief outline of the project. We will reply to further the conversation.

• Music Xray is the music industry’s only dedicated A&R platform.

• It’s free for industry professionals to use.

• The company is venture backed.

• It harnesses the latest technology to the benefit of those who seek new songs & talent.

• It enables the industry to open the doors of opportunity to artists everywhere while eliminating much of the hassle of separating the wheat from the chaff.

• It’s transparent and fair – making the A&R process more about how good an artist is and less about whom they know (or who they can reach on their own or of whom they can request a favor). In other words, Music Xray is professional.

· It guarantees artists get heard by those they submit to within a reasonable amount of time (unheard of in this business).

Now the data:

• More than 850 songs have been selected for real industry opportunities in the past 60 days alone!

These deals include placement in major Hollywood movie soundtracks, major TV network theme songs, major and cable network series placement, reality show auditions and placement, radio station playlist adds, label deals, magazine features, blog features, publishing deals, management deals, production deals and sample deals.

• Over 1200 industry professionals now use Music Xray to conduct at least some of their A&R activities. Among these professionals are top Hollywood music supervisors, major & indie label A&Rs, radio stations, influential music bloggers…

• The industry’s ONLY song to opportunity matching system (S2O) has created an effective way of delivering a high percentage of relevant music to the professionals’ in-box without restricting outliers and creative innovation from reaching their ears.

• Music Xray’s back-end statistics (Collective A&R) has itself produced deals between artists and industry professionals by highlighting high-potential songs that have been well-rated by multiple industry professionals yet remained unsigned. Here are a few examples:

• Dear Diary – Mary Sarah (rated consistently high by 47 professionals)

• Stop Messin With My Mind – written by Marissa DiBlassio (rated consistently high by 14 professionals)

• Tastes Like Sugar – The Strike Nineteens (rated consistently high by 11 professionals)

• See You Tonight – Kotadama (rated consistently high by 16 professionals)

• One in a Million – Amanda Blush (rated consistently high by 7 professionals)

The truth is, we tried making the service completely free and figured we’d find one way or another to keep the lights on like so many web based businesses. But early on, we realized it wasn’t working. The industry professionals were overwhelmed, couldn’t keep up with their submissions and stopped logging in. Without the professionals on the site taking submissions all we had was another artist-facing website that couldn’t fulfill its promises.

I’d rather eat poo than be the operator of one of those sites!

We soon figured out that charging a small fee ($4) tended to keep the riff raff out. Those who were unwilling to invest a little bit of change in getting their music heard by industry decision-makers also seemed to be the ones jamming up the system for everyone else. Suddenly, the industry professionals were engaged again. Yes, they were getting fewer submissions but the quality of the submissions was higher. We then enabled the industry professionals to increase or decrease the fee as needed to regulate the inflow of submissions. If they were receiving too many songs, they could increase the fee to slow things down.

The fees are usually pretty reasonable. Not unlike the amount you’d spend sending a CD and presentation kit through the mail in the old days (and never hearing back or even knowing that it arrived). On Music Xray, in exchange for your coin you are guaranteed that the professional listens and provides feedback. Even in the case of rejection you are told why.

Our job here at Music Xray is to keep the industry professionals engaged and interested so that the doors of opportunity remain open and the business is more about how good you are and less about who you know.

Charities

The fees collected on Music Xray keep our lights on and perhaps enable some of the professionals to afford an extra drink or two (and who wouldn’t buy someone a drink in exchange for some professional attention to their music?). None of the professionals sees Music Xray submission fees as a primary source of income. It’s extra pocket change at best and many of them funnel the money to various charities we have on the site like Save The Children Fund, Musicares, Songs of Love and others. I bet you didn’t know that.

This isn’t new. We’ve been enabling industry professionals to divert their money to charity for over a year. Honestly, not all of them send their money to charities. In fact, a lot don’t but we’re seeing increasing numbers of them do it. At some point we may display a badge on the profile pages of those that send their fees to charity. For now, we just quietly suggest it as an option and it seems to be working.

