The most important and common method of music research, also termed "Call Out". Song excerpts are played to a representative group of persons over the phone and rated by them. If the songs are selected according to hypotheses formulated in advance, the results provide data not only on individual songs but on entire categories of music.

During a Sound Check carried out by the Mediapulse Corporation, a hundred test persons listen to twelve-second excerpts from 27 songs played to them over the phone. Sound Checks are standardised, and the research results are available within a week of the survey.

The test audience consists of a hundred persons from the broadcasting area of the radio station commissioning the study. The age of the test persons corresponds to that of the target audience as determined by the radio station. The test persons form a representative sample of the population of the broadcasting area in terms of age, sex, educational level, occupation, occupational level and community size.

27 excerpts (hooks), each lasting twelve seconds, are played to the audience. Audience selection and composition are carried out by the head of programming of the radio station commissioning the study.

The test audience is given personal questions and questions regarding the music played to them:

• Familiarity: Have you ever heard the song before?
• Rating: How much do you enjoy hearing this song on the radio? Grade 0 (not at all) to grade 10 (very much).
• Burn(out): Should the song be played on the radio more often / as often as at present / less often / never again?
• Mind absence (only if the burnout question is answered with "as often as at present"): If for some reason it were no longer played, would you miss it very much / rather much / not particularly / not at all? 
• Switching habits (only if the burnout question is not answered with "more often"): If this song were played on the radio, would you switch to another station?
• Sociodemographics: Sex, age, education, occupation, occupational level
• Radio use: Which station do you usually listen to? (Station list provided by the customer); listening frequency for those radio stations that are usually listened to.

The results are evaluated according to:

• Rankings by familiarity, rating, burnout and switching habits
• Radio use of the test audience
• Sociodemographic composition of the test audience