Music Critic: Music to your ear money to your pocket

Besides getting sent free CD's to review, music critics get backstage access and free concert tickets, often getting the opportunity to interview high profile musicians and performers, too.

Mark Swed has been chief music critic of the Los Angeles Times since 1996. He has also covered music for the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, and 7 Days, has also written for the New York Times, The New Yorker, The Economist, BBC Music and many other national and international publications.

The music critic may earn $150 for a CD review or between $100 and $500 for a feature article. An average salary for music journalists is $45,000 yearly.

So what do you need to become one? Music critics combine music studies with journalism. Many of them have earned a master's degree in a music-related field, such as music theory or musical performance, or in journalism. The music critic's goal is to describe the purpose and feeling of a particular piece of music as well as a technical breakdown of the composition. Some music critics focus on classical music, while others limits themselves to film scores. Many music critics, regardless of genre, can relate to the musicians they write about; they themselves are often musicians and/or composers. So if you love listening to music or it's your passion, you might like the job since music critic spend a great deal of time listening to music and then evaluating its quality for the purposes of informing and influencing consumers. In fact, the opinion of a reputable music critic can persuade or dissuade a consumer in his decision to purchase music.

Mark Swed has contributed liner notes for recording, program notes for concerts, and catalog essay for MOCA. Swed has received awards in criticism from the Los Angeles Music Center, ASCAP, the American Music Center.

Being a music critic can be an exciting job. Like any career in the entertainment or journalism industry, it takes clout and a keen sense of the latest and upcoming trends to be really successful. So if you are serious this career then do these few things :

• Entrench yourself in the local music scene. 

• Decide if you are going to focus on a certain genre of music. 

• Having a base knowledge and feel for many varieties of music will help you plan on writing for a magazine or newspaper.

•  Attend as many local, unknown artist performances as you can. 

• Talk to be band and get to know a little about their style of music. 

• Pitch your articles and yourself to newspaper and magazines.
  
  
  You are all set to try your hand or ear in Music.

Carnival Barker:A fun way to earn your living!

You might have seen a guy in any carnival or fairs, who is screaming and cracking jokes to get the attention of the visitors. He is actually doing his job, and he gets paid for that. He is called Carnival barker

 A Carnival barker is a person who uses voice and words to attract patrons to buy tickets for entertainment venues ranging from booths in carnivals to strip joints. Carnies, as they are called, might promise more than the show actually delivers in order to bring in a crowd. In fact, barkers have reputations for being hustlers who specialize in parting customers from their money. A barker may conduct a brief free show, introducing performers and describing acts to be given at the feature performance. Professional barkers dislike the term and refer to themselves as "talkers."

 

 

 

 

 For this job all you need is a very good voice, the ability to learn a carnival language and to be happy to work up to 18 hours per day. The pay for this job is around $250 per week.

This could be a good summer job for students. The job offers good pay, travel, and excitement. Long hours--often an 18-hour shift--are standard, and strong vocal cords are a must. It's also necessary to learn carnival language. A barker is a carny, a customer is a mark, a booth or concession is a joint, cheap prizes are slum.

In carnival lingo, a barker is a carny, a customer is a mark, a booth is a joint and cheap prizes are slum.

  Traveling carnivals used to be more common before than they are today as small towns had less entertainment and fewer attractions for people to enjoy. Barkers were part of the overall carnival experience. People who attended carnivals would be enticed to pay their entry fees by a barker.

Traditionally, barkers were unskilled laborers who had good voices and good people skills. A barker might also be a con artist. Even so, some barkers successfully moved into show business, including comedian and actor Jackie Gleason, television personality Ed McMahon and Col Tom Parker, Elvis Presley's manager.

Being a barker still has attractions for those who want to travel. The life of a barker can be challenging though as the carny must know how to deal with not only customers, but other eccentric carnies as well. So is it your cup of tea?

 

Fantasy Broker: Got Fantasy Get it Real!

Just the way its sounds! Fantasy Broker's job is to make sure the client gets whatever they want at the time. It's kind of like making every dream come true for them.

A clerk wants to be a stand-up comedian for one night. A Businessman wants to drive a freight train across a western State. A psychiatrist wants 20 dates on 20 weekends with 20 girls from 20 different countries. How do they do it? They see a fantasy broker whose business is making dreams come true. Originally pioneered in Chicago by an advertising executive, fantasy firms in several cities in America now do a booming business, charging from $150 to thousands to turn dreams in reality. So a fantasy broker will make dreams come true, whatever is in his hand of course. He/she will be like a genie but with logic and on practical side.

Whatever the client asks for - a day performing live with a circus, a sky-diving adventure in the Himalayas,  a jail visit with Paris Hilton - Fantasy Broker will make it happen for his client. Now of course don't get any wrong ideas, the job of a Fantasy Broker could be as small and as simple as making arrangements for two in a famous restaurant at the busy hour, or arrange the picnic for the family on a rainy day. Well there are people who would not want to make any effort for such personal and small events in their life, they would rather pay for it and get it done. Or they are simply too busy to do it on their own but still want to that to happened. That's where the requirement of Fantasy Broker's comes. Those simple events might earn those couples of hundred dollars while a more elaborate fantasy can cost clients thousands. It all depends on how many hours it takes to arrange the details, plus the cost of insurance (on riskier fantasies), flights, food, celebrity, appointments, or whatever is involved. 

