For the last 3-4 years we have been helping unsigned artists and bands getting their music heard. Having been in contact with thousands of different bands from all over the world, we have come to learn a lesson or two, and would love to share these with you. This is the first one we will share.

There are countless artists and bands in the world, who are all competing for the same limited amount of record deals. So what can you do about it?

As we see it, you’ve got two choices:

1. Forget the traditional code of practice and sell your music online yourself, or
2. Take pro-active action towards getting a record deal at a major record label. Do this by branding yourself as a great “investment”

The traditional code of practice

The traditional code of practice is to record a demo and send it to the A&R people (the people at a record label who look for new talent to sign) at various record labels and hope to get signed if the label likes your music. This is not how it’s done anymore.

Start by asking yourself: “How many demos do you think a major record label receives daily?” The answer is probably hundreds or thousands.

Now ask yourself: “How likely is it that they’ll listen to my tracks and sign me compared to hundreds of other artists?” Got the answer? Slim to none.

You can take matters into your own hands by uploading your music for distribution on iTunes etc. We would like to help you with this at TrackTesting.com, where you can learn a lot more on selling and distributing your own music online. If this choice is not for you, read on – if it is, feel free to go to www.TrackTesting.com to learn more.

Pro-active action

Major record labels are all about business. You get signed by a record company, if they think you can sell a lot of records and earn a lot of money for the record label.

The bad news is that the record labels want to sign you if they think you can sell a lot of records. They want to sign the artists and bands they think are commercial – even if it means compromising the quality of the music, and commonly won’t sign the high quality artists and bands if they don’t believe in the commerciality in them.

The good news is that you can easily satisfy the record labels demand for commerciality. The secret behind this is minimizing the record labels risk to sign you. As cynical as it may sound, you want to look like a good investment opportunity for the labels, because that is exactly what they are looking for. And if you can show them that you can make the record label money, they will put a lot of hard work into you guys.

So how do you do this? How do you brand yourself as a safe investment for the record labels?

There are three simplified steps to the process:

1. Write great songs
2. Create a image for you as an artist/band
3. Build your fan base

Write great songs

This one should not be hard to understand, and not something we can help you with. But we can help you find out which of your songs your potential fans think are great. See more below.

Create an image for you as an artist/band

Marketing is everything, and you need to emit an attitude that complies with your genre and music style.

Build your fan base

This is a critical part of convincing the record labels that you will be a great investment. Having a fan base means that there are people who are already buying your music and going to your concerts. So play all the gigs you can get hold of – even the ones who does not include any pay. You want to get your unique image and great songs in front of as many people as possible.

Another step you can take to get your music a commercial rubber stamp, is to upload your music for testing and feedback at TrackTesting.com. TrackTesting offers a unique service for unsigned bands and artists. You get the opportunity to upload your music for testing and feedback, which means that your track is sent to 200-300 of our many thousand testers from all over the world.

The testers listen to your song and give it a score and a comment, and you will receive a test report with invaluable information. The strength of the test report comes from the segmentation of our testers, who are divided according to age, gender, geographical location, music taste etc., which gives you, as a musician, a detailed overview of what you can do even better with regard to your music and who your greatest fans are.

Furthermore, TrackTesting can handle putting your music up for sale online, and each month, the tracks with the best ratings will be sent to A&R people at leading record companies. If your music receives a good rating, your music has already been given a seal of approval by a wide selection of the population and has therefore gotten a commercial rubber stamp.

Go to TrackTesting.com now to upload a track for testing and feedback

Now we’re introducing a very important step – The Pro Panel

Pro Panel consist of music professionals with a proven position as DJ, Club DJ, Radio Playlist Commitee Member, A&R on a label, Music Producer or similar. Only the very best of our Full Track test will qualify for being tested in the Pro Panel and as an artist you will definitely want your music at the Pro Panel as you will have the chance to be spotted by these music professionals.

At our pre test we have had 4 artists and bands that has been signed to one of the major labels, several tracks being played intensively in the radio and lots of tracks being played at the clubs.

How do I get my music into the Pro Panel? You will only be able to enter the Pro Panel if your tracks scores enough in both the sound bite test and the full track test. If your track has qualified for the Pro Panel you will be invited to join.

If you are a music professional you can join the Pro Panel here

Music distribution and promotion

We have a goal here at TrackTesting which is to help as many Artists & Bands to reach the market. We have been doing a lot of testing during the last 3 years and have a lot of loyal users here at tracktesting.com. Therefore, we are proud to announce that we have launched our new application for www.myspace.com and so far it has been a success.

Artists & Bands are able to upload their music for test and get a qualified feedback report as known from www.tracktesting.com. The user base is merged with our existing so we can ensure a fast result as usual.

So now we have our own space at www.myspace.com – go and test it…..

By connecting to your friends you will have the opportunity to discuss music with them and if you are an artist or a band you will have the opportunity to invite all your friends. Unfortunately, we can’t guarantee that they will be invited to test your music as this will twist the test result. I bet, if invited my friends for voting on my music I would get A+ all over the line. But we promise that this will help other artists and bands getting an opinion on their music. And this opinion is really important. So please, go invite your friends – and they will of course receive gift cards when doing a music test.

And the best part is that we have made some beta tests showing that people think your music is better when they see a picture of you. So by adding some more information you can improve your test results.

Well, most of our users are from abroad and speaks english so we decided to upgrade you to business class and give you free gift cards for amazon.com Music Download – go check it out – their music download shop is awesome.

During the last year we have only focused on features for improving the tests and we think we have done pretty well. So now it is time to spoil our users with our new a glamorous style.

As we are pretty happy about testing all kind of things – though focusing on the music – you will experience a lot of different design updates during the next 3-6 months. This is because we need to know what performs the best and giving our users the best experience. 

You are always welcome to write us for feedback and suggestions on our site and we would also like to hear how your user experience is.

The latest improvement we have made is to segment the tracktesters into different genres. So now, if you are a hip hop fan we won’t bother you with rock or pop but only the newest and coolest hip hop. We think this is awesome as it gives more presice tests.

Why?

• Musicians: The test results are now much more relevant, as many testers previously rated songs bad “just because they do not like the kind of music”
• Track Testers: Will now only be asked to listen to music they like, and will only have to hear music from their 3 favorite genres = a lot more fun!