DALLAS – After four months of extensive beta testing and gathering feedback from more than 100 music industry professionals across labels, management, publishing, distribution, catalog and artist tools, Rocketship launches today (Oct.13) to the general public as the music industry's first AI platform capable of identifying the potential audience of a song before it has ever been released. Built to level the playing field for the estimated 7 million independent artists worldwide who lack the data and tools to maximize their music's potential, Rocketship brings strategic intelligence once reserved for the world's largest labels to artists at every level.
Rocketship is an all-in-one tool for independent artists and music companies alike, putting the power of data-driven A&R directly into the hands of those creating music. Built to help great music be heard amid the more than 100,000 songs uploaded to DSPs each day, Rocketship uses proprietary AI to analyze more than 80 audio, lyric and contextual parameters of an artist's song. The platform correlates that information against millions of data points and decades of music history to deliver a comprehensive profile of the song's potential audience.
“Artists make their most expensive decisions – which single, which audience and where to spend – before they have a single data point on how a song will land,” shares Rocketship founder Maxwell Zotz. “Rocketship gives them a real starting point. It doesn't replace taste or instinct. It means they're not guessing alone.”
With the platform now fully live, every new user gets a free analysis of one song, showing who it is most likely to reach. Users will then have the opportunity to unlock additional missions such as “creating content,” “find your fans,” “release and streaming growth,” “growing your socials,” “placements and opportunities” and more. From there, Rocketship builds a full end-to-end marketing campaign tailored to the artist's release date and budget, all housed within Mission Control, its AI-powered command center. Trained on each artist's specific music and goals, Mission Control provides data-driven direction at every stage of a song's life.
Extending that support from strategy to execution, Rocketship offers Rocketship Studio, which gives artists a simple way to turn their music into vertical video content in minutes, without any prior editing experience. Artists can upload their own footage or choose from AI-curated clips selected to reflect a song's imagery, mood, setting, themes and color palette, with selections also informed by the audience identified for the track. With real-time previews and a finished video ready to share across social platforms, Rocketship Studio helps artists translate their music into visual content designed to connect with potential fans.
“Just because the audience for your last single received that music well does not mean that your next single is bound to be successful with that same audience, nor does it mean that the delivery mechanism in which you chose to reach them will automatically work again,” says Zotz.
Rocketship's patent-pending methodology was developed with copyright compliance as a foundational requirement and reviewed in coordination with Loeb & Loeb, one of the nation's leading entertainment and intellectual property law firms. The approach allows Rocketship's AI to learn from the most notable music of the past five decades, across all genres, to better analyze the potential audience of an unreleased song.
Rocketship was co-founded by music executive Maxwell Zotz (known as "Zotz") and tech entrepreneur Billy Rodgers. Over the last 17 years at the forefront of the music industry, Zotz has developed deep expertise across artist management, fan engagement, A&R and intellectual property, as a leader committed to elevating artists at every stage of their careers. Zotz built his first company, Verge Campus, into a respected media platform known for branded national college tours featuring Kendrick Lamar, Chance the Rapper and Steve Aoki, leading it to acquisition within five years.
Zotz spent eight years as VP of Music & Brand Strategy at MAX.Live, where he led artist partnerships on behalf of Fortune 500 brands such as Ford, Dr Pepper and McDonald's while championing the launch of innovative artist tools and platforms including SET The Set and SET.Live. Having previously collaborated on Rodgers' fan engagement platform, Fanpage – a trusted tool for artists to engage directly with their audience – the pair went on to identify a critical gap at the intersection of music creation, audience identification and emerging AI. Their mission crystallized around a single idea: connect more artists with fans who will love their music and build the infrastructure the next era of the music industry demands.
While Rocketship is designed with the independent artist at its core, its capabilities extend across the full music business. Labels and managers gain a data-driven framework for deciding which singles to release and promote. Publishers can leverage Rocketship's predictive song-to-artist matching to make placements. Rights holders can use the platform to uncover growth opportunities and map a clear path to higher long-term ROI on high-value song catalogs.
Rocketship is available now at rocketship.music, where artists can analyze their first song for free.
ABOUT ROCKETSHIP:
Rocketship is the first AI platform to identify the potential audience of a song before it has ever been released. Co-founded by music executive Maxwell Zotz (“Zotz”) and tech entrepreneur Billy Rodgers, and legally validated in coordination with Loeb & Loeb, Rocketship's patent-pending AI is educated on over 250K songs and built in full compliance with music copyright law. The platform gives independent artists, labels, managers, publishers and rights holders the intelligence and tools to stop guessing and start launching. Learn more at rocketship.music.