Make money by listening to music

Reading Time: 6 mins

“There are two means of refuge from the miseries of everyday life: music and cats,” someone profound once said.

While we know you can get paid to look after cats, did you know you can make money by listening to music?

Crazy, right?

Well, that’s what Slicethepie is offering.

Excited? Here’s how it works…

• How can you make money by listening to muisic?
• Reviewing with Slicethepie
• Reviewing like a pro
• I’m like a star, a star…
• How much money can you make by listening to music?
• Other music reviewing sites you can try…

 

how can you make money by listening to music?

When we say music scout, we don’t mean a boy in shorts with his trusty Swiss army knife, warbling next to a campfire.

It’s simply what Slicethepie calls a music reviewer.

They pay you to share your opinion on new songs before they are released. These reviews go directly to the unsigned artists to help them improve whatever it is they’re working on. This is why it’s so important that reviews are specific and constructive (you can also get paid to view advertisements, fashion items and other pieces of branding).

Luckily, you don’t need to know anything about music to write a good review! Explaining how it makes you feel and comparing it to the other artists and songs is already enough to be useful. If you still feel a bit daunted, you can find some handy tips via this link.

 

reviewing with slicethepie

‘The scouting room’ is where all the reviewing takes place.

The bands upload their tracks to the room and then Slicethepie selects them at random for you to listen to. All the tracks are anonymous, until you’ve reviewed them. This means you can’t be picky about what you review. It’s pretty clever actually.

1. To review a piece of music, you need to listen to at least 90 seconds of the track before you can start writing. The more in-depth and specific your opinion, the better. However, you will need a minimum of 45 words in your review
2. Next, you rate the track from 1-10
3. Then, fill in a checklist for how you would describe the song if it was a person. For example, is the music funky? Playful? Sexy?

And you’re done! Just click ‘Submit’ to move onto your next review.

 

reviewing like a pro

The tricky bit is how to get the maximum amount of money out of your review.

Rather than a flat rate, Slicethepie pays you depending on your star rating, which in turn depends on the quality of your reviews. Reviews are judged on the following criteria:

• How close your rating of the track is to the average score the track has received from other reviewers. For example, you will have a low accuracy if you think a track deserves a 9 when most of the other scouts only gave it a 3.
• Whether your feedback is detailed and meaningful and will actually benefit the artist.
• How active you are as a scout is also a consideration. The more reviews you do, the higher your rating. However, this doesn’t apply if you aren’t taking the time to correctly review the tracks.
• Your ability to spot and ‘tip’ artists that go on to become successful (more on this in a moment).

Based on our tests, your rating goes up one star for every 30 tracks you review, assuming that you listen to enough of the song and put effort into your reviews.

When you first register with Slicethepie, they will ask for your email address.

This is IMPORTANT because you must make sure it is the same one as your PayPal account, which is how you get paid.

Although it will be a little while before it starts mounting up, as soon as you hit $10 you can make a withdrawal and access your cash. Just remember to keep an eye on that star rating.

 

I’m like a star, a star

Your star rating will increase how much you get paid per piece of music. For some reason, despite it being a UK company, Slicethepie pays everyone in US dollars – but not to worry, as you can convert it back easily with your PayPal account.

A pretty standard guide for how much Slicethepie pays out (converted back to UK pence) is:

• One star: 2p per review

• Two stars: 4p per review

• Three stars: 6p per review

• Four stars: 8p per review

• Five stars: 10p per review

The total amount you receive per review can vary depending on the items you’re reviewing. Generally though, you should expect to see your payments range between 1-15 pence.

As well as earning money by reviewing, you can also earn a ‘tip’ for every ten reviews you do.

• Tips can be used to back a band you think are really good. If the band get through to the next stage, then you get a free backstage pass for the band.
• This means you can get their album for free. But, you can also choose to buy contracts which entitles you make money from their album sales later on.

 

how much money can you make by listening to music?

The money you make per review also depends on the particular scout room you’re reviewing in.

Slicethepie has more than 10,000 reviews every day and so to keep up with demand, they set the fee-per-track according to how many reviews of each track they allow.

• So, if there are loads of people wanting to review, the amount of reviews each track can receive is increased and each reviewer earns less.
• This works out well for the bands who get more feedback, but not so well for the scouts who get paid less.
• Sometimes, though, it works the other way and you will be invited to a scout room where high-priority tracks will be played for a higher rate of payment than usual.
• You can also make extra money by recommending a friend. If someone else signs up with the code in your Refer a Friend area, you get 10% of their entire review earnings for the next year. For example, if your three friends each earn £10 in a week, you’ll get an extra £3 without doing anything – again, you can see how this will mount up. And, there’s no limit on how many friends you can refer!

Imagine you earn 15p per song you listen to. This means that if songs are an average of three minutes and you therefore listen to ten in half an hour, you’re looking at £3 an hour earnings. This doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a great thing to do while you’re doing something else, like eating or watching TV, so long as you can concentrate enough to do decent reviews.

To sign up to Slicethepie, click here.

 

other music reviewing sites You can try…

Here are some other sites you might like too:

HitPredictor

On this site, you can choose the music genres you want to listen to, rather than getting a mix of anything and everything, (although this means that sometimes there won’t be much for you to review).

Whatever you write on here will be going to the artists, producers and record labels – so your opinions will be shaping the future of music.

Earn 3 points for every piece of music you listen to; once you reach 500 points you can enter raffles for $50-$100 iTunes gift cards, or free DVDs and CDs at 1,250 points. There are also loads of contests to enter and other prizes to be won daily.

Hit it at this link.

Music xray

For this site, as well as picking preferred genres, you can also tell Music Xray your favourite artists, so the site can use fancy software to pick music as similar as possible to what you love. This means that sometimes there will be lots of songs, and sometimes there will be none, depending on what the artists are uploading.

Music Xray helps connect potential success stories to record labels and producers, as well as set up fan bases for when the artists start solidifying their position in the music industry.

You’ll be paid a few cents to listen to 30 seconds of a song, and can withdraw the money from a PayPal account similarly to the way Slicethepie manages it.

Get jamming at this link here.

Research.fm

This music research station pays you to help it decide what tunes to play on local radio stations.

Since it is an invite-only site, the only way to join the reviewing panel is to give your email address to one of their telephone interviewers who may call you about taking a radio survey over the phone. Invitations for surveys are then sent to your email account and you rate short music clips to be rewarded with fairly substantial Amazon gift cards.

Have a look at this link here.

 

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