I’ve looked into the many ways of making money online and one program recently caught my attention – getting paid to listen to music. My research brought me to some poor quality sites that made me think this isn’t a very good idea until I discovered the opportunity to earn money with MusicXray. As someone who loves listening to music, I thought I would give this site a try to see how things would turn out.
How Does MusicXray Work
MusicXray is an established platform that introduces emerging artists to the public and compensate fans (that’s you) by paying a small amount – 10 cents – to listen to one song. To get started, you’ll need to create a user account and connect it to your Facebook profile.
This integration will allow the software to know more about your music taste and listening habits. You are also required to submit a list of 10 of your favorite artists/bands under the Fan Match section to help speed up the matching process. After that is done, you just need to wait for the program to send you songs according to your preference.
The Result
The program is actually very diligent in sending me daily email notification to check my account for potential music. However, 99% of the time, there’s actually nothing to listen to. I’ve been a subscriber for two months now and have only earned 20 cents. That’s not a lot to boast about, really.
Overall, I do think that this is a legitimate program and it’s a small task to do to help someone kick start their music career, but the earning process is really slow. Therefore, I don’t think that I would rely on it for long term monetization. That didn’t stop me from thinking though – is there a BETTER way for people who love listening to music to make money online?
Introducing Affiliate Marketing
When I say better, I am referring to earning dollars instead of cents and making good use of your time to create something that has RECURRING income potential WITHOUT a huge cost of investment. Something that explores your creativity, your interest and allowing you to become an online entrepreneur. Yes, YOU, a business owner.
This revenue model is called affiliate marketing and believe it or not, many people have become very successful doing this full-time. What they basically do is that they promote reviewed products/services to other online users and earn sales commissions whenever someone buys through them. You can do this for any type of companies that offer affiliate programs. And your cost of maintenance? Just a custom domain name, a WordPress website and some online training.
Here are some music related affiliate programs and their commission payouts that you might be interested to know.
1) TuneCore Affiliate
This program is a popular platform for independent artists to distribute from all over the world. When someone subscribes through your website and use this service to sell their music, you’ll earn a 7% sales commission. You may sign up for the program through Conversant which is an affiliate network.
2) Amazon Associate
Who doesn’t know Amazon, right? They have a huge marketplace for unlimited streaming, MP3 download, CD and even Vinyl (if you fancy those). With their wide selection, you’ll never run out of artists to promote. Signing up as an affiliate can be done within Amazon itself and commission starts from 5%.
3) iTunes Affiliate
For all the Apple fans out there, here’s a good news. You can now leverage from the iTunes Store to promote not only music, but also apps, books and more. The affiliate program is offered privately through their official website with the potential of earning 7% in sales commission.
Now, you are probably wondering how can affiliate commissions turn into a recurring income. Well, that’s because when you write product reviews, the content will get indexed and ranked on the search engines AND they stay there permanently until a better marketer takes over your place.
So as long as there’s a demand for a particular music product, your articles will always be shown to the online users/readers/customers for months and years to come. Unlike listening to music where you need to constantly commit to the task in order to earn, a good content can engage and convert into sales on its own without requiring any direct effort from your side.
With more free time, you can move on to writing more content to generate more commissions. That’s generally how you build an online business through the music related affiliate programs.
Well, I hope that this quick review and comparison has opened your eyes to an exciting opportunity to earn money online. If you like to know more, head over to Wealthy Affiliate for the right tools and training to help you get started. I’ll be in there to give you some personal guidance too. So just give me a shout.
Have any thoughts or questions about this topic? Please don’t feel hesitate to leave them in the comment area below.
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Hey Cathy,
MusicXray looks interesting enough. A good way for people who are into music to earn some money online. However, may I know if there is a limit amount of music you could listen for a day? Let me know soon.
I may add this into my income stream too 🙂
Hey Joshua, actually you don’t get to choose the number of songs to listen to. Musicxray sends them to you according to the preferences that you’ve filled out during the sign up process. They do send notification to check the music inbox, but 99% of the time, there are no songs to listen to.
Yikes, that’s a pretty small payout. You have to listen to A LOT of musics to make money on that website. The affiliate websites are probably a much more lucrative option in terms of earnings, although they do require a lot more time creating content than just passively listening to musics.
I was like wayment (wait a minute, that’s how it sounded when I said it) when I saw this Musicxray! I was really excited, until you said that it only paid $ .10 per song, and after two months you had only earned $ .20. No way! I would love to listen to music and get paid.
Sounds like Musicxray really has potential, but the problem is I’ll bet many artists either don’t know about the service, or aren’t willing to use it. The affiliate networks that you mentioned would definitely be more beneficial for those looking to make money with the music industry.
Hi Cathy,
I haven’t heard of MusicXray before. It sounds like a fun way to make money, but if you don’t receive enough music to listen to in a week or two, then I think this may not be worth it, especially if you only get paid 10 cents per song.
I would rather become an Amazon affiliate and promote interesting products from a blog. At least the commission here is more than what you would earn with MusicXray.
Hey there Cathy, I could relate to this.
At one point, I was interested in the music niche and had tried MusicXray. The ad on YouTube that I had watched made it seem easy to make money listening to music, but that was certainly not the case. I earned 0 dollars because there was no music available. When I tried affiliate marketing, I was making more money so I feel that there’s a better opportunity here.