Frequently Asked Questions

What is SoundOut?: SoundOut is an online track testing and consumer insight and analytics service for recording artists, artist managers, record companies and radio stations. SoundOut provides detailed and accurate reports generated directly from consumer feedback on new tracks. It is designed to give artists, labels, broadcasters and anyone else who works with music rapid and accurate market insight when evaluating new tracks.

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 can use the SoundOut Pro service to assist in their A&R work and decisions around artist signings, next single releases and marketing strategies around recordings and artists. Radio stations can also use this service to help choose the right tracks for their playlists. SoundOut is for anyone seeking consumer insight and analytics on new music.

What can a SoundOut report tell me?

How good a track is, with guaranteed 95% accuracy
What your target market should be
What sex and age group your music appeals to
Whether the track has broad or niche appeal
What emotions the track generates in the listeners
What the strong and weak elements of the track are (e.g. vocals, guitar, production etc)
What music fans honestly think of the track

What can SoundOut reports help me do?
Showcase the right 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.
Select the best tracks for albums and singles: Use the SoundOut multi-track packs to upload all of your songs and short-list the best ones for your album and single choices, by accurately gauging audience reaction and getting objective feedback from real music fans on each track.
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 provides discovery opportunities, plus SoundOut tracks will be searchable by music supervisors, sync agents and advertisers to secure commercial opportunities.

How do I find out about the commercial opportunities available from SoundOut?: If you get a SoundOut rating of over 7 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 combines 4 proven techniques to provide genuinely objective feedback: the wisdom of crowds, computational forensic linguistics, reviewer profiling and comparative analysis. SoundOut is also very cost effective, making in depth consumer insight accessible to the mass market.

What is the "Wisdom of Crowds"?: Simply put, the fact that with the proper structure and characteristics, large groups of ordinary people 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 90% accuracy in track ratings. If you want to know more, we can recommend some good books on the subject...

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

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

The reviewers are a broad cross section of music fans and 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 does SoundOut work?: Every track submitted to SoundOut is fed randomly and in real time to 80 reviewers on our sister site, Slicethepie. These reviews and ratings are then automatically analysed by the algorithms, computational forensic linguistic technology and other proprietary SoundOut techniques to produce a SoundOut report, an example of which can be found here.

Can I trust the reviews?: SoundOut gets its music reviews from Slicethepie. The music reviewers on Slicethepie are genuine music fans who anonymously review and rate tracks. They have no axe to grind, no hidden agenda and no other reason not to give you their honest opinion. Each of those 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 reveals the star rating (quality) of each reviewer beside each review.

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 here.

Is payment secure?: Yes, your payment is totally secure. SoundOut uses Datacash to process all our online payments.

What does a basic SoundOut report look like?: A sample report can be found here.

What do I get with the Standard SoundOut report?: A sample report can be found here.

How accurate is SoundOut?: The Wisdom of Crowds is astonishingly powerful; SoundOut reports are normally over 95% accurate.

Can any artist or label use SoundOut?: SoundOut is open to everyone from unsigned artists wanting genuine, unbiased feedback on their latest track to hardened industry veterans who’d like to spend more time working with their artists and less time sifting through mountains of demo tapes.

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. However 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.

Can anyone download my track?: No. Neither SoundOut nor Slicethepie allow downloads. In addition, once your track has been served to the requisite number of reviewer it is permanently deleted and only the review data is retained.

How long does it take to get my report?: Dependant on the type of report you require, this can range from under 24 hours to 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 the SoundOut site.

What if I get a SoundOut rating over 7?: If you get a SoundOut rating over 7 for any of your tracks and would like to find out more about the potential commercial opportunities that we can help you access, contact us at info@soundout.com.

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

How can I cancel my SoundOut account?: If you wish to cancel your membership please click here and follow the instructions on the site.

I have lost my password/username, what do I do?: Click here to be sent a reminder of your password.

I still can't log in – HELP!: Just send an email to membership@soundout.com, include your date of birth and our customer support team will help.

How do I report an error on SoundOut?: In the unlikely event of an error occurring, please e-mail our customer support team who will get back to you as soon as they can.

I'm a journalist and want to get in touch with SoundOut, how do I do this?: E-mail us at press@soundout.com.

I'm a media company - how do I advertise on SoundOut?: E-mail our Customer support team who will forward your request to the correct department.

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. After this the track is permanently deleted.

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. Once your track has had the designated number of reviews it is permanently deleted.

How many reviewers are going to hear the track?: 80.

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. There is a maximum file size of 5Mb per track.