A Spreadsheet of ALL OF MY SUBMISSIONS

[sguiles]

Thanks, Rutherford!

I hope to be adding the "Reason for Forward" column very soon. Until then, I'll keep writing.

[Rutherford]

Thanks, Rutherford!

I hope to be adding the "Reason for Forward" column very soon. Until then, I'll keep writing.

Cool. It's pretty nice to have that biological imperative that keeps a person moving forward. Break a leg!

Rutherford

[Casey H]

I got motivated by this thread so I started crunching my data in Excel. Found a great shortcut... Excel has a DOESITSUCK(x) function! Yup... there was quite a correlation between DOESITSUCK(x) = TRUE and getting a return!

OK, just razzing ... On a serious note, it *IS* a good idea to look over all your submissions, feedback, forwards/returns and look for patterns. That's what the info is there for. I just don't advise getting too anal retentive (or is it "anal-retentive" with a hyphen?) about it.

For example, Taxi will tell you that the majority of their returns are for being off-target to begin with. So, simply looking at whether or not you are on or off target in most of your returns will tell you a lot. Is there a PATTERN of comments on a particular track such as lyrics, melody, etc? Checkboxes can tell you something but most of us have found they are not used consistently in the same way across screeners/listings and are extremely listing dependent. So don't overdo the analysis mathematically. Reading can often trump number crunching.

Casey

[Russell Landwehr]

Checkboxes can tell you something but most of us have found they are not used consistently in the same way across screeners/listings and are extremely listing dependent. So don't overdo the analysis mathematically. Reading can often trump number crunching.

Casey

I noticed (in one of my anal attentive moments) that songs got lower scores in the "marketability" category if they were returned, but the same songs would get higher "marketability" scores when they were forwarded. So that tells me that the screeners are using that category to score the marketability of a song in relation to the listing, not in a stand-alone-sort-of-way. (there's that hyphen again, gawd I love those things ) So really everything is contextually based and you would have to be really anal-contented to build an algo-rhythm for things like that.

[gklosner]

I posted this on a similar thread (search "Keeping track of your music" in Biz Talk), but it's even more appropriate for this thread:

Okay, inspired by this thread (and the need to keep up with my submissions and the patterns), I have finally created an Excel sheet (gives more info than my Submission History page on TAXI). I do believe there are at least two DIFFERENT spreadsheets that have been alluded to in the above and other particular forum posts:

1) submissions to deals
2) deals to placements (and beyond)

I've had forwards and publishing deals, but no placements yet (except a film end-credit placement we got on our own contacts, not via TAXI), so I'm concentrating on the forward vs return patterns (the "submissions to deals" chart) at this point.

Here are my columns, if any are interested:

Title - song title, of course
Version - i.e., Orig, Instr'l, Short Intro, Solo Piano, etc. (since we all have alternate versions of the same song)
Writer(s)
Artist - some of my submissions are with my sister, and some I do on my own; could be collab'ns in the future
Key - someone in the forum mentioned that certain keys of songs tend to get fwd'd more often, so I'm testing that haha
i/v - instrumental or song (vocal)?
instr (main) - what's the primary instrument? Even if piano, guitar and other instruments are there, which one drives it?
dur'n - duration (minutes:seconds)
BPM - this might matter more to dance/techno, but I'm curious if there's a pattern for my stuff
Submit Date
Listing #
Genre (of Listing) - I put in 2-letter codes for the genre the listing is asking for (in/na/fk/rk/if, etc., similar to TAXI's)
Description - copy/paste from listing, then edit out obvious things like "broadcast quality," "submit 1 to 3...," etc.
f/r - forward or return?
Screener # - lets you know which screeners deserve a box of homemade cookies, or need to be fired hahahahaha
Comments - notable screener comments
Company - Company it got fwd'd to (x if returned)
Deal? - did this fwd lead to a deal? y or blank (I suppose you could put "n" if it was for something you know is over)
Deal Date - good to compare this date with the submission date, see how long it took
Notes - my comments to self

It's a big task overall, but I'm just doing it bit by bit, when I feel like it. Makes it more attainable, and more enjoyable to do. I like the color-coding idea, but don't really need it yet (I use colors on an Excel file I created for my Groupons haha! If you're a Groupon/coupon geek like I am, let me know if you want to know about THAT one!)

[sguiles]

Wow, Gene! Lots of cool ideas for the spreadsheet.

I'll be honest and say, now I haven't looked at my spreadsheet since I first posted it awhile back.
I think I'll revisit it soon though.