1.       Why am I doing this?                                                                                                                                                                                                                               I am a songwriter and enjoy home recording. I am also married and have three kids. It costs a lot to raise a family. Pursuing music as a career is just not practical for me for many reasons. But, I write songs when I have the time, and love music. I have often been frustrated with what to do with the music I make, and have, at times, asked myself and God 'Why am I doing this?'. The ‘music industry’ seems a bit too foreign and complicated to deal with and it would seem to take much time, energy and resource to tap into it. I am busy with the rest of life. Aside from that, I have had numerous songwriter friends over the years who have written songs that sounded good to me and to other friends, but they never did anything with them either. They reminded me of my situation. For whatever reason, what I was seeing sort of gnawed at me over time. Music is to be enjoyed, and if more people could enjoy a good song, why not. I saw several things come together around the same time: the Internet, music files small enough to move through the Internet and the rise of affordable home recording gear. I could see this in 1999 and it’s just gotten better over time. I did this site on the bet that there are lots of other people out there like me looking for a more simple way to get there music out without the complexity of the ‘music industry’. I am also a follower of Jesus and work in the mental health field. I am familiar with the suffering people go through in this life from work and from just being alive. I think good music should help support good causes also, in addition to paying the artist who made the music. I started a charitable nonprofit organization that is funded, in part, by revenue made through this simple music endeavor. So this site is my take on putting these things together into a cohesive whole. Whether this thing sinks or swims, it’s one of those things that would cause me regret if I never took the risk to put to put it out there.                 

2.       So, what exactly is going on here?                                                                                                                                                                      CrossoverSoundwaves.com is a web based music distribution company for independent artists. The way it works is that artists agree to participate by signing our artist agreement and then their songs are submitted to the company to be evaluated in the song jury. Once they are uploaded to the song jury, emails are sent out to jurors who like the genre of music posted. The jurors log in to the song jury, listen to the song and vote on the songs on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the highest possible rating of the song’s quality.

All songs ratings will be averaged after at least 8 ratings or votes have been completed by jurors. All songs with a 70% or above approval rating will be posted to the artist’s page. They will be available for public download at that point. Songs are available for free and fans can tip artists much like they would if the artist was playing live at a coffee house.

We have a ‘Tip Jar’ feature to facilitate tipping. After the cost of the transaction fees are taken out, the money is split 3 ways; 70% goes to the artist, 20% goes to the company and 10% goes to a nonprofit corporation called Crossover Sound Waves Inc. to help families and individuals with micro-grants to help overcome problems related to disaster relief and accessing or sustaining housing. Check out the Artist Agreement by clicking here.

3.       Is the site free for artists to host their music?
Yes. The distribution described above is in effect. For more detailed information please refer to the Artist Agreement.

4.       Does a song have to go through the Song to be on the site?
Yes, however the Song Jury can happen in several ways. One way is to go through our web-based system, which is a little more direct, involving fewer steps. Another route would be through one of our Songwriter Showcases that are structured in a similar way to the website. Participants in the audience have the opportunity to evaluate and score the artist’s songs and give feedback. Songs could technically get voted onto the site this way as well.

The biggest caveat is the quality of the digital recording. Someone could perform a song well live and get great feedback, but not capture the life of the song with the recording. If this is the case we may have the digital version go through the web-based song jury gauntlet to make sure the rendition of the song is good enough to get on the site (a live recording may be the solution in this case to see to it that the song is presented in the best light available, or accessible at the time).

Part of the reason for the song jury is that we are looking for quality songs for fans of particular styles of music. We’ve created a simple ‘peoples choice’ system that seems to be a fairly quick path from the recording studio to the listener, with as few steps as possible in between. Those steps have to do with whether people generally like the song or not.

5.       What’s up with the charitable bit?
The founder of the company (me) is a follower of Jesus, who has also worked as a Social Worker since 1986. Housing is a difficult thing to access for families coming out of homelessness, particularly in Santa Cruz County in California, where this company is based. Most people would agree that a car is no place to raise a family. Our shareholders are different in that they can be recipients of some of the proceeds from commerce on this site in a time of need. The plan is to provide help with housing, to kids in foster care and for disaster relief.

This kind of approach will hopefully attract likeminded songwriters and listeners who would like to make some kind of a tangible difference for a family or a person that needs to have more options around housing.

6.       If a song does not meet the 70% approval rate threshold, can it be resubmitted later?
The short answer is yes. Now for the longer answer….
The idea behind the song jury is to get feedback on what people who like your style of music think about your song. Whether the song makes it or not, you’ll have access to the ratings and feedback comments on your songs. Once you get that feedback, you can do what you want with it. Some of the feedback may be useful to help the song find a life of its own and be all that it can be (maybe you can sell it to the Army once that happens). Much of how this will actually work will have to be road tested, because it’s new, and how much demand there is for a service like this is unknown. We will get to find.

7.       Why don’t you use professional song critics?
We may do this in the future, but for now it's the critic that ultimately counts- the listener. A revolutionary concept behind the philosophy of this site is that ordinary people know whether or not they like a song without a critic or a marketing department from a record label advising them to do so. We want artists to find their fans, and that’s part of the reason we attempt to narrow the field a bit by trying to pair up jurors with original songs from the genre of music they like to listen to. Nothing is perfect, and we will learn as we go, but this is where we’re starting.

8.       Are songs on the website encoded with any Digital Rights Management (DRM) encoding?
No. There even seems to be a trend within the larger music industry to move away from DRM. There is also the reality that this company is not some huge record label with a large marketing department. It’s not even a label. A certain amount of viral marketing done informally through the web can be beneficial in exposing more people to great songs. If they want to find out more about the artist, they can always do a search and buy more songs. A listener that understands where the money is going may be more inclined to buy knowing that an artist they like is getting paid for their hard work, the site gets paid so it can remain online and families and individual are going to be helped with housing related issues as a result of the purchase.

9.       There are some features that are not on the site yet that would make it more user friendly. When do you  plan to make those changes (this could cover a variety of possible features- by the way, please send us your feedback whenever this come up for you)?
The goal for this site is that it will pay for itself. That would include any website development changes. We’re banking on success, and with that will come the resources to continue to develop the website so that it is a maximally effective tool for independent artists. If you, or someone you know that simply has too much money, is interested in the possibility of investing in the development of this company, please contact james@crossoversoundwaves.com.