Taxi Music Review 2022 (PLUS Submission Secrets!)

[@MusicForIncome]

Are you a Taxi member? What's your experience been like? Have you been to the Road Rally? Are the Taxi forums useful? Are you considering Taxi but have reservations about joining? Leave your thoughts below!

[@ZevMeth_originaljewishmusic]

I think it would make it much simpler and easier if they just limited each listing to three or so songs per listing (doesn't have to be 3), and that every other song submitted after that is $5 per song I feel like this would make more people comfortable with submitting songs, while also weeding out the people trying to submit too many songs! I can tell you that I would much more likely submit songs to different listings if the aforementioned suggestion were utilized, and I wouldn't care that they had a limit to submit songs before having to pay.

[@christopherjones9419]

I'm a Taxi member and I live in rural Wales in the UK.I've had a wealth of instrumental cues placed in shows on MTV, HBO and other networks directly from Taxi forwards. What I owe Michael Laskow and Taxi is the education they've given me. There are still elements of my work that at times aren't good enough. I'm working and being mentored by industry pros to help my music reach that top couple of per cent. I love this as it's something worth striving for. Once you accept that A list compositions are the ones that prevail and make money it all fits into place.I'm a teacher and I have a university degree in music.That's not enough. A small number of companies tell the truth and have integrity.Taxi is one of them.Lots of companies give no meaningful education and shake people's emotions up like a soda pop while charging them exorbitant fees(way more than Taxi).Find the way to educate yourself and realise the flaws in your own work.The journey's a buzz!

[@MusicForIncome]

Love it Christopher! And love your attitude and work ethic - I'm sure that's a huge part of your ongoing success! Here's to many more placements! 🙌🏽

[@ChrisMHall]

Hi Christopher, Another Taxi member from Wales. I'm out westish

[@christopherjones9419]

@@ChrisMHall Hey Chris-i'm just outside Pontarddulais a couple of miles from the Pont Abraham Junction.

[@christopherjones9419]

@@MusicForIncome Thanks Michael- I really enjoy the challenge.

[@ChrisMHall]

@@christopherjones9419 Edge of Swansea for me

[@Richard-xp4sh]

Michael, I was at the same RoadRally as you - 2018. The RR was fantastic and worth the travel costs!. I joined at the end of 2017 and signed my first contract through submitting to a listing with Taxi in Jan 2019. I truly believe Taxi helps open doors. The feedback given on submissions offers great insight as to how you could improve a track OR why your track was forwarded. I learnt (and continue to learn) a lot from writing to a brief. I've renewed again for 2 years just recently and can't praise them enough and would definitely suggest anyone just starting out will benefit hugely from a membership assuming they put in the effort to improve their craft, use the forum and watch the Taxi TV shows every week here on KZbin. Attending the Rally reassured me that Taxi was the 'real deal' and not just a seedy little office with a couple of people collecting fees.... Its so much more than just a place to submit music - its a great education in the music business.

[@MusicForIncome]

Love this Richard. This is exactly the way to use Taxi and get the most from the service they offer. Here’s to your continued success!

[@danweber8170]

TAXI works! At least for me it does and the contacts I've met through them, are fantastic people to deal with, as well. Thank you for another great video, Michael!

[@MusicForIncome]

Thanks Dan and congratulations on your continued successes!

[@SamuMusical-Aprendatocar]

The constant chatter amounts to nothing but a scam. Taxis must enhance transparency, ensuring that members are informed about how companies select the music.

[@HauschildAndreas]

I would say I have had mixed experiences with Taxi so far. I became a member right around October last year and started submitting in November. I even got a forward on my first submission and it felt incredible! 😁 This told me that I was already able to produce music that was of high enough quality and that was something I hadn’t previously had any way of telling. Motivated by this initial success I kept submitting and kept getting a good deal of forwards. And further more most of the times I got a return there was really good usable feedback that told me where I should improve. All in all I probably did around 80 submissions between November and February and through this process of writing a lot and having some things forwarded and others returned I became a lot wiser as to what my strengths are and where my weaknesses lay. So as a learning and skill development resource I really think that Taxi is hard to beat and I have gotten a lot from it in this area for sure! Also, not being forwarded unless the music is good makes you less likely to make bad first impressions with the libraries you are forwarded to which is a really good thing 👍 However, at this point I have had about 40 forwards through Taxi, all of them at least around a few months old at this point and I have yet to see something come from a single one of them. I have been in touch with their head screener and asked them if there was perhaps something that the screeners accidentally let slip through when forwarding my the music - something I do which they don’t notice but the library owners do and don’t like, hence why they don’t reach out. He assured me that that wasn’t the case - they have the best A & R team anyone could ask for, if they felt a submission earned a forward Taxi feels confident it met or exceeded the criteria for a particular listing (his exact words). This answer left me feeling a bit assured that my music is actually good enough but also left without anything to improve upon which felt frustrating as what I have been doing obviously hasn’t been working that well. Perhaps it is just a matter of more time before some of the clients reach out. If they do it will be a nice surprise 😊 But for now I have decided to stop writing and submitting more music to Taxi and take what I have learned from them and continue forward myself contacting libraries directly. In this way I am not tailoring the music too specifically to a particular request and it is easier for me to submit the same tracks to many different libraries at the same time. If it takes a thousand submissions to libraries before I get through then that’s ok 😊 And submitting directly seems a faster way of getting to that point then.

