Radical Fairness

Songness is designed to find the best new independent songs online and recommend them to fans based on their individual preferences.

It doesn’t focus on hits. Heavily promoted major label songs already have recognition; we focus instead on the millions of independent songs that are excluded by the hit-making industry.

The big problem for independent artists and songwriters is gaining recognition of their songs on the Internet. The big problem for fans is finding the good new songs. They can be solved in the same way.

Most new songs can’t compete for recognition on the basis of popularity because they’re not well promoted. They can compete on quality, but a different measure is required to compare songs fairly.

Ratings are a valid measure of quality and fans already rate a lot of stuff online. They trust each other to be fair more than they trust media, advertisers, or record labels.

Here’s how we approach the recommending task: 1. Independent songwriters, musicians and labels submit songs to be rated by fans. 2. Pre-recruited fans of a genre are invited to rate each song 3. We use the best available technology to personalize recommendations to fans based on their own interests.

100,000 fans rating 30 songs a month can radically impact music marketing: more great songs will get recommended in the first place; and more fans will share more new favorites with their own friends.

• It works because fans decide what’s good and what’s not
• It’s fair because there are no thumbs on the scale
• It’s FREE for artists and labels (and we share data)
• 80% of the download price goes to song owners
• We’ll share the news with other media to give ratedsongs a bigger lift

Songness blends these interesting "mosts" in a way that creates a more level playing field for more artists. We rate new songs to define an audience for them, we help artists find new fans by recommending their songs to all of the right people, and we help fans find songs they like by predicting how they'll rate every registered song in the database.

It happens with bottom-up feedback from people like you — a creative collaboration between artists and fans. There are no pay-offs and no favorites.

The Songness team includes people with varied experience: in research, software and systems engineering, music, marketing, journalism, public relations and more.

Songness is about real feedback and information sharing. We welcome your comments any time.