Music & Sound Annotation Expert

About this role

Role Title: Music & Sound Annotation Expert

Role Type: Contractor

Location: Remote

micro1 is engaging Music & Sound Annotation Experts to contribute to a customer's project at the forefront of music and audio technology.

Your ears are the ground truth. You'll listen to short field recordings and document exactly what's audible, instruments, tempo, key, background sounds, crowd reactions, through a structured web platform built for this project. Later phases involve grading AI model answers against what you actually heard.

What you'll do

• Listen to 30-90 second field recordings (headphones, your own quiet workspace) and complete structured annotations: which instruments are present, tempo and key, timestamps of background events (traffic, sirens, applause), 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 paid onboarding/calibration session and a short weekly sync

Who we're looking for (any of these backgrounds)

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

Requirements

• 3+ years of hands-on music or audio experience
• Strong analytical listening: you can pick individual instruments out of a busy, noisy, real-world mix, not just studio recordings
• Can 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, dropdowns, timestamps, short structured notes
• Clear written English for brief, evidence-based notes (e.g., "accordion enters around 0:12")
• Quality headphones, quiet workspace, reliable internet
• Available 20-25 hrs/week for the engagement window

Key skills

• analytical listening
• music theory knowledge
• audio annotation
• attention to detail
• written communication