Hey peeps! I’ve been playing around with this Music Xray site for a couple of days, and I’ve gotta blog it because I’m having way more fun there than I ever thought I would.
I can’t even remember how I landed there, but basically here’s how the site works:
Music Xray is offering music fans the opportunity to participate in focus groups, provide feedback, get paid to listen to music, and influence decisions made by artists and music industry professionals. At the same time, fans can discover new songs and acts.
That’s a pretty accurate description. Festivities typically unfold like this:
- Every day you receive 3 or 4 songs in your inbox.
- You listen to the songs and answer three short questions about them, rate them on a scale from 1-5, and click submit.
- You get a little bit of money added to your balance for each song you critique.
Don’t get too excited about the money thing, because you’re not gonna make a whole lot of money here. It starts out at 5 cents per song and increases as you critique more tracks. I think the cap is like $0.40 per song, which isn’t bad for three minutes work, but like I said—still not a whole lot.
While it can be strangely amusing to watch the pennies pile up as you listen to new music, the reason I’m having so much fun is because these are real people asking (paying!) for brutally honest opinions on their music, and looking to break through.
Every day I receive four(ish) songs in my in-box… Even if three of them are garbage and one is a gem, then it’s still a damn good day. I subscribed to every single genre except country, because frankly I’m enjoying listening to all the stuff I’d never seek out in real life.
Today I listened to a metal song for the first time in like five years and even though I hated it, it was still kinda fun to rate it.
Then I listened to this pop-rap number where the hook was something like, “come take a ride with me shorty,” or something like that. I clicked dislike about 10 seconds in, but you can’t submit your rating until the song has streamed all the way through. So I’m listening to this thing and I realize, wait a minute—the production on this song is actually rock solid. Then I realize another thing; this song is catchy as hell from a mainstream perspective.
I’m not joking when I say that song had enormous radio potential. Whoever put that track up looking for feedback was not seeking the opinion of an indie niche blogger that gravitates toward shoegaze and folk. He wanted to know whether his song had the potential to be a mainstream hit, and it damn well did.
I changed my rating from dislike to like, gave it a 4/5, and commented that even though I hate his style I can’t deny he’s got producing chops and definite mainstream appeal.
That was kind-of an eye opening experience because it’s easy to get caught up in this little indie-world of ours and forget about everything else that’s out there. It’s a fun little site, and I’d definitely recommend trying it out. You don’t have to subscribe to every single genre like I did, but sometimes it can be fun to leave the indie-sphere for three minutes and get a nickel for it.
