It’s like a GPS system to tell you if you’re getting closer or further away from getting a deal for your music or your band.

It also changes the most effective way to use Music Xray to advance your music career.

When musicians submit tracks to industry professionals for their consideration, the professionals are asked to rate them. Many of them do. They give the songs one to five stars on each of the following criteria: composition, production, performance, arrangement, and hit potential.

As of today, Music Xray shows you your track’s average ratings once your track has been rated at least five times. Why is that important?

Simply put: high ratings indicate a high probability your song or act will eventually be successful securing the type of deals you’re pursuing. Low scores mean it’s not likely to happen.

By showing you the average of several ratings, we’re not singling out any one of the professionals who rated. Their individual ratings are private. Therefore, they’re sincere. The knowledge you gain from seeing these average ratings, previously, took months or even years to acquire.

You should learn the ratings of all your songs so that you know which ones gain traction for you and which ones may be holding you back.

Additionally, your songs that are receiving high ratings will continue to get pushed to the top of the statistics section, which is seen by dozens of industry professionals each day and it’s where they can hear top rated songs that have not been submitted directly to them but that are getting positive ratings from other industry professionals.

This eco-system that provides you feedback while you execute your submission strategy means the best way to use Music Xray is as follows:

1. Submit all your songs to at least 5 industry professionals (here’s a list of a few who ALWAYS rate the songs they receive.

2. Step one may result in your song getting a deal; in which case, misson accomplished. If not, once you have your 5 ratings for each song, you may regard it as a prediction of your eventual success.

3. Continue submitting the tracks that are receiving high ratings. Cease investing in your weaker songs and/or get professional song critiques and/or career coaching. After tweaking your music and/or your submissions strategy, go back to step one.

Good luck. I look forward to hearing how our new feedback loop works for you.

1. Get deals
2. Get fans
3. Get better

Music Xray is focussed on helping you get deals and providing you access to people who can help you get better.

But getting fans? We think a lot about the challenge but Music Xray does not offer a solution beyond giving you an attractive way to present your music. So, we want to know, how do you identify likely fans and then engage them?

Do you use Headliner.fm? Do you use Jango radio? I like them and Music Xray has a relationship with both companies and we encourage you to use them. How about Fanbridge? Please share some of your experiences in the comments section of this post.

There’s another one we like and that we’ve been experimenting with and I encourage you to give it a shot and report back to the community. It’s called Music Connected Advertising (MCA).

The MCA service enables artists (as advertisers) to target (with an interactive ad) audiences of other artists that have fans that could also become their fans.

You following? Let’s say you think Coldplay’s fans would really be in to your music. MCA let’s you create an online ad (really attractive ones) and then when people all over the Internet who are searching for Coldplay, already reading about Coldplay or have previously purchased or listened to Coldplay tracks will see your ad, hopefully click on it, hear some of your music and join your mail list or “like” you on Facebook etc.

In the past, digital advertising was reserved only for major label artists with massive promotional budgets. But, now everyone can access this powerful promotional tool for a pretty fair price.

As I said, for the next few weeks, we are trying out MCA and wonder if you want to, also.

Here’s the deal: You get 50% off the standard pricing and a free interactive ad (which they will create for you). The ad alone would cost you $1500 or more to build with a professional designer.

Here is what you get:

- 1 free interactive ad including a built in music player
- 100,000 targeted ad impression (shown exclusively to people they know like or are likely to like your music)
- Complete analytics package (location of your fans, numbers of interactions, types of interactions, etc.)

- The cost is a very reasonable $600!

For everyone else, this package is priced at $1000. But, we’d like to get a few of our artists using it and sharing their experiences.

All you need to provide is:

It’s that simple. If you would like more information, please email: sales@injectmusic.com and mention the “Music XRay deal.” One of their campaign managers will be happy to explain the details.

We think this is a great opportunity and hope you are able to take advantage of this.

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

• 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)

If you haven’t been following the evolution of the traditional music business, there’s a lot to catch up on but let me give you the quick overview:

To begin with, Warner Music Group is for sale. Both BMG (which sold its recorded music assets to Sony a couple years ago) and Sony are in the running to acquire Warner but rumor has it that Yucaipa Companies (a holding company focused on private equity investments) is in the lead and is aligned with Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster and Facebook. EMI is also on the block after falling into the hands of Citigroup when EMI’s financial backers defaulted on their obligations to the financial giant. Meanwhile, former Universal Music head Doug Morris has moved over to lead Sony Music while all of the aforementioned companies fight over their share of an ever-shrinking market for recorded music sales.

What’s more, the major labels have not been doing a good job breaking new artists. A recent IFPI report showed that total sales by debut artists in the global top 50 album chart in 2010 were only 25% of the level they achieved in 2003.