It's helpful to have some law background or know someone with law, so you know if a person's request is legal or not.

Fantasy Fulfillment Institute in Washington, D.C., did $2500 worth of business as a result of an ad that read: You can do anything you want... drive a formula race car, ride a camel down Pennsylvania Avenue at 3 P.M., live in a ghost town, float down the Potomac on a magnificent barge with one hundred slaves, or kiss a buffalo. 

So what do you need for this job? More and more connections and resources since you will need to make all sorts of arrangements quickly and knowing someone in the field (whatever the fields happens to be - airlines, performers, sports) makes that much easier. It's also helpful to have some law background, so you know if a person's request is legal or not.

Be a professional couch potato

Watching TV whole day was never so useful before. This new Generation can actually be couch potato professionally and yes can earn too.

Watching TV and giving viewer ratings is not only an entertaining job, but it also pays. Sitting and watching TV all day could be the easiest job ever.

Yes, this is a job where you get paid to watch television. Television shows like "The Daily Show" and "Jimmy Kimmel Live" have these positions where people get entertaining or important TV clips to be used throughout the show.

What exactly you make while watching TV? You could be paid up to $12 an hour to do so. This "too good to be true" job is required by certain television productions including late night talk show, news satire programs and other productions that focus on using clips and quotes from the world of television for comedic purposes. Even companies that keep track of the rating for every single television show hire professional couch potatoes to ruin their eyes for money.

The average salary for professional TV watcher jobs is $53,000. Average professional TV watcher salaries can vary greatly due to company, locations, industry, experience and benefits.

Okay so sounds like you just have to sit around whole day that means you don't any specific qualifications to become a TV watcher. Of course! All this job needs a television-obsessed intern to sit around and watch TV to find newsworthy clips for social commentary. The jobs require a good eye and the ability to sit. The schedule is flexible but requires a minimum of 15 hours a week. However, there's a lot more work involved than just passively watching your favorite show. Pro TV watchers usually scan through different shows and news clips, and find the right clips that can be used on a television show or news program. "Close attention to details" is one of the necessary skills, along with being familiar with the technology of TIVO and DVD players.

Some of the qualities are required in a person though. Along with being detail oriented, he/she should be able to sit long time and have patience to watch many shows at one stretch. He/She must love watching TV and should be able to rate the programs.

What do you think of it? Many of us must be jumping off their couch to read this because the best time pass activity will just pay them off if they join. Besides no one will have complaints in home regarding to many hours of TV watching. So you could be a couch potato officially and respectfully.

It is definitely not a job where you could expect a lot or a big pay back, but it is something which you could do when you are in phase of just doing nothing and waiting for your career to pick up or maybe you are not finding the right job and you are taking a break. It is a best bet to students and women. You can meet many out there who incorporated TV show in their life so much that it's difficult to find out they are discussing is real or reel situation.

Trim Cow Hooves for a Living?

Just like horse shoes, cows need some hoof maintenance too. These fine animals can have poor milk production, lameness, and decreased fertility if not properly groomed. Try to imagine giving a cow a pedicure.

The quality of floors, in terms of shape, hardness, friction and hygiene is of great importance for the health of cow feet and legs which in turn affects the milk production. So no matter how weird it may sound to you, someone has to trim cows hooves and there are people who are actually willing to do that. Generally people who have a farm house or a dairy need to take good care of their cows. And trimming cow hooves is not all that easy. It’s a serious job.

All of the animal's weight is carried by four hooves. So, their very life and happiness depends on hoof care.

Caleb Spencer, 23, who trims cow’s hooves for living, enjoys doing what he does. He comes home with cow dung and dirt all over his cloths and some- times gets a kick or two in his ribs while doing the job but he still think it’s an important job to do.

I love cows, and I'm really surprised at the number of the people who raise cattle who don't know what trimmers should and shouldn't do. -Caleb Spencer.

He began his career at 19 by creating his own yearlong apprentice program with the Hoof Trimmers Association and working with the professionals. He left his Franklin, Ind., home for a travel trailer that took him around the country, including Utah, where he and a six-man crew trimmed 1,600 cows in nine days. Depending on the breeding, some dairy cattle have a better hoof than others, so some need trimming more than others. Another consideration is the type of feed that the animal receives. Some feeds promote faster growth than others. Some feeds promote firmer hooves than others. There is a big difference! Even horses and dogs get their hooves trimmed for the same reason.

So what a cow hooves’ trimmer need to know before getting into this job? Just like any other job near animals, he or she should have knowledge of animal behaviors’ especially cattle’s. Any degree or certificate would be a plus. Hoof trimming should be supervised or taught by a veterinarian or professional hoof trimmer until you become accomplished at the skill. What the trimmers earn in general depends on the herd, i.e. size, location, what condition the cows are in etc. could be anything between $10 to $70 per cow. There are even companies with cow hooves trimmers who provide this service to farm house owners. This job could sound like a layman’s work for some while people who are doing it can only tell how difficult hooves trimming could get. It’s definitely a personal choice though.

