Frequently Asked Questions

What is SoundOut?: SoundOut is the market leading track-testing tool that delivers accurate consumer insight and analysis to artists, managers, labels and radio stations. SoundOut delivers detailed reports generated directly from live consumer feedback on new tracks by any artist. It is designed to provide anyone who works with music a fast and affordable way to use audience insight when evaluating tracks.

What is SoundOut Pro?: SoundOut Pro uses exactly the same process as SoundOut but provides a more extensive level of testing and reporting for industry professionals that require deeper insight across a broader range of demographic and country specific markets. SoundOut Pro is designed to deliver timely information to support commercial decisions around recording and release projects. For more details visit us here

Who should use SoundOut?: Recording artists, bands and musicians who want to know more about their tracks in terms of how, to what extent and why their music resonates with music fans, in order to make smart decisions to maximize their potential. Record labels, publishers and managers can use SoundOut to assist in their A&R work for artists and songs, and decisions around next single releases and album choices, pre-mastered recordings and marketing strategies for tracks and artists. Radio stations can also use the service to help choose the best tracks for their playlists. SoundOut is for anyone seeking consumer insight and market analysis on new music tracks.

What can a SoundOut report tell me?

The commercial market potential for the track
How good a track is overall, with guaranteed 95% accuracy
How the track rates in comparison with others in its genre
How much people like or love the track
What sex and age groups your music appeals to
What your target market should be
What the strong and weak elements of the track are (e.g. vocals, guitar, production etc)
What emotions the track generates in the listeners
What music fans honestly think of the track

What else can a SoundOut Pro report tell me?

How much people like or love the track split by age groups and gender
Which regions the music resonates in
What the music purchasing habits are of consumers the music appeals to
What the employment status’ are of consumers the music appeals to
How the track rates in comparison to other major label releases
How the track performs in UK Only, USA Only and 16-24, 25-34 and 35-44 Age Groups Only

What is the SoundOut Market Potential score? How can it tell if my track's a hit?: The market potential score is calculated using the overall track rating and passion level rating for the track, and also takes into account how much the reviewers have talked about the "commerciality" of the track in their reviews. The track rating indicates how good the track is in terms of quality and the passion rating identifies how much the reviewers liked it. The more the audience loved the track the more likely they would be to buy it.; Since Aug 2009 we have put every new release by the major labels through SoundOut, before the singles have been released (commercially or on radio). By subsequently mapping the SoundOut market potential scores of the tracks against their post-release sales performance, this has shown a definitive correlation between the two and is why we are confident that SoundOut is a good indicator of a track's sales or hit potential. It should be noted however that the relative success of a single assumes a reasonable promotional budget, and also directly relates to the existing profile of an artist.

What can SoundOut reports help me do?
Assess the hit potential of any track: SoundOut’s Market Potential forecast can show you the real commercial potential of any track, and compares where it stands in relation to thousands of other tracks.
Select the best tracks for singles, albums and promo
: SoundOut multi-track packs are an affordable way to upload all of your songs and short-list the best ones for your single and album choices, or decide which to give away as promo tracks.
Showcase the strongest tracks on EPs or Demos: A&R and industry execs are looking for hit songs, but these aren’t always your favourite tracks. They’re listening out for music that will resonate well with real people, so you can use SoundOut to select which of your tracks rates highest, and has the most commercial appeal before you send them to industry professionals, or for commercial opportunities.
Improve your songs or recordings: Use SoundOut's track analysis and objective feedback from a real audience to understand what the weakest parts of your songs or recordings are, so that you can make improvements before mixing, mastering or distributing them.
Decide where to focus marketing effort and spend: Target your music accurately to increase your fan base. SoundOut tells you who your tracks appeal to most enabling you to promote your music in the right way to the right people.
Access commercial opportunities: Artists who recieve high SoundOut ratings will have their tracks exposed to the major labels, national radio stations and music publishers that are already using SoundOut services. This will provide discovery opportunities, plus SoundOut tracks will be searchable by music supervisors, sync agents and advertisers to secure commercial opportunities.

