I've used musicxray. I'm fairly unhappy with the process. Each song must be submitted for 'diagnostics' before it can be submitted to opportunities. No problem with that in general, but:
- the diagnostics give you only an average, not individual feedback
- diagnostics all assume you are an artist looking for a label
- it takes forever to get 5 listens/ratings
- there is no where for you to state that you are not a performer, but a song writer.
Each diagnostic costs $10 and gets you 5 ratings from industry professionals. Again, I'm fine with the price, it's quite a deal. But... you have no indication who those pros are. Nothing indicates whether they are mostly hiphop/rock/folk/country/what-have-you. So no way to know if they actually fit the genre of the song. I write in more than one genre. He who likes rock might detest country!
Second, I've had songs sit for 2 months before getting 5 reviews.
Third, no feedback, just a rating that is averaged over all the reviews. That isn't helpful. Does a 3 mean everyone thinks it's a 3/5 or does it mean some loved it and some hate it? (Not that that indicates anything either. Millions of people hate hiphop, as an example.)
In general, I find diagnostics to be useless.
I have submitted songs for professional critique.
One got a " it's okay. I'm sure it'd be a huge hit at the pub, but it's not worth recording..." Um. Okay. Why isn't it worthy? And why, if it's likely to be a 'huge hit at the pub' is it unlikely to be a hit anywhere else? I want feedback that helps me grow. This didn't.
Another got a glowing response - 'awesome song' all the right stuff, prosody, music, lyric, etc. The only negative was ' the vocals are a little rough'. So, while this is a lovely critique for making me happy, I'm not sure it's honest and it's not really going to improve the song. (Not sure it's honest because any crit that is too good always makes me wonder. There's almost always something that could be fixed.)
On that song (vocals rough) I had to laugh. I love Neil Young, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen - none of whom has that polished perfect singing voice. I prefer non-traditional voices, and the people named (et. al.) are proof that I'm not the only one who does.
Anyway, my personal opinion of musicxray so far is that it's substantially less than ideal. I'm leaning toward joining Taxi, where at least my submissions might generate real feedback most of the time. If they reject it, they often tell you why.
