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.

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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 will award $300 (plus your earnings) to the user who drives the most traffic to Music Xray in March through the use of their affiliate code. So, get started! But you can make money with your affiliate code even if you don’t want to compete. Keep reading.

If you add your affiliate code to the end of any Music Xray URL, anyone who clicks on it will be tracked as having reached Music Xray through you. Even if they leave the site without signing up and then come back a month later, they will still be tagged as someone you referred. You get paid 15% of our margin for every transaction the person you referred conducts on Music Xray – FOREVER. Not just the first transaction but rather every transaction for as long as they have an account on the site.

Your earnings are reflected in your account balance which you’ll see on your dashboard when logged in.

If you don’t want to bother customizing an email and tacking your affiliate ID on the end of URLs, you can just click one of the buttons within your account to invite artists, fans or industry professionals and an email is automatically sent to them with your affiliate ID already included. BUT, if you want to do it, it works like this (see below for ideas on how to most effectively use affiliate ID’s):

Grab any URL from the site that you think someone might be interested in. For example, let’s say you know someone who might have a perfect song for Trace Adkins. At the time of this writing, Torrez Music Group is conducting a search for such a song and the drop box is found at this URL: http://www.musicxray.com/profiles/626. HOWEVER, if you want to get credit for sending someone to that URL, you should tack your affiliate code onto the end of it and instead send them a URL that looks like this:

http://www.musicxray.com/profiles/626?afid=55f8e620e868012c5dc81231390a1e12

Be sure to use your own affiliate code and not mine or I’ll get the credit instead of you. Also, notice that between the end of the URL and your affiliate code you have to put “?afid=”. That’s just telling our system that the numbers that follow are the affiliate code and not something else. You can see how that’s explained on your settings page and in the image above.

Also, note that you do not have to send people long ugly URLs. You can simply embed that long URL into a link like in the following example:

…..

Hey Bill, I saw that Trace Adkins is seeking music and I thought you might want to send him one of your songs. Click here.

…..

You will notice that the link I embedded in the words “click here” includes my affiliate code.

Here are some other ideas for how you can make this work for you.

Send your contacts to the special offer page

If you’d just like to get people started on Music Xray you can simply send them to the special offer page located here: http://www.musicxray.com/new-artist-account (just be sure to tack your affiliate code on the end of that URL and you’re good to go. You’ll notice that we have a no-brainer deal for anyone considering starting with Music Xray. All new accounts get:

1. Free Uploading and/or importing of all their original music.
2. Free matching of their songs to real industry opportunities.
3. A free focus group on their music (we will pay up to 25 respondents for feedback on their music).
4. A free $8 credit to get them started (enough for two submissions to major labels).
5. Guaranteed feedback on every submission.
6. Guaranteed response time or their money back.

Start your own newsletter

Feel free to start your own weekly (monthly, daily, whatever) music opportunity newsletter and send it to musicians you know, post to your MySpace or Facebook accounts and whatnot.

Post opportunities on your blog, band site, Facebook, tweet them or post them in the comments section of sites you visit (when relevant)

If you have a site with decent traffic and you’d like us to curate a special rss feed of opportunities with your affiliate link already embedded, we can do so. Just contact us at support@musicxray.com and we’ll get you started.

Have Music Xray send a fancy schmancy email to your contacts

If you have more than 500 contacts you’d like to tell about Music Xray, we can create a special and very professional email for you with a selection of some of the most attractive opportunities together with a special offer for those just creating new accounts now. That email might look something like this (but it would have your affiliate code embedded into all the links).

Get started using your affiliate codes now!

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.

Focus Groups Results Page

This feature helps artists and industry professionals reduce risk by increasing confidence in the potential of music before spending large amounts of money in mass promotion efforts.