I just thought this was all worth explaining.

Description
Position: Chief Marketing Officer
Location: San Francisco

About Layers
Layers is a European technology start-up company based in Barcelona focused on launching an outstanding web platform globally that will introduce a new dimension to the existing web..

How Big Can You Think?
Layers is seeking an experienced executive to serve as our company’s Chief Product Officer.
The job’s responsibilities’ will include interfacing with PR companies, marketing staff, US company investors and US clients, defining the marketing and monetization strategy for the US market, and leading its execution.

Our Layers CMO will be based in San Francisco and will report directly to the Layers’ CEO. Additionally this person will work closely with the Layers COO, CPO, CTO and a corporate technical and product team based in Barcelona.

Layers.com offers the most comprehensive content discovering, sharing and enriching experiences for web, mobile, for end users and web masters.

JOB RESPONSIBILITIES
Your principal duties will involve sales and negotiating sophisticated agreements with key technological publishing platforms, web property owners, web browsers companies, app stores and key investors in social media advertisement. You will be expected to develop and cultivate professional working relationships with key executives at these companies. You will also interface with US based Layers investors. You will lead the growth of Layers usage in the US Business and Consumers markets. You will be responsible for the results in different types of monetization schemes of the company services. You will participate in and manage certain legislative initiatives and rate proceedings that impact the business. You will be part of the Layers senior staff meetings where the company strategy and direction is presented and reviewed.

SKILLS/QUALIFICATIONS
·Seven to ten years of experience at a web/internet company or equivalent organization. Significant experience in structuring, negotiating and drafting complex commercial agreements, such as licensing, Internet-related and complex technology/technology services agreements.

·Proven track record of identifying, negotiating and closing deals.

·Excellent organizational skills, in particular the ability to prioritize and build effective working relationships.

·Ability to handle multiple assignments with effective resolution of conflicting priorities.

·High degree of intellectual capability and ability to think strategically.

·First class communications skills, both written and verbal, and ability to build relationships and collaborate with a variety of personalities and styles, including experience dealing with senior management and clients.

·Strong ability to work well independently, coupled with strong interpersonal skills, resourcefulness and an ability to participate in a highly collaborative team environment.

·Deep understanding of web companies environments, and the Internet business.

·Highly valued – a strong sense of commitment, flexibility and teamwork, without disregarding a capable
fun personality and a sense of humor.

·The job requires traveling.

On Tuesday February 15th, I’ll be discussing some of my entrepreneurial failures publicly here in New York City. If you’d like to attend just click here and you’re good to go.

As Music Xray is defining 21st century A&R, the vision behind Music Xray didn’t start at Music Xray. My first attempt to lower risk when investing in the promotion and marketing of music began at Polyphonic HMI and the service I launched there called Hit Song Science (HSS).

Ultimately, I had a falling out with my business partners and I failed to persuade them that I could get the job done. That failure resulted in me loosing two years in bringing my vision to market and to Polyphonic changing their name twice, hiring two new CEO’s and spending a rumored 13 millions dollars pursuing their own strategy to tepid results, at least so far. If I had not failed in that persuasion, I may have been able to prevent those terrible results for all involved.

My efforts to introduce HSS into the traditional music industry are the subject of a very popular Harvard Business School case study that is taught at the world’s top business schools. The concept of computerized hit prediction fascinated the media and was even written into the screen plays of network television shows like Numb3rs and Studio 60.

Today, I am a different entrepreneur than I was just a few years ago and some of that comes from learning from my mistakes. I’m going to be sharing some of those lessons publicly a week from tonight, on February 15th here in New York City and I’d like to invite anyone interested to come along, hear a few tales of failure and hopefully learn how to avoid them. I’ll be answering questions and hanging out after the event as well. I’d love to see you there.

Here’s the link again: http://www.meetup.com/foundersatfail/events/16069282/