Needless to say, artists and their managers have been trying to regain their revenue via other avenues such as touring and merchandise sales (T-shirts & trinkets). However, high ticket prices, ticket sales gimmicks and sub par shows are jading fans who seem to be flocking to fewer and fewer shows. Live Nation, the world’s largest concert promoter reported a whopping 10% drop in ticket sales in 2010.

All this is happening at the same time that more music is being created by musicians and heard by fans than ever before. The dichotomy of thriving demand for evermore-abundant art while the traditional music business is failing has perplexed many industry watchers. But as with every disrupted business, the opportunities for entrepreneurs abound and what we’re seeing in the music business is an exciting emergence of the structures that will define the industry for at least the coming decade.

So, that brings you up to speed with where things stand. Now to address the question I asked at the top: How will fans experience music in the digital age?

A recent report by Edison Research found that in the 12 to 24 age group, music radio listenership fell by nearly half in the past decade, from two hours to 43 minutes per day and radio fell from the number 1 means of consuming media to number 3 behind Internet and TV. On the other hand, music consumption via the Internet is on the rise with personalized streaming radio company Pandora leading the way and competitors like CBS’ Last.fm and Jango making great strides too. Pandora has even partnered with some car companies to have their system streamed to drivers, taking an even bigger bite out of traditional, terrestrial radio.

One of the more recent trends are online music lockers. Think of them as personal hard drives that are out there on the Internet where you can store your music collection and stream it to a connected device like a smartphone, a car or home stereo system or your computer any time you want. There is some legal controversy around these types of systems but everyone expects these types of solutions to move forward and become fairly ubiquitous – not just for storing your music rather for storing ALL your files. Good-bye hard drives, altogether. But will they be the way music is consumed?

The problem with the online music locker solutions is that they still require consumers to own digital files of music which either have to be ripped from CDs, purchased online or pirated and you won’t be able to have unrestricted listens to anything you don’t own. That seems so last century given that almost anything anyone would ever want to hear can already be easily found online – even if only at Youtube. Therefore, I’d place my bets on all-access on-demand music streaming services.

“What?” you ask.

On-demand streaming services already exist in the US but they have gotten less attention than they deserve. Companies like Rhapsody and Mog offer consumers a monthly subscription model in the $5 to $10 per month neighborhood and they allow you to stream music to any Internet connected device on demand. Not like Pandora, where you get a selection of music that is generally targeted to your taste but otherwise not within your control. These services let you chose what you want to hear, when you want to hear it and they have almost every song ever recorded available with only a few exceptions. The company that, by far, is generating the most buzz is Europe’s Spotify, which is preparing for a US launch. In Europe, they’ve already reached 1 million paying subscribers. A couple great things about their service is that it is completely integrated with Facebook which makes sharing your music and playlists both easy and legal and you can store up to 3,000 tracks for offline listening and swap them out for different tracks any time you want. Services like these make it completely unnecessary to own music at all. Why would you if you can have access to an unlimited library of everything that’s ever been recorded?

In Europe, Spotify offers a completely free version that is supported by advertisements. In the US, it is unclear what their free service will be like because the labels are putting extra restrictions on Spotify in the US. Music companies are concerned that the revenue they will derive from streaming services like Rhapsody, Mog and Spotify won’t replace the revenue they generated from the sales of albums – and they’re absolutely right.

Gone are the days when consumers had to buy 11 songs they didn’t want so they could hear the one song they did and gone are the days when the major music companies controlled distribution. Those days aren’t coming back and that means the supply-side of the music business (labels, promoters, managers and artists themselves) have to change and adapt. All of this is great for the consumer but it represents some serious changes for the music industry and those changes, how they are shaking out and what they mean for the artists and business people that make the music industry run are what I will cover in parts II and III in the coming days.

Subscribe to the blog to be alerted when those posts are available.

When businesses spend money to develop new products and services they spend even more marketing and selling them. They make sure their customers get a taste. They spend money on advertising, they give away free samples, they spend money on trade shows, business trips, negotiations… In short, they spare no expense when it comes to getting the deals that generate the revenue and eventual profit.

Musicians can no longer expect to create a great product and to then be discovered by happenstance (not to say that was a very good system in the past either). They especially cannot expect industry professionals to give their time away for free to listen to and evaluate their music when there are so many unsigned artists out there requesting their time and attention.

If you think you should not have to expend time, money and resources getting your music heard by the gatekeepers of opportunity you will simply be out-competed by artists who “get it”. It’s that simple.

Don’t shoot the messenger. And actually, if you think about it, this new reality is an improvement over the “happenstance” way of getting discovered.

