About Our Ratings & Reviews

Songhack’s Tools section contains reviews and ratings of digital products and services for musicians. There are over 100 companies with products marketed directly to the career musician. We are the only comprehensive source for user ratings and reviews in the whole market.

User Reviews

In addition to our editorial reviews, we encourage users of Songhack to share their experiences with these tools by submitting their reviews and ratings. Registration is not required to leave your own rating, it is only required to submit a text review (mainly to prove you’re a human.)

Rating Categories

We have established four rating categories for tools. The scores in each category are combined into an overall score ranging from 0.0 (complete failure) to 10.0 (perfect). As you may notice, these rating categories don’t really apply to a small number of the tools be list… for example, free career education resources and musicians’ charities.

The categories for rating digital products and services for musicians are as follows:

Features & User Experience – How useful and robust are the tool’s features? What is the quality of the user experience? What is the quality of the user interface design? How easy is the tool to use for the average musician? Are new features being added and old features improved? What is the value of the feature set vs. the cost of using the tool?

Community & Support – How popular is the tool with musicians? How many active users does the tool have? How helpful and attentive is customer support for the tool? How active is the community using the tool? How active is the company providing the tool in giving users information on how to best use the tool? How easy is it to find answers to common questions about the tool, and are those answers sufficient? What extra steps does the tool take to encourage best practices by its users? What features does the tool provide for users to support each other?

Musician-Friendliness – How much does the tool help musicians? How much does the tool exploit musicians? Is the tool specifically designed for musicians, or for a more general audience? Does the tool have musician-specific features? What are the ethics behind the tool’s mission and its marketing to musicians? Do musicians who use the tool generally benefit from using it? Does the tool take advantage of musician ignorance in regards to music business practices, or does it help to inform and educate them? What are musicians’ general feelings about the tool’s ability to help them?

Value – What is the tool’s return on investment for musicians? How accessible is the pricing to the average musician? Is the pricing flexible and responsive to the scale of the musicians’ business? How much money can a musician make from using the tool? Is the tool only for professionals, or can amateur and aspiring musicians also get value from it? Does the tool fall into the exploitative category of “pay to play”?

Editorial Policy

Our editors strive to provide fair, useful and constructive ratings and reviews. If you would like us to review your product or service, or would like to discuss the review or rating received by your product, Please e-mail us.

While each category is unique, there is some overlap in each rating. For example, a tool that provides an excellent feature set at a great price will boost ratings in all categories, not just those related to features and value.

We review tools based on a combination of our editors’ hands-on experience with the tools, the reported experience of consumers, marketing materials promoting the tools, media accounts of these tools and other research. Where we feel we lack experience or knowledge of these factors, we refrain from reviewing until we feel comfortable we have fairly analyzed and assessed the tool.

Generally, each rating and review factors in some hands-on editorial experience with the tool. However, there are certain cases in which hands-on editorial experience is not currently feasible (for example, with tools that require significant investments of time and/or money to evaluate hands-on). In these cases, we will only review a tool if there is sufficient information related to consumer experiences, feature specifications, etc. to draw an informed judgment as to a tool’s value.

We regularly adjust these reviews based on changes to the tools, new information received, new experience with the tools, new feedback from users and input from the companies behind the tools themselves.