What can SoundOut [Pro] reports help me as a music industry professional do?
Assess market for potential roster signings: Support your instincts and experience with the leading source of consumer insight and market intelligence to assess and analyze the potential market for roster signings whether as a manager, label or publisher.
A&R demo tracks and select album choices for your artists: SoundOut Like and Passion level ratings indicate which tracks resonate most strongly with target audiences. SoundOut multi-track packs are a cost efficient way to receive early analysis on multiple tracks, to ensure you select the best ones for your artists to record.
Guide and support strongest single choices for radio play and chart success: SoundOut’s accurate Market Potential forecast guarantees to uncover commercial, radio friendly hits. Use SoundOut Pro’s detailed analysis to support pre-conceptions and uncover decisions around single choices before radio plugging or release, by comparison testing your short-list of tracks with real music consumers in real-timeSupport.
Audience test mixed tracks pre-mastering to perfect recordings: Rapidly pre-test tracks with consumers before the expense of mastering, and use SoundOut’s track analysis and objective consumer feedback to adjust and perfect recordings. SoundOut delivers the right information at the right time.
Support marketing activity and spend & uncover new potential markets: What sales potential do tracks have with target audiences? Which new audiences could you present the artist to? SoundOut Pro marks the end of think and the beginning of know. Live consumer profiling, detailed demographic analysis and robust market insight helps plan accurate campaigns and highlight new markets

How do I find out about the commercial opportunities available from SoundOut?: If you get a SoundOut rating of over 7.5 for any of your tracks and would like to know more about the potential opportunities that we can help you access, contact us directly at info@soundout.com.

What's unique about SoundOut?: Most current market research techniques rely on hand picked participants who are fully aware that they are taking part in a market research exercise. This delivers subjective feedback from a targeted audience. SoundOut however combines 4 proven techniques to provide genuinely objective feedback and highly accurate results: the wisdom of crowds, computational forensic linguistics, reviewer profiling and comparative analysis. SoundOut is also very cost effective, making track testing and in depth consumer insight accessible to the every artist and any size industry player.

What is the "Wisdom of Crowds"?: This is a very powerful and proven methodology that large groups of ordinary people organized under the right conditions (a "smart crowd") outperform small groups of experts in making decisions and predictions. It is not new. It is the science behind Google and decision making in some of the largest companies in the world. It has been proven time and again that collective wisdom consistently surpasses the experts. It also means that SoundOut can guarantee 95% accuracy in track ratings. If you want to know more, we recommend you read "The Wisdom Of Crowds: Why Many Are Smarter Than The Few" by James Surowiecki.

What makes a "smart crowd"”?

A smart crowd (in our case the sample group of 80 reviewers) must be organized under the following 4 conditions to harness Wisdom of Crowds and deliver an accurate overall result:

Diversity of opinion: A sample group with many different points of view makes better decisions than one where everyone has the same information.
Independence: The individual reviewers' opinions are not influenced by others.
Decentralization: Answers are given by individual reviewers based on their own local and specific knowledge rather than by a central person.
Aggregation: SoundOut provides a way of accurately measuring the sample group's collective answer.

We've tested SoundOut over and over again by randomly feeding the same track multiple times to 80 different reviewers each time. The overall track rating always falls within a 5% range, making SoundOut 95% accurate!

Is SoundOut just computer analysis of my music?: No. SoundOut uses genuine feedback from real music fans and consumers and then analyses and interprets this data for you. SoundOut translates subjective input into objective insight in a unique way that helps you rate, comparison test and understand the market positioning of new music.

How does SoundOut work?: Every track submitted to SoundOut is fed randomly and in real-time to 80 independent reviewers on our sister site, Slicethepie or 200 reviewers for SoundOut Pro reports. They are asked to respond objectively with their rating and honest feedback. These reviews and ratings are then automatically analysed by the algorithms, computational forensic linguistic technology and other proprietary SoundOut techniques to produce a detailed SoundOut report.

Who are the reviewers? What other information do you hold on them?

The reviewers are a broad cross section of music fans and consumers sourced from our sister site Slicethepie, they do not know they are conducting market research when they hear the track, which helps to achieve honest and objective responses. We know quite a bit about them, including

Age
Sex
Location
Employment status
Genre preferences
Music buying habits (physical and digital)
Music piracy habits

How do you select the reviewers who rate and review my track? Why can't I select who reviews my track?: The sample group of 80 or 200 reviewers that reviews your track is selected automatically at random because a diverse group of reviewers is required to form a "smart crowd" that ensures you receive an accurate overall track rating. See the FAQs on "Wisdom of Crowds" and "Smart Crowd" above for an explanation about why we do this.

