Tips From the Money Goddess

Fresh out of their closed beta, Mixaloo features an innovative new way for aspiring DJs and music lovers alike to earn cash making and promoting custom mixes. You get to choose songs from the over 3 million they have in their database, then you get to create your digital mixtape. Mixaloo even lets you create widgets(complete with a 30 second clip of each song in the mix) that you can use to promote your mixes on sites like Facebook, Myspace, your own blog, etc. Every time someone buys a mix that you’ve created, you not only get paid, but you earn points, which you’ll be able to exchange for merchandise, though that part of the site isn’t live yet. Mixes can be further personalized with user uploaded cover art, which can add a nice touch to your digital mixtapes, maybe even increasing it’s salability.

Here’s some information on how you earn money and points, from Mixaloo’s FAQs [note: they pay via PayPal]:

“How much money do I earn for the sale of a Mix?

Mixaloo shares revenue with you based on the following formula: Retail (track price – wholesale track price (what we pay the artist) – Partner Processing fee)/2 = your payment. We try to keep it between $.08 and $.20 per track but can not guarantee that.

How many points do I earn for the sale of a Mix?

You get one point for each track sold.

How do I get paid when my mix gets bought?

We pay users once a month when they have exceed a $10 minimum balance. If your account is under $10 your balance is forward to the next month. Once a year pay out all users regardless of balance. For more payment information please review the site Terms and Conditions.“

I’ve embedded a widget into this post, but at the time that I wrote this review, it wasn’t functioning and was giving me the following message: “Sorry. Unable to load the data for this mix”. I was also unable to preview my mix on the site. I’m unsure if that’s the case due to some sort of technical glitch or if it’s just because this feature isn’t actually live yet. Hopefully by the time you read this post, it’ll be up running.

Their song selection does seem to be as vast as they claim, however I noticed that some individual artists’ selections were very limited. Just to use an example, for Beyonce, the only song available right now is Ring the Alarm, and then a bunch of Destiny’s Child saxaphone tributes. Also, I noticed that a section in the mix editing area, “other artists you may like” isn’t completely ready yet either. I know that this is simply due to the fact that Mixaloo is a new site, but the artists that do have something listed in this section seem to have the same 6 artists over and over again, and others don’t have any listed as recommendations at all.

For music lovers, especially those who are already known as musical mavens and cultural trendsetters by their peers, Mixaloo offers a great way to express yourself and make some dough… and it’s as easy as throwing up a Mixaloo widget on your Myspace, Friendster or Facebook. In this age, who doesn’t have at least one of those? Mixaloo offers a fresh, innovative service, and I’m sure that as they grow, they’ll definitely improve, although aside from a few technical quirks, it looks to me like there’s little that needs to be, at this point.  [update: as of Nov 15, 2007, the widget is working, so check it out!]

Technorati Tags: mixaloo, digital mixtape, make money, create mixtapes, sell mixtapes, make money online, music

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