If you haven’t heard about Slicethepie, it’s a great website that allows fans to invest in the artists they love.

From their FAQ Section:
Slicethepie connects Artists with Music Fans and those looking to invest in the best new Music – Artists can raise money through Slicethepie to record and release their album;

o Artists upload their tracks.
o Music Fans (we call them Scouts) are paid to review and rate those tracks.
o The Artists with the best rated tracks will go on to the Showcase where Investors, or anyone for that matter, can choose which Artist/s they’d like to invest their money in.

Now, from the same people comes a new service that allows labels and artists to pay to put their tracks up for rating by a cross-section of listeners.

It’s called SoundOut and from looking at the sample report, it is a comprehensive look at what (anonymous) people thought, including information about their age, their gender, their overall sentiment towards various aspects of the song and what they thought the highlights of the track were.  Each user reviews the track and leaves a comment for reading.

After the track has been up for 24 hours and rated by users on the site, a report is sent to the artist/label outlining in detail the demographics of those who liked and disliked the track, allowing the label/artist to gain an insight into where to put marketig money into.
SoundOut’s About Section describes the service as:

SoundOut is an online consumer insight and analytics service for recording artists, record companies and music publishers. SoundOut provides detailed and accurate reports generated directly from consumer feedback on new tracks. It is designed to give artists, labels, publishers and anyone else who works with music, rapid and accurate market insight when evaluating original tracks.

A SoundOut report can tell you a great deal about your music including:

• How good a track is, with guaranteed 90% accuracy
• What your target market should be
• What sex and age group your music appeals to
• Whether the track has broad or niche appeal
• What emotions the track generates in the listeners
• What are the strong and weak elements of the track
• Where marketing spend should be focused
• What music fans honestly think of the track