Can I trust the reviews? What motivates the reviewers to leave reviews? Are they compensated?: SoundOut gets its reviews from music reviewers on Slicethepie. They are genuine music fans and consumers from all over the world who anonymously review and rate tracks. They have no axe to grind, no hidden agenda and no other reason not to give their honest opinion.; We pay reviewers varying amounts for every track that they rate and review. Each of the individual reviewers are personally rated on their ability to predict the broader market view of a track – the better they are at this, the more weight their opinion carries and the more they get paid per review. Your SoundOut report identifies the star rating (quality) of the reviewers. We make the star ratings public and this encourages diligence among the reviewers.

How does the reviewing work?: Tracks submitted to SoundOut for analysis are fed randomly, anonymously and on a priority basis, to users reviewing on our sister site, Slicethepie. These users are paid to write a review and rate the track 0 - 10. The artist and track name are only revealed to the reviewer after the review has been submitted (although there is also a SoundOut option to keep this confidential). The reviewers are not aware that the track is from SoundOut until the review is successfully submitted.

How much does a SoundOut report cost?: That depends on how much detail you want from your report and how quickly you need it. Prices and sample reports can be found at www.soundout.com or please contact sharmita@soundout.com about SoundOut Pro reports.

Is payment secure?: Yes, your payment is totally secure. SoundOut uses Datacash to process all our online payments. SoundOut Pro reports are currently available to order by email only and you will receive an invoice for payment.

What does a Standard SoundOut report look like?: This is a sample SoundOut report; This is a sample SoundOut Pro report

How accurate is SoundOut?: The Wisdom of Crowds is astonishingly powerful; SoundOut reports are guaranteed to be over 95% accurate. See the FAQs on “Wisdom of Crowds” and “Smart Crowd” above for an explanation of how.

Can any artist or label use SoundOut?: Yes, SoundOut is used for niche and mainstream music and open to everyone from unsigned artists wanting genuine, unbiased feedback on their latest track to managers and labels who are looking for timely information in order to support the best decisions for their artists.

I want to keep my material private – will the reviewers know the name of my band and track?: Your track will be reviewed by our reviewers without knowing the name of the artist and the track. Once the review is submitted, that information will be revealed to the reviewer if you wish. There is an option to keep the track data anonymous when you order your report.

Can I get a report on well known music or cover versions?: No. The reviewers on Slicethepie are there to rate new, original tracks. They are likely to rate unoriginal tracks poorly, resulting in a report that will not be representative of the true merits of the track.

Do I relinquish any rights to the music by uploading it to SoundOut?: None at all, you just grant us the right to stream the track a set number of times to the reviewers for the sole purpose of collecting the reviews required to generate a SoundOut report.

Can anyone hear the tracks I’ve submitted?: No, only the designated reviewers will hear your track and once they have moved onto the next review they are unable to hear it again.

How many reviewers are going to hear the track?: 80 for a SoundOut report, 200 for a SoundOut Pro report.

Can I cancel a report once it’s been ordered?: No - once you have ordered the report the track is automatically fed for review.

How long must the track be?: We need the minimum length of a track to be at least 90 seconds long, although it makes sense for the track to be longer, so that it can be properly reviewed by the reviewer.

What format must the track be in?: Tracks need to be in MP3 format at 192kbps and encoded at a constant bit rate, the audio sample rate must be 22kHz or 44kHz.

Can anyone download my track?: No. Neither SoundOut nor Slicethepie allow downloads.

How long does it take to get my report?: SoundOut Express reports are delivered within 24 hours. SoundOut Standard and SoundOut Pro reports are delivered within 5 days.

How do I know when my SoundOut report is ready?: You will be sent an e-mail advising you that the report is available for download from your SoundOut account.

Will I receive spam and junk email?: No – we hate junk mail and spam.

How do I contact the SoundOut customer service team?: Email us at info@soundout.com