Answers
How long does it take to research an artist properly?
About three to six minutes for a complete file on one artist, and around half an hour for a sweep that comes back with a ranked slate of names you had not heard of.
The measurements
These are elapsed wall-clock times for work that has actually run, not estimates of what it ought to take. Each figure is a median with the 95th percentile beside it, because the tail is the part that decides whether you can wait for it.
A scored briefing on one artist takes 2 minutes 17 at the median and 4 minutes 42 at the 95th percentile. A compiled dossier — the facts, the catalogue and the routes to a human — takes 3 minutes 06, and 6 minutes 02 at the 95th. A scouting sweep across the open field takes 28 minutes at the median and just over two hours at the 95th. A full chain, which opens with a scout and ends with filed reports on the finalists, takes 8 hours 44 at the median and about 16 hours at the 95th.
The last of those is why it runs overnight. It is not a page you wait on.
Why the spread is so wide
An artist with a deep catalogue, an active press record and a lot of discourse takes longer than one with a Spotify page and nothing else, and there is no way to know which you have before the work starts. The 95th percentile is roughly double the median across every kind of run, and the longest briefing observed took 11 minutes 21 against a median of 2 minutes 17.
A tool that quotes you one number for this is quoting you the median and hoping.
What the same work costs a person
The comparison worth making is not against another tool. It is against the afternoon an A&R spends reading, listening, checking who else has been in touch and writing it up — which is why most artists on most boards never get that treatment at all.
The point of measuring the machine version in minutes is that it can be run on the fiftieth artist as readily as on the first.
Where this number comes from.
Checkable
Briefing 2m 17s median, 4m 42s at the 95th percentile. Dossier 3m 06s and 6m 02s. Scout 28m and 2h 07m. Chain 8h 44m and 16h.
Elapsed wall-clock on completed runs from this product, taken from the run records rather than from a stopwatch, over 10,430 metered operations between 23 August and 2 September 2026.
See it on your own board.
Every new account starts with $5 of credit and no card — enough to put an artist on the board and read the whole file on them.