HitQuarters

Contact directory

The website hosts an enormous music industry directory that includes regularly updated contact info for A&Rs, publishers, managers, songwriters and publishers. The directory is distinctive for including 'track records' for each individual entry. The idea behind this is that users can judge the value of a particular contact by reviewing their past successes. It also means that users are able to search for a particular artist and find out the appropriate A&R, manager, producer etc associated with that act.

Focus on aiding unsigned and independent

The website has a strong focus on offering unsigned and independent artists, songwriters and producers in tools to help develop their music careers, whether through attracting the attentions of record label A&R and management, pitching songs and tracks, releasing and marketing music independently, or just learning more about how the music industry works.

To this aim the website features an extensive contact database known as HitTracker, where users can find contact information for A&R, publishers, managers, producers and songwriters based on their track records, a news bulletin service, free artist promo pages, demo review feature judged by A&Rs, producers and managers, and an archive of several hundred interviews with industry figures that are geared towards offering constructive career advice and industry know-how.

Members of HitQuarters that have gone on to find success have included Christelle, The Knife, Dominique Young Unique, Bobby Creekwater, Lesley Roy and State of Shock.

Interviews and features

One of HitQuarters' most prominent features is its weekly in-depth interviews with major industry figures such as A&Rs, producers, managers, songwriters, promoters and publishers. Past interviewees have included pop impresario and entertainment mogul Simon Cowell, industry executives and A&R Martin Kierszenbaum, Mike Caren, Jason Flom, Peter Edge, Chris Hicks, Richard Russell, Miles Leonard and Ron Fair, managers Jonathan Dickins, Dumi, Louis Walsh and Eric Härle, songwriters Diane Warren, Wayne Hector, Rami Yacoub and Andreas Carlsson, producers RedOne, Chris Braide, Steve Mac, JR Rotem, Richard X and Phil Ek, and songwriter, producer and A&R Linda Perry.

The website also runs a regular demo review feature where a changing panel of industry experts review songs uploaded to the site by unsigned artists, assessing their hit potential and offering advice on how the tracks can be improved. Past judges have included Visible Noise CEO Julie Weir, and producers Colin Richardson and Eddie Galan and producer and publisher Steve "Blast" Wills.

A&R chart

HitQuarters founded the world's first A&R chart that measured the success of individual A&R representatives based on points accumulated from their respective artists' chart success. Most notably, 2004 saw Wind-Up Records' Diana Meltzer become the first woman to top HitQuarters' World Top 100 A&R Chart, a considerable achievement in what is traditionally a male dominated field. Previous number 1s have included Clive Davis, Tommy Mottola, Dr. Dre and Mark Williams.

SongQuarters

HitQuarters is a companion site to SongQuarters, an online tip sheet for "songwriting leads to major and developing artists". SongQuarters shares the same contact directory as HitQuarters and its members automatically have access to the HitQuarters site.

SongQuarters is a subscription based service with 7-day trials available for those wanting to try it out first.

The songwriting leads are split into three categories according to the level of the artist they relate to: 'Top 500', 'Newly Signed and Developing' and 'Unsigned and Up-and-coming'.