Do you ever see random people on the subway or at the store and think to yourself, “I wonder what their life is like.” or “What’s that guy’s deal?” Well, About.me gives you that little window into people’s lives – albeit in a way that is completely controlled and curated by the person you’re wondering about. And while that’s not quite the same, it is pretty interesting. It’s also noteworthy to realize that About.me is legitimizing the “vanity blurb” in a way that no other social network or profile page has. Because About.me is meant to be a quick digital calling card, it seems to be more accepted to “advertise” yourself in a way that would be seen as more narcissistic on other sites including Facebook and even LinkedIn.

I’ve seen a lot of different profiles over the past few days and I’ve categorized them into five types. I’ve given them names for the purpose of simplification. Which one are you?

The upstart professional: These are posted by people who may be young, just getting going in their careers and who don’t have a lot of accomplishments under their belts to mention so they come up with clever ways of saying who they are. Maybe they have a great photo or a unique depiction of themselves to go along with it. The strategy seems to be to call attention to themselves via their profile page and to say a few words simply about what defines them most. Here’s an example. Here’s another one.

The photographer or designer: About.me pages are perfect for these kinds of professionals because they can display their work right on the page itself. The page actually features what they are good at doing. They don’t need to say too much about themselves because the page design or the photo says it all. Here’s an example of that. Here’s another one.

The “too successful to mention” professional: These are profiles by people who are so successful or so well-known that they don’t have to say much about who they are. In fact, they can completely understate it without appearing to be falsely modest. These are people who are on TV or are otherwise famous. Here’s an example of that. Here’s anther one.

The successful (but still rising) crowd: I fall into this category. This is the kind of profile for people who are mid-career, have a few successes under their belts but are relatively unknown and still need to let people know who they are and what they’ve done so they can continue to build upon it. Speaking for myself, I find that if someone is going to read something about me and I miss the opportunity to put my best foot forward I will end up missing out on further opportunities to achieve the next level of success – something I’m very focused on at this stage of my life. Here’s an example of that. Here’s another one.

The professional whose organization lends them considerable prestige: OK, kind of a long name for a category but this is the category for professionals who are moving up, who are probably pretty talented and successful but who can afford to understate it because the organizations they work for lend them credibility. They don’t need to “show off” by listing their achievements. Here’s an example. Here’s another.

So there you have it. This isn’t a definitive list and I’m sure you can think of more categories or better define the ones I’ve listed. If you create a profile for yourself be sure to post it here in the comments section or on my Facebook wall so I can check it out.

The idea was based on the fact that we all have multiple scattered social networks in which we’re present. Youtube, Facebook, Myspace, Flickr, Twitter, LinkedIn… plus many people have their own blog. The best place to find someone online depends on what type of interaction you’re seeking with that person.

What we need is a sort of digital calling card that tells people a little bit about us and then directs them to the various other online locations where we can be found.

That’s what about.me is about. You go there, sign up, get your own vanity url such as http://about.me/yourname and then use their tools to easily design a nice little profile for yourself. Here’s mine: http://about.me/mikemccready

Another cool feature is their statistics dashboard that lets you see how many times people view your profile and other little tidbits of fun data. Wow! Back when I was in school I never thought I’d say the words “fun” and “data” in the same sentence.

About.me was in beta trials for most of the year they’ve existed and they emerged from beta just over a week ago. Then, yesterday it was announced they were acquired by AOL for an undisclosed amount. One of the founders had previously sold another company to AOL so both he and his investors are probably happy to an undisclosed degree today.

On the top of each profile page, there’s a little button you can click that will take you to a random profile and you can also go to the directory to see some of the featured ones. People have gotten really creative and there are some excellent designers, photographers and poets coming up with all sorts of creative ways to create their own personal brand.

It’s also a great little link to put below your signature in emails. A little click and people will know a little bit about you. And just like all things digital, you can change it whenever and as often as you like. So far, it’s completely free. I wonder how AOL plans to monetize it and when.

About me

What I’ve learned is that nothing replaces the expert human ear when it comes to A&R. However, technology has emerged that can enhance the music industry’s human skills in much the same way a medical doctor’s skills are enhanced by the X-ray machine and other modernities. The X-ray machine doesn’t do the job of the doctor. It just gives the doctor additional information upon which better decisions can be made. Today, no one would consider seeing a doctor who doesn’t use state of the art technology.