The Body as BILLBOARD

Painting logos or etching tattoos on face or skin are the best ways to become live ads for companies. Some even go extremes and get permanent tattoos.

A human billboard is someone who applies and advertisement on his her body. Most commonly, this means holding or wearing a sign of some sort, but also may include wearing advertising as clothing or in some cases, having advertising tattooed on the body.

 

 

 

 

 

I had seen champion boxer Bernard Hopkins enter the ring with a temporary tattoo ad for GoldenPalace.com and thought, ‘If he could do that, then maybe I could do the real thing, Since I wasn’t a champion boxer like he was, I would have to make it a real tattoo ad.
-Billy, Boxer and Body Advertiser

You could earn anywhere from $100 to $5000 based on the size and importance of the tattoo. Billy ht Human Billboard­ – an amateur boxer out of Alaska who is having his dream of being fighter, pays the bills by selling spots on his body for permanent tattoos featuring the logos of corporate sponsors. This new advertising trend is taking Japan by storm. ‘Body advertising’ involves attaching an advert in the form of a sticker or transfer onto different parts of the body to attract attention to the product. Wearers are paid to wearing the adverts, with companies realizing that for those who use social networking sites, the novelty value of drawing attention to yourself or parts of your body through stickers is highly attractive. With adverts on faces or thighs, body advertising has become a talking point in Japan. Ms. Gardner, 50, had shaved her head for an advertising campaign by air New Zealand, which had hired her to display a temporary tattoo with a message “Need A Change? Head down to New Zealand. www.airnewzealand.com.” Ms. Gardner was among 30 of what the airline calls “cranial billboards.” For shaving their heads and displaying the ad copy for two weeks, they either receive a round-trip ticket to New Zealand (worth about $1,200) or $777 in cash. Not a bad deal. Tattoo-related advertising stunts go back to at least 2001, when Golden Palace, an online gambling site, paid the middle-weight boxer Bernard Hopkins to wear a temporary tattoo with its Web Address during a televised bout. Now because of social networking this method of advertising has become more effective than ever before.

FeelUnique.com pay to apply tattoos with the company’s Web address on eyelids and then wink at strangers.

One of the Women registered at Wit has 4,900 friends on Facebook, and on average each member has 330 friends. There’s even one women registered who has 8,000 followers on Twitter. Ads can easily become viral if their friends share those photos. Actually, 20 members put an ad of a futsal stadium for a day, which lead 20 new customers to the stadium. Still it might not be the idea of earning money for everyone but there will be some of you who would say it’s not a big deal if they are getting good money for it. So would you shave your head or get a tattoo on your forehead for that extra cash?

Whistling can pay off YOUR BILLS!

The job of professional whistler is actually a very common job in the music industry. There is someone doing the whistling on movie soundtracks or the music singles we buy because it’s not always necessary that the singer knows whistling too, or even if he knows, he might not be a professional whistler. Someone had to be really good at it to make it a profession.

But still whistlers are not as famous as singers or any other instrument player. Steve harvest-a New Yorker and three-time International Whistling Entertainer of the Year-says, “We whistlers have an uphill battle to gain recognition for what we do, and to have whistling accepted as a legitimate musical art form.”

For the moment, though, most people still regard whistling as little more than a nuisance. “There are some people who are even irritated by my whistling,” admits Herbst. “I  had a women stop me on the street one time and she said if she’d had a two-hundred pound man with her she’d have punched me in the nose.”

Most people are not aware of it. That’s the biggest problem. When people say to me, ‘what do you do?’ and I say, ‘ I’m a professional whistler, ‘ they said, ‘Yeah, okay, what do you really do?’ They think it’s a joke.
Steve Herbst, Professional Whistler

Whistling is against the law in a handful of U.S. municipalities, as it has been used as code by gangs.

If you watch TV, you are hearing more and more whistling in the commercial. Some whistling scenes are also developed in other countries as well like in India, China and Japan.

The residents of the island of La Gomera (in the Canary archipelago on the northern coast of Africa), whistle to communicate across the ravines and gullies on the island. In fact, the people there have developed an entire whistling language ( Silbo Gomera), as whistling sounds carry across long distances better than speech. Now that is something really different and might not have been heard. But what a great way to communicate. Lots of people can whistle since it’s very common for boys to just whistle when happy or ingrost in some work or simply looking at something they like. But becoming a professional whistler is little more than that. It takes a lot of detailing when you try to whistle some song like you have to know each and evry up and down of the tune to make is sound professional. You might have to keep your throat clear and running, free from anything that might affect your whistle. And of course a lot of practice.

It could be fun for the people who love to whistle. Whistle definitely is melodious to hear and makes any song better when used in background. But of course if you are looking for a great recognition like any singer then this job is not for you, but if you want to earn goof then it’s worth giving a try.