Music & Sound Annotation Expert — United States

Job Description

We are looking for experienced Music & Sound Annotation Experts to contribute to a customer project at the forefront of music and audio technology.

Your ears are the ground truth. You will listen to short field recordings and document exactly what is audible — instruments, tempo, key, background sounds, crowd reactions — through a structured web platform built for this project.

Later phases will involve grading AI model answers against what you actually heard.

Key Responsibilities

• Listen to 30–90 second field recordings (headphones, your own quiet workspace) and complete structured annotations, identifying which instruments are present, tempo and key, timestamps of background events (traffic, sirens, applause), and scene details.

• Compare paired recordings of the same song captured at different locations and judge what stayed the same and what changed.

• In later phases, review AI model descriptions of clips and mark what's correct, wrong, or invented, with a brief written explanation.

• Attend a good onboarding/calibration session and a short weekly sync.

Preferred Backgrounds

• Professionals from any of the following backgrounds are encouraged to apply:

• Working or gigging musicians, session players, producers, or mixing engineers.

• Music educators, ear-training instructors, band/choir directors, conservatory students or graduates.

• Location sound recordists, sound designers, Foley artists, or podcast/documentary audio editors.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• 3+ years of hands-on music or audio experience.

• Strong analytical listening skills, with the ability to identify individual instruments within a busy, noisy, real-world mix, not just studio recordings.

• Ability to identify tempo (within a few BPM) and musical key (relative pitch with a reference is fine).

• Comfortable with detail-oriented, repetitive annotation work in a web platform, including dropdowns, timestamps, and short structured notes.

• Clear written English for brief, evidence-based notes (e.g., "accordion enters around 0:12").

• Quality headphones, quiet workspace, and reliable internet.

• Availability for 20–25 hours/week during the engagement window.

Required Skills

• Analytical Listening

• Music Theory Knowledge

• Audio Annotation

• Attention to Detail

• Written Communication