What: Music marketing site
Expected pay: illusive
Husl $core: $SSSS
Where: National
Requirements: music to sell or ears to listen
Review: Music Xray purports to offer two money-making opportunities. You can get paid to listen to music — essentially 10 cents a song; or, if you are a musician, you can upload tracks and have producers consider them for lucrative opportunities. But people who have used the site say that isn’t what happens. If you want to upload your music, you pay them a fee that ranges from $15 to $20. Then….cue the crickets.
If you want to get paid to listen to music, you sign in and they pay you 10 cents for each song you review. But the site only pays out when you earn $20 or more. Numerous reviewers on say that once they got close, they no longer had tracks to listen to. If you love music, listen to the radio. This site isn’t worth your time.
Sadly if you want to listen to music for a living, rotten pay is the norm. However, if you go to job boards, such as Indeed or Glassdoor, you are likely to find music-related positions that will pay a decent wage.
What their users say:
This is an exchange from Reddit:
“Hey all, I’ve been using Music X-ray for a couple months. It lets you listen to user-submitted music and pays you 10 cents per song you listen to, but they only send you a few songs a day at most. I don’t mind only making 0-30 cents a day, it only takes a minute and I like listening to new music anyway. The thing is that their payout threshold is $20 and as my “pending” money increases, I have been getting fewer and fewer songs, to the point where I would not be surprised if they have it setup so that by the time you are at $19.50 or so, you don’t get any music and you never get paid. So my question is, has anyone actually made it to $20 and received a payout? Thanks.”
“The clowns at Music Xray is a joke. When you sign up to listen to music clips, you get 10 cents for each song. They claim you can cash out your earnings when it reach $20. You will get songs to listen to during the first few months. However when your total is approaching the $20 requirement, all of a sudden you will no longer receive songs to listen to. They are full of you know what!”
And the reviews from musicians on Pissed Consumer are worse:
“I have been submitting music to Music X-Ray over four years, around 30 opportunities, and 22 response with the same message (good candidate but not what we’re looking for) and the other 8 opportunities accepted my music but I never heard back from them about my music.I have two A & R music opportunities have my music on hold for one year and a half.Music X-Ray making me pay ten dollars before I can submit and new music on their site.I believe that Music X ray is a scam after reading all the complaints.I always believe it in my heart. Monetary Loss: $350.”
“I don’t know who these music x ray “professionals” are but let me tell you a little story. I have 30 plus years as a musician and songwriter who has had material recorded and included on albums by major country and pop/rock artists. As an experiment I sent four songs to different opportunities on music x ray. BTW I have never heard of most of the people who are offering these opportunities.
On song one the comments were the production was weak, the guitar solo was poor and the lyrics were confusing. The song was recorded in Bryan Adams studio in Vancouver by Bryan’s producer. The guitar solos was performed by a young guitarist who just recently won an international guitar competition out of thousands on entrants, a competition the included a full ride scholarship to the Berklee College of music and the song itself will appear on a major country artists album to be released this fall. This song is incredible and will be picked up without any doubt in my mind through my regular network.
Song two was recorded as a scratch demo track in my studio with my regular band. This song was previously recorded by a country crossover artist on an album about five years ago. We recorded the song with the same arrangement as the earlier version. The song at that time reached no 3 on the Canadian Country charts. This song in the hands of music xray received a rating of less than 30%. Keep in mind that this song five years ago paid off my house.
Song three was a song and arrangement that was written and performed by the lead singer of one of the top rock & roll bands ever to come out of Canada and an artist who has more than one vocal artist of the year award and a collection of Juno awards. This song made a 35% rating and comments received included gems like “vocals need improvement” and cut and paste “Not what we are looking for right now” Well according to the opportunity listing it couldn’t have been more on point.
The fourth song was also recorded in the Bryan Adams Studio and produced by a Juno award winning producer and was written by myself and one of Bryans long time collaborators. This song was sent to a name producer on music x-ray who gave us pretty good reviews but then wanted $800 bucks to “re-mix and re-master” the song. Holy crip ***!”