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.

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Music Industry Fat Cat

Another problem is when industry people write usurious contracts with the artists. This occurs most often when the artist has weak negotiation position and no good alternatives to an agreement with the label. For every hour the act was practicing in the garage the label was paying a team of attorneys to figure out how to keep as much of every dollar of revenue they possibly could and then to write those ideas into the contracts. I believe that continues to occur today, even in the form of the new 360 deals.

So… just thinking out loud here:

One solution to this is for an artist to hire their own team of business professionals and consultants on an as-needed basis. If an artist can get financial backing from an angel investor (just like any other start-up) they can then pay the industry professionals for promotion, PR, artist development, production, distribution and whatever else they need and the artist can retain almost all of their rights (minus whatever percentage they sold to their investor) and they remain in control. I know most artists don’t have the kind of funding it takes to accomplish that, but it might be a better model for the future.

Then, there are the sites like Slicethepie and Kickstarter when artists can go try to raise funding from their fans. In theory they’re just raising funds for recording but they might do better if they reposition it as funding for all aspects and expenses involved in getting an artist from point A to point B. And, just like with any other start-up, the band would need to put a trusted CEO / Manager in place to assure the investors their investment would be properly and wisely managed. These business mercenaries that the artist would have to hire and are readily available and they’re looking for work now that the industry has laid so many of them off.

Please contact me if you would consider being:

1. A salaried band manager with a small success-based incentive fee and continued employment only guaranteed by your results.

2. An angel investor for the right act assuming it were managed professionally.

Check it out.

Update – The podcast was just approved and accepted by iTunes:

Click here to get it on iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=370842199

In this episode, I feature Jag Star, Lucy Woodward, Simon Fagan and Jennifer Daniels.

I’d love your feedback.

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

At Music Xray we send out a mass email every Tuesday to tens of thousands of artists who have signed up on our site to receive them for free. This is a link to the one we sent today: http://eepurl.com/rX8D

Today, we got back an email from a disgruntled artist that said, “YOU PEOPLE ARE THE WORST KIND OF LOW LIFE LEECHES THE SLEAZY MUSIC BIZ. HAS TO OFFER… I’M NO LONGER STUPID WHEN IT COMES TO THE KIND OF SCAMS YOU’RE PEDDLING”.

I’ve said before that I do not blame any artist for feeling jaded. The music industry has a long history of mistreating artists and you don’t have to look very far to find artist-facing internet sites that are well-meaning but that can’t live up to their promises. Many times that’s due to the fact that they can’t muster the traffic it takes to help an artist promote their music. Other times, they don’t have the ability to attract industry professionals to their sites to do deals with the artists. Either way, there are simply a lot of dead end sites for artists out there. Artists end up uploading their music over and over again to tons of sites and have little to show for it. Frankly, with over 13 million artist profiles on MySpace alone it’s no wonder it’s harder than ever to stand out.

Yet, we keep hearing all about the new tools that make it easier than ever to do it yourself. Get a MySpace page, a ReverbNation presence, a website, a digital distribution deal and you’re set. Except it’s not working. I’m not saying artists shouldn’t have that stuff. They should. They have to just to be in the game. But it’s nowhere near enough. Most of the time, it’s still going to take a mass-exposure event (or series of events) to break a new act. To break out. To break through.

Nevertheless, the harsh reality is that if you’re and artist and you’re planning on making any money with your music you have to either be good at the business or you have to go into partnership with people who are. Most people aren’t good at both sides of that equation so teaming up is the only option. But revenue generating deals are like pretty girls at the dance. They have no shortage of suitors. It’s easy to resent that (I know I did) but resenting it doesn’t change it.

The fact is, deals between artists and industry people happen every day but if you’ll permit me to continue with the analogy, the pretty girl is definitely not going to dance with the boys who don’t ask. Getting discovered as an artist is very much the same these days. Just because an artist has a lot of fans and plays on MySpace isn’t likely to get the artist a deal. The artist must submit music to and interact with industry professionals. They must build relationships. They must get feedback and advice on how to get deals. Industry professionals aren’t out looking for artists these days because they don’t have to. The artists come to them. Artists have to hustle. That’s just the way it is and artists can decry it but it’s not going to change until there are more opportunities than artists – and if an artist waits for that to happen the opportunities will continue to pass them by.

So, when we get an email like the one I quoted above my reaction is not to get angry or to feel attacked. It makes me motivated to help artists get over feeling jaded and help them find the real opportunities to generate revenue with their music.

What do you think?

OKGO is more known for their videos than their songs – even though I do think their music is pretty good. If you’ve never seen these guys you might want to watch the videos in reverse order, starting at the bottom of this post. This first one was choreographed by one of the band member’s sisters and was shot in one take. It did so well on the web that their next video was done in the same vein but using treadmills.

I remember sitting in Capital EMI offices in 2005 having a discussion with the band about computer-based hit predictions and they were not buying it at all. They had yet to release their first song through EMI so they were completely unknown. I guess they believed much more in viral video-based hit prediction and I definitely it worked for them even though we had predicted that the music alone wasn’t enough to get them on the charts. Anyway, these are great videos so even if you’ve seen them they’re worth watching again.

This new video is much more entailed but seems to be equally good. It’s for their new song “This Too Shall Pass”

This is their second video to their song called “Here It Goes Again”. By the way, the guy singing in the video is (as I understand) not their lead singer. He’s actually the drummer but he does play the role of the lead singer in their videos. Just another one of their quirks.

This is their first video to their song called “A Million Ways from 2005″

Speaking of “hey look at me!” posts… early last year I thought I wanted to do a series of video podcasts that featured (rather, sort of compared and contrasted) Barcelona and New York. I go back and forth quite a bit so I thought I could get plenty of fresh footage on an ongoing basis and I was having all these ideas about how the two cities could be juxtaposed.

I was going to do the whole series in Catalan (so, obviously not directed at an English speaking audience). In the end, I just couldn’t get it together to make more than the first installment so I never posted it. I just had too much on my plate and I wasn’t getting any strong indicators that there would be a lot of interest. For what it’s worth, here it is.

For you non-Catalan speakers, what I’m pointing out in the video is that New York is beautiful and imposing as seen from above or from a distance but when you get down into the city it’s a bit gritty, industrial and it could use a makeover. Barcelona in contrast, isn’t so pretty as seen from above but when you get down into the city it’s one of the most beautiful cities in the world with great infrastructure and manicured public spaces. I make a few other comparisons and contrasts as well. You get the point.

I don’t foresee making any more of these.

A principis de l’any passat vaig voler fer una sèrie de vídeos curts que comparaven i contrastaven Barcelona i Nova York. Ja que vaig i vinc sovint, pensava que sempre tindria suficient metratge i no deixava de tenir idees de com relacionar les dues ciutats.

Entre una cosa i l’altra només vaig fer el primer episodi. Vaig començar a tenir massa feina i no detectava que hi hauria prou interès com per justificar la continuació. De totes formes, aquí tenim el vídeo que sí que vaig acabar. No crec que en faci més però si us agrada passeu-lo. A veure que us sembla.

Salut!