Collective A&R Statistics

You probably didn’t know that every time an industry professional receives one of your songs, they rate it. They give it a score for its composition, arrangement, production, performance and hit potential.

Songs that are submitted a number of times to various professionals on the site begin accumulating multiple ratings, all from professionals who make their living with their ears.

Each day, professionals can log into their account and view the collective ratings. They can view songs that have received high ratings across the board from multiple professionals. They can also choose to view songs that have been rated highly on composition but that maybe did not score well on production or performance. The songwriting might be excellent and while the rough demo recording might not turn any heads at radio it could easily get the attention of the manager of a celebrity act. Alternatively, “hit potential” may not be important to a music supervisor seeking a quality Jazz song. So, that supervisor can adjust his or her search to highlight songs that are consistently getting good ratings on other criteria but that may have scored low as a potential hit song.

This tool enables Music Xray to display your music to professionals to whom you never even submitted a song. Some Music Xray artists have been contacted by industry professionals they never would have thought would have an interest in their music. The key to making this tool work for you is to submit your best songs to more professionals so that it can accumulate ratings.

We currently do not reflect the ratings back to you, the musicians however, we are working on a way to do this in the near future.

At Music Xray, we are committed to creating the best environment for musicians and industry professionals to interact in ways that are rewarding for both parties and to generating the greatest number of potential paths to success for each song.

As a bit of an anecdote, these are today’s highest trending songs at industry A&R (with consistently high ratings across all measured criteria). In other words, these are a few of the songs getting the most attention on the platform right at this red hot moment:

Currently trending at Industry A&R

See You Tonight by Kotadama

 

First Move by The Branded

 

Impossible by Diamante

 

Oh No by Derrty Zo

 

Call Me Crazy by Gliffics

 

When You Come Home by Lynx ft Mystery Lady

What if you could be a fly on the wall in hundreds of A&R offices and hear which songs repeatedly get passed over after a few bars or see which songs tend to grab the attention of music professionals? That’d be pretty cool.

As long as there are commercial and professional opportunities for songs, there will be decision-makers and gatekeepers making the decisions about which songs and acts get chosen. If they themselves could get a quick bead on which songs and acts are grabbing the attention of their peers and counterparts, they collectively would be able to churn through a lot more music, pull the needles from they haystack and offer a lot more deals to independent musicians and songwriters everywhere.

Well, that’s EXACTLY the insight that Music Xray already gives to 1300 of the industry’s top song and talent seekers. The results speak for themselves: over 3500 songs and acts selected for opportunities just in the past 6 months and professional users ranging from Columbia Records to MTV.

In fact…

Here are some of this afternoon’s top trending songs:

See You Tonight by Kotadama

Carry The Weight by Krystale

Impossible by Diamante

Magical Night by Linda Basso

Nowhere Land by James Hampton

It makes almost all the music in the world available to you on-demand, 24×7. That’s just going to beat any cloud service that requires you to pay for the cloud plus pay for the music you’re going to store in it. And yes, the paradigm of owning all the music you play is familiar to the public but when access is perceived as good as ownership minus the storage and organization headaches, I can’t see how anyone is going to prefer to own more digital files than they must. Storing and organizing your documents is hassle enough for most people. A solution that helps you avoid that kind of pain will be welcome relief for most.

Apple and Amazon are formidable opponents. Spotify isn’t going to win easily and several solutions will co-exist for some time to come – but eventually, I imagine Apple and Amazon will have to become more like Spotify to remain competitive rather than outperform Spotify with their current propositions.

I’ve been a premium Spotify user for almost 18 months and a free user when I’m in Europe (1/3 of the year) a lot longer than that. I practically quit buying music as soon as I became a premium user, which enabled me to use Spotify unlimitedly in the US. I even opened a second account and gave it to my dad for his birthday last year. He quit buying music after that too and hasn’t turned back.

When access emulates ownership in the way Spotify pulls it off, there’s just no need to own music anymore. Sure, Spotify has gaps in their catalog but I’m betting market forces will require content owners to resign themselves to Spotify’s ways rather than have their content increasingly omitted from play lists or worse – forgotten – by an audience that becomes accustomed to Spotify’s access model.

And yes, I know there are other access models here in the US that have been around for the better part of a decade such as Rhapsody and more recently MOG and Rdio. But they don’t have a freemium model that lets people get a taste. That’s where Spotify can drive adoption and get people used to the access model and foster brand loyalty at the same time – thus beating their access competitors as well.

It will be interesting to watch.

Regardless, other players will do what it takes to compete more effectively against Spotify. MOG, for example, is close to launching their own freemium model and there are parts of their interface and a few features that give Spotify a decent run for their money. And Apple is not one to be in any game and not be the leader. In my estimation though, it’s just a matter of time before they will have to change their model to ultimately win against the currently superior access model and the more compelling user experience.

Great new music and discussion about the music industry.

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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.

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.

You pay $300 and Kyra Larock will organize a 30 minute face to face meeting for you with an A&R representative from any of the following labels: Jive (Sony), Capitol (EMI) or Universal or Bad Boy. I mean, seriously, if you’re serious about your career and you think you have what it takes, why wouldn’t you leap at this opportunity?

For most artists, the biggest challenge is getting in the door and here’s Kyra offering a limited number of guaranteed slots – not just a guaranteed listen by one of these executives – BUT A FULL BLOWN 30 MINUTE MEETING!!

If you’ve spent any more than that on your recording but aren’t willing to spend that on getting in front of the right people, I have to question your understanding of how the new music business works. You have to invest in yourself just like any other business invests in selling their goods and services and if you can make a meeting like this happen for any less money (not to mention how long it will take you to meet the right people and arrange the meeting), I’d like to know where.

Click here to view this opportunity on Music Xray.

Kyra Larock

Great new music and discussion about the music industry.

Listen here or subscribe via iTunes

Alternatively, subscribe via rss here.

Great new music and discussion about the music industry.

Listen here or subscribe via iTunes

Alternatively, subscribe via rss here.