With Music Xray we’ve created a platform that enables industry professionals to guarantee they will listen to everything that’s submitted to them and we’re enabling them to provide feedback on every submission. Sure, you pay a few bucks. That helps insure that every artist doesn’t submit every song they own to every opportunity. You can see how that would happen and how that wouldn’t work for anyone, right? I don’t believe anyone can reach as many industry professionals as we make available with the guarantees we provide for as little time and money as it costs on Music Xray.

We’re providing one of the key pieces of infrastructure that the new music industry will be built upon and we’re doing it in a way that benefits the musicians by leveling the playing field and insuring that more music is considered for more opportunities.

Don’t be out-competed by others. This is the new reality and the sooner you make it work in your favor the more of a head start you will have!

While there is no one formulaic way to success, we’re starting to see an increasing number of success stories emerge on Music Xray and I’d like to share the stories of two artists and how they each got it done differently.

When you’ve got something good – submit, submit submit!!

Mary Sarah is a talented teenager from Texas. She began submitting on Music Xray about 7 months ago. She submitted to some of the top producers who were offering detailed feedback, song critiques and career coaching. Each of these people were impressed with what they heard. Some of them passed the music on to people they knew. All of them wrote stellar critiques and as always, the industry professionals on the site rated the music for Music Xray’s back-end statistics (keep reading. You’ll see why that’s important).

Then, once she knew that the music she had recorded was standing up to tough scrutiny, she began submitting her songs to all sorts of opportunities: label deals, management deals, sync license deals, exposure opportunities on blogs and more.

Finally, she was spotted by Nan Cassidy on Music Xray, an artist developer based in Nashville together with Sharon Dennis of Dennis Management. When they heard Mary Sarah they knew there was something there. Right on Music Xray, they were able to see Mary Sarah’s stats via statistics from Next Big Sound. They could see that Mary Sarah’s Twitter, Myspace and Facebook followings were growing. Lastly, they were able to look at Music Xray’s back end statistics and that’s when they knew.

One of Mary Sarah’s songs had been submitted to industry professionals on the site 38 times and it had received an average of a 4 star (out of five) rating on every measured attribute (composition, arrangement, performance, production & hit potential).

That is the power of collective A&R!! Thirty-eight industry professionals had heard and LOVED Mary Sarah’s music but none of them had opted to (or been able to) offer her a deal. But they had taken the time to listen and rate her music because Music Xray had made that possible and due to that, Nan and Sharon were able to feel even more confident that their instincts were spot on. Nan and Sharon signed Mary Sarah to a management deal and now she’s on her way in Nashville. Subsequently, Maray Sarah won a $50,000 promotional marketing campaign from Musicati based on yet another submission.

Target opportunities like a sniper.

Grand$un is a hip hop artist from the New York area who has written and produced a couple yet-to-be hit songs. They are really good. He doesn’t have a big budget to invest so he watches Music Xray’s opportunities closely and instead of taking the shotgun approach that Mary Sarah did, he sits back and makes sure each opportunity is as close a match as possible for his songs. He submits only when he reads of an appropriate opportunity or if his songs are matched to an opportunity via Music Xray’s song to opportunity matching system (S2O).

He has secured a few opportunities but nothing that blew the doors off the hinges for him. But then, it happened and he was signed to a one-album deal at Orpheus/Fontana (Universal). You just never know when it’s going to happen. Grand$sun added, “I couldn’t have done it without Music Xray”.

In both cases, both artists were given a lot of validation by professionals on the site who told them they had what it takes to make it. That’s why, if you’re not getting deals on Music Xray, you should be getting as much professional feedback as possible. It could lead directly to a deal but at the very least you will learn how close to a deal you are, your song will accumulate data within Music Xray’s statistics back end that other professionals can see (as in the case of Mary Sarah) and you will learn what you need to do to make it happen.

Sure, it’s only a few cents at first but the more you participate the more you get paid for subsequent listens. Yeah, OK no one’s going to get rich listening to songs but you probably devote at least a little bit of time discovering new music so why not get paid for it?

Click here to sign up. Oh, and we’ll even give you a pay raise when you invite other music fans.

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/

Starting a few days ago however, we launched a feature whereby industry professionals don’t simply click a button to acknowledge they received and listened to the song, rather they now either “Select”, “Place on Hold” or “Not Select” a song for an opportunity, in which case they provide a reason or reasons for their decision not to select a song or artist.

I know this seems like the natural or normal thing to do in the day and age of web 2.0 but let’s not kid ourselves. Many emerging artists are too young to remember the days when labels, publishers and the like would not even accept unsolicited material. In my day, you’d send your demo tape or CD to a label and most likely you’d never know if it even arrived, let alone get any acknowledgement that your music had been listened to.

Getting guaranteed feedback from top A&R executives, program directors, music supervisors and more is a watershed for musicians and song owners and I am proud that Music Xray is again the first to make something like this a reality.