[@MusicForIncome]

Hey Andreas! Thank you so much for taking the time to detail your whole experience there. I'm sure it will be really useful for a whole load of people reading this. Sounds like a sensible option given that situation to approach libraries directly, and see if any of those taxi opportunities come back around to you in the meantime. Fingers crossed for you!

[@HauschildAndreas]

@@MusicForIncome Hi Michael, thanks for the feedback and the support! I appreciate it 😊 I will keep at it and differentiate my approach to find what works best for me 👍 The reason I was able to get forwards right away with Taxi is your course on production music, no doubt, which I had followed just prior to joining Taxi. I already knew how to make music beforehand but it was all the key pointers and inside perspectives in that course which helped me focus my work into something that is good production music. Thanks for that! 🙏

[@MusicForIncome]

@@HauschildAndreas So great to hear, Andreas!!! That's made my day! :-)

[@HauschildAndreas]

@@MusicForIncome Well deserved! 😊🙏

[@TaxiIndependentAR]

This video covers that topic (getting forwarded by TAXI, but not hearing back yet). Worth a watch! kzbin.info/www/bejne/jKi2fKSplJedeaM

[@GoDewy]

6% of members get a deal each year. Everyone pays $300. That's quite the bad gamble, ratio wise.

[@MusicForIncome]

So 2 things: (1) Where are you getting this stat from? Provide a verified source for this info we can all check. This is the internet after all, you can't expect people to believe a random number. (2) Let's assume, for sake of argument, that you're right. (BIG assumption!) If everyone who joined Taxi all submitted music that was perfect for each & every listing, we could draw some scientific conclusions. But given that anyone can join and pitch, and that they reject some listings (& give composers feedback as to why), what you're saying doesn't really make sense. For a (completely made up) example, if 70% of people who joined taxi simply don't yet write music good enough to be forwarded, and of the remaining 30%, only 5% of those submissions really resonated with what the client was looking for (as music is subjective, of course) - this all doesn't seem that crazy. If your music isn't getting forwarded and getting deals, start working on getting your music better... ...and watch what happens. You're paying to access the opportunities, not to get some guarantee of a deal. Because if anyone could guarantee that, they would be charging you a hell of a lot more than $300.

[@VeryOnBrend]

I joined Taxi after joining you. Had some forwards, but nothing came of it. In the end, the $5 per submission thing is what turned me off. I think their reasoning behind that fee is flawed and nonsense. I have since joined another company; That Pitch. comparable yearly membership fee with no submission fee per track. Submit as many tracks as you want each month. I've had 5 songs picked up that came with an up front fee to me, and 3 of those tracks have already appeared on TV. It was just a no brainer for me. Go where the results are.

[@MusicForIncome]

Thanks for the headsup about That Pitch, Brendan - I'll look into them, glad you've had some success there! Great stuff!

[@briantuckerworship]

So if I'm a Christian music songwriter, is there any opportunity that TAXI provides for pitching songs for record deals? If I record my song I wrote in a studio to make a great quality production and submit through Taxi, does it make sense to pitch to Taxi if I don't intend for it to be in any movies or TV?

[@calamitydave5000]

I'm looking for the resource about structure ie. edit point and other jargon that you mentioned. Any info would be appreciated. Thx 👍 12:10

[@moodmode]

Looks like you’re describing service for dummies and non professional. Why I need their review , I am pro.

[@melvasu1163]

Taxi is really just for producers not songwriters. They only review and care about productions. If they claim an artist is looking for a song...uh their review will say change the drum beat [SMH]

[@rolandocaraballo]

Taxi reyect the track. For what ever reason. ????

[@mitchelledels9762]

You can submit your songs to XPN IN PHILLY IF YOU HAVE A FOLLOWING AND HAVE A SITE. IF they like your tunes they will play them on air and you can hear them in your car. Work getting a following of people and site and your music will go somewhere Unless you want to spend you money making Taxi rich.