Mike McCready

Today, Music Xray has launched a focus group feature that enables anyone to conduct a focus group for their song(s). It provides a way for musicians and industry professionals to know immediately how the market will react to a song, which market demographic is most receptive to the song and if the song has serious hit potential.

I have already initiated the search process to replace myself as CEO of Music Xray. It’s time.

While I’m confident we can get the job done with our current team, I believe Music Xray could use the skills of a seasoned entrepreneur/executive in this space who has previously taken a company from our current stage through a successful exit. There are a few in my network to whom I’m reaching out and we’re also meeting new people. There’s no rush but sooner is better than later given all we have to do in 2011.

I’ve been thinking about a clever way to describe our new Song to Opportunity (S₂O) Matching system and that’s the best I’ve come up with so far. It turns your song into an opportunity magnet.

Today we’re rolling out (in beta) what I consider to be our first tech-sexy feature – Automatic Song to Opportunity Matching; or as we lovingly call it – S₂O Matching.

Here’s how it works:

From The Music Industry Report (http://musicindustryreport.org): Why the CD is dead and what music companies need to do about it. A great short “YouTube” video that every potential Independent Label/Production Company/Artist Development Company/Management Company should watch. Jim Park Young is a Korean music executive and provides wisdom keys concerning why he feels his company has been so successful in marketing pop artist overseas. During the interview, Mr. Young also states that the Album format is dead and that the key to success for the foreseeing future will be on creating great singles and selling them online. He also states that if your focus is only toward selling music from your project, you are leaving too much money on the table.

His name is Davis Rogan. He’s a friend of some good friends of mine. I interviewed him a while back when I heard they were making Tremé and that one of the main characters was based on him. I was going to write a piece on The Huffington Post but I didn’t end up writing [...]

My neighborhood, Greenwich Village in Manhattan is home to a lot of celebrities. Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick and their children live down the street. This morning I’m on my way to the office and I see this big billboard for SJP’s next movie on the side of a building and it occurs to me that they can’t leave home without seeing that and I just wondered what that must be like. “Look kids. There’s mommy!”

We all pay for access whether we want to or not. The only choice we have is how we pay. For most people, the smartest choice is the path of lowest cost (in terms of time and money) that achieves the desired outcome, i.e. access. At Music Xray, we give artists access at the click of the mouse and for a fraction of the cost it would take most artists to access many of the same people. We don’t guarantee you place a song or that you get signed. That will depend on your song and perhaps the relationship / dialog you can strike up with the industry professional receiving the song.

The nature of the business requires music industry professionals (MIPs) to view songs and sometime acts themselves as mere products. MIPs want to be efficient. If they express interest or disinterest in a song or an act they want to be able to dispatch with the business of it either way. They want smooth sailing on the business side if a deal is to go forward and they don’t want to be endlessly hounded by the artists and their managers if they don’t have interest, use or ability to move forward. From the MIP’s perspective it’s so much easier to deal with a professional they know and have dealt with in the past than it is to deal with hundreds or even thousands of emerging artists who more often than not do not know or understand the music business.

It’s about time we sent this guy to the loony bin!

The official line is that the group fought with EMI (their label) to be able to post this video online and make it freely available. But we know that’s not true. Making viral videos has become OK GO’s trademark. Not allowing the video to go viral would be shooting themselves in the foot. OKGO is [...]