So whether it has been using computers to help predict hit songs or developing an A&R platform that harnesses state-of-the-art technology to help the industry perform better, solving the music filtering problem has been my passion for a long time.

I’ve been thinking about a clever way to describe Music Xray’s new Song to Opportunity (S₂O) Matching system and the best way I’ve come up with (so far) is that:

It turns your songs into opportunity magnets.

Or maybe it’s the match.com for songs and opportunities to find each other.

Maybe it’s the Pandora for A&R…

However we describe it, I think it’s pretty cool. You upload your songs for free and then sit back and wait to be alerted when an industry professional is seeking a song like yours. Give it a shot. The more songs you upload the more alerts you will get.

Here’s how it works:

1. Some of the hundreds of music industry professionals who use Music Xray to find songs and acts have given us a few “seed” songs. That is, songs that have a musical style and sound similar to what they would like to have submitted to them. For example, if they are seeking a new single for Britney Spears they might give us a few of her songs plus an additional song in the style and sound they are seeking.

2. Music Xray uses software to analyze the acoustic properties and underlying mathematical patterns of the “seed” songs and compares them to those in songs that have been uploaded for free into the company’s system by artists and rights holders.

3. Music Xray notifies the artists when there is a match between what professionals are seeking and the artists’ songs.

We’re not making any formal announcements nor really talking much about this while the service is in beta. Nevertheless, we’re thrilled that Music Xray is pushing the envelope. It’s the first enhanced A&R platform in the world. It harnesses cutting edge technology to enable the industry to filter through large quantities of music to find the most appropriate songs for each opportunity.

This is A&R on steroids.

Click here for more information.

Click here for my most recent wander into the fray of 12 million Huffington Post readers

Don’t get me wrong. I think the entrepreneurs who are making music and acts easier to promote, distribute and find are doing a HUGE and much needed service. I recommend using them and really like many of the people behind these companies. The thing is, artists aren’t directly benefiting – at least not much. Do you know who is? Other entrepreneurs and the business people who are interested in getting behind acts to give them a big push. These new services have made it possible for smaller teams with fewer resources to compete against the big boys and get real results. But don’t let anyone fool you into believing it can be done by the artist themselves and for no money at all.

If you’ve been following what I’ve been saying lately you’ll remember I discussed a little experiment we did a few weeks ago where we tracked how effective artists are at promoting their own music to fans and strangers on the web. For the most part we reached the conclusion that firstly, artists aren’t very good at promotion and secondly that the audience is a bit burned out by all the requests to listen to new music that bombard them ever more frequently.

What does this mean? Mostly it means that if as an artist you want to stand out (and in addition to great music) you need a team. You need differentiating factors that will help you rise above the noise of every other artist out there trying to gain traction. It’s not unlike the challenges that are faced by a new company trying to enter a crowded market. You have to have marketing know-how, smart people who can execute a well-thought-out plan and you have to have the resources (read “money”) to make it happen.

Don’t shoot the messenger. You’re better off knowing this stuff than living in denial.

The new tools that have been developed by start-up companies to help artists get more done for less have really taken a bite out of the traditional music industry who have historically done things very inefficiently. Now, all the right moves can be made for less money but let’s be real, not for no money at all!

So, here’s one way to get it done (I discuss more of this stuff on my podcast: http://www.mikemccready.com/the-song-cat-ar-podcast/

1. First and foremost you have to have great music. That’s a given. Get some professional feedback. Knowing that your mom, girlfriend, group of friends or other local musicians dig your sound is not enough. Usually it’s not real validation. Get the professional opinion of people who have made a living off their golden ears and gut instinct. Be flexible. Your song’s not done until you say it is. It can always be changed and improved upon if you get good feedback you believe in. And yes, it can be hard, rigorous work. That’s what separates the pros from the hobbyists. Oh, and one last thing on this point; just because someone else might be able to bang out a great tune on the first try and it takes you a bit longer, don’t despair. Take your time. The time it takes to write a great song is not a measure of talent. It’s a measure of experience and inspiration. Plenty of masterpieces were written over time.

2. Professionally record your music. Hey, don’t get points one and two in the wrong order. Don’t go spend a lot of money recording your songs before you’ve honed them from the songwriting perspective. Also, no need to go out and spend $5,000 in the best studio you can find. You’re probably going to have to record them more than once and perhaps with a couple different producers so work your way into this. Do something first that illustrates your style and sound first. Make sure it sounds good and as close to radio ready as possible so that the listeners don’t have to use their imagination to hear how the song “could” sound. At the same time, you don’t have to hire Steve Lillywhite right away. Continue to get feedback and go spend the big bucks when you know you’ve got it right.

3. As you’re working on points one and two be performing live. That’s more important for honing your stage presence than it is for building a local following. Yes, you want to build a local following but more than that you want to be an awesome live performer. Learn to love performing live if you don’t already. Your revenue from live performances will be a big part of your income. Consider working with people who specialize in career coaching and artist development.

4. Get the right people to hear your music. As I’ve said in previous posts. Most of the time it’s going to take a mass exposure event or series of events to break you as an artist. The slow build is nice and you should continue to do that but it’s the so called “lucky break” that’s going to get it done for you every time. They call it a lucky break but luck is just the convergence of being prepared for success while you knock on every door trying to make it happen. When you know you’ve got the right song, sound and look – go for it. Submit your song to every appropriate opportunity. Chances are that if the professionals you’re getting feedback from in step one are telling you you’re ready, you’re ready and a deal will come if you just get your music into enough of the right hands. Heck, some of the professionals who are giving you feedback might even be the ones who end up offering you a deal. You never know.

Interact with industry professionals. Build the relationships and make sure your music is getting heard by the people with the power to make the decisions. It’s truly not about how many people hear it through your own efforts. It’s about how many of the right people hear it so they in turn can give you the oppotunity to get your music in front of millions.

You’re more likely to get this all done right with a solid team around you. You’re not likely going to be able to do this all on your own. Get someone who is good at business and who will work night and day for you to get your music into the right hands. If you don’t know anyone locally who can help you, consider submitting your music to managers seeking to manage new bands.

We live in an attention market where someone first has to get you to pay attention before they’ll ever get you to pay money. For some people, attention is an even scarcer commodity than money is. With as much stuff, information, and people bombarding us all day long something has to seem pretty compelling on the surface for us to bother. For you, the title of this post was compelling. For many others it wasn’t and these words will go unread.

But my point is, we just conducted a bit of an experiment at Music Xray I think you’ll find interesting. Each of our artists showcase their music for free in what we call a Song Presentation Pack and that looks like like this: http://present.musicxray.com/xrays/1569/public (no, they don’t look like that link. You have to click on it).

We ran a contest and the top three artists to get the most views of their Song Presentation Pack over a 3 week period won $150 to spend on Music Xray.
There were a few hundred entries. The artists lit up Facebook and Twitter and their blogs, but not much happened. The winning song had fewer than 200 views/listens.

Now, these are the possible reasons:

1. Artists just weren’t motivated by the contest or prize (possibly but probably not the case since these are artists who are pretty engaged with our site).

2. Artists are really bad promoters (possibly but not all of them and having a contest should reveal those that are pretty good at it).

3. The audience is apathetic and harder to engage than ever because they’re jaded and attention is scarce.

Now, I’m not saying number 3 is the answer and our experiment wasn’t scientific, but the evidence is there and my gut tells me it could be the case.

With so many DIY musicians out there, how can any of them distinguish themselves?; even the good ones if the audience is jaded and won’t give them the time of day? Is it as true now as it’s ever been that most artists need professional advocates, evangelists, publicists, labels, mass exposure events and to partner with people who can help them get to the next level?

What do you think?

This week’s new opportunities: http://eepurl.com/s1jv