Why I Finally Quit TAXI Music | 6 Reasons and My Honest Thoughts After Two Years | Sync Licensing

Comments · 240

• MA

  @MakeMusicIncome · 3 years ago · pinned

  Get our FREE eBook “50 Ways to Make Music Income”! <a href="https://makemusicincome.com/free/">https://makemusicincome.com/free/</a>

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• 6S

  @6stringbeats397 · 3 years ago

  I joined Taxi just to try it out. I quit after a year. It’s a cool company to get your chops up and get feedback on things to improve on. A lot of my music was rejected some was forwarded but nothing really happened. I started to build my own relationships and a lot of my music that I originally made for TAXI got accepted in other libraries from relationships I formed on my own. Now the music that I originally made for TAXI is getting major placements on NFL, House Wives, Vanderpump Rules etc. All from my personal relationships. You gotta have personal relationships in this business.

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• BO

  @bossnutt · 2 years ago

  Sounds like these briefs keep a true creative in a box that may feel stifling.

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• OF

  @OfficialKennyLauderdale · 1 year ago

  Gosh, I haven’t seen Taxi in yearrrrrs… I didn’t even know that they were still open

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• AN

  @andreasfranzmann9634 · 3 years ago (edited)

  Well my experience with Taxi couldn&apos;t have been better: Subsribed for one year, 6 submissions, 5 forwards, 1 contact by a publisher I still write for. So my calculation is: $200 + $30 = 1 deal, which is what I was hoping for and was lucky to get. <br>However, you can all do this on your own, just as you said. I see Taxi as an uplifter into writing + the potential of a deal. However likely that is. <br>Great video, fair and honest in my opinion. Thanks Eric!

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• DE

  @Detroitdogg · 2 years ago (edited)

  Over the years I &nbsp;belonged to Taxi and Broadjam. I left both for the same reasons you outlined.

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• GR

  @gregcarrozza · 3 years ago

  I have been a Taxi member for 6 years and it took me several years to understand the industry and improve my work both in quality and quantity. I had over 90 forwards before my first deal 3.5 years ago. Since then, I have 600 signed tracks and songs across 20+ libraries/publishers and over 250 placements as of my last PRO statement. I do agree that more members have your experience as compared to mine. But I really think that’s because you (and probably others) haven’t given Taxi enough of a chance and taken full advantage of everything Taxi has to offer.<br><br>First, you must submit more music; 10-20 submissions in a year is not going to yield enough positive results. As you mention, there are many reasons why a forward will not result in you being contacted to sign your work. So you have to create and submit a lot more in order to give yourself a better chance of success. I’ve done nearly 600 submissions to Taxi over the years. More of that was loaded in years 2-4 and more recently has tailed off because libraries and cowriters come to me now (more on this below) so I don’t have as much time to write and submit to Taxi.<br><br>Next, my experience with the companies that have signed my work through Taxi forwards has been great. They have been high quality both on how they conduct business and the placements I have ultimately gotten through them. I have many friends who are Taxi members both more and less successful than me, and haven’t heard anything bad about any company anyone has signed with through a Taxi forward. If fact, I’ve had a bad experience with a company that I submitted to cold and not through Taxi.<br><br>And Taxi vets these companies to make sure they are of good quality which is much harder to do as a composer just searching on the internet. In addition, these companies ask Taxi for music so they have a need right now. When you submit music to Taxi to fill that need, and if it gets forward and ultimately signed, there’s a much higher chance that you will get a placement. If you contact libraries cold and send them music you’ve done, if they don’t need it, they will probably ignore you. However, they may sign it even if they don’t need it right now. But there’s a much lower probability of placement of that work if they don’t actually need it and just want to fill out their library with more tracks. Now that I have provided lots of music to libraries and they have placed some of that music, they send briefs out or ask me directly to provide them with specific music. And, again, this work has a higher change of placement.<br><br>This underscores your point that personal relationships are important. To me that is a great BENEFIT of being a Taxi member. You get introduced to the companies by forwards, and then you get to keep and maintain those relationships beyond Taxi. <br><br>And while Taxi is a middle man in the sense of screening submissions, they are very good at it. Of course they may get one wrong here or there, but mostly they don’t. Most libraries looking for music come to them specifically BECAUSE they screen the submissions so that they don’t have to. Many good companies don’t accept cold submissions because they don’t want to review them. It’s WAY too much effort. And Taxi provides very good feedback when your work is returned (not forwarded) which you can use to help your work improve. Even if you got a response from a cold submission to a library, they aren’t going to give you details on why they aren’t signing you. Again, they don’t have the time. At best it will be yes or no, and as I said, probably no response.<br><br>An important aspect of Taxi is the forum where you can get feedback from peers, find collaborators, and generally learn about the industry. You can hear music that has been forwarded and you can learn about deals that others have gotten.<br><br>And the biggest part of Taxi missing from this video is the Taxi Road Rally held in Los Angeles on the first weekend of November. The event is free for members (and one guest) and is an invaluable source of information and networking possibilities. At the most recent event, I met a publisher that I did 4 songs for and then he asked me to produce 5 albums over the next several months (one solo and 4 with other artists). I have learned so much at the classes there and listening panels where random member’s music is played and critiqued live. And I have met so many of my collaborators and friends, many of which we have signed and placed works together. The rally is the single most important reason why I have success in this industry.<br><br>My observation is that those Taxi members that are successful are taking advantage of ALL that Taxi has to offer like Taxi TV episodes, the forum, the forwards blog and road rally. They are using these tools as well as the feedback from submissions to improve their work and to make excellent connections.<br><br>All this being said, Taxi is not for everyone. I know that my experience might not be the same as some other members. But you get out of it what you put in. If you want to be struck by whatever your muse is and just write a dozen tracks a year and try to find someone to publish them, you can do that without Taxi. You can find some low level libraries that will get you a few dollars, maybe hundreds. But if you want composing and/or song writing for sync to be your full time income then you have to do the music that is needed, you need to do it excellently and you need to do a lot of it.

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• MY

  @mynameisirrelevant46 · 3 years ago

  As a fellow songwriter/ producer I respect your independent spirit and dedication. I will like and subscribe sir..All the best

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• MO

  @moneicorobinson3818 · 3 years ago

  Great info, you are most transparent I’ve seen In my 4/5 years and 3 or 4 groups I’ve been involved with learning about sync music!

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• KE

  @keithrobertsonofficial · 2 years ago

  I worked for Taxi for about 5 years, and I never heard of anyone in all that time who had a &nbsp;license cover. It’s great that you finally left.

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• RO

  @robinschell8767 · 1 year ago (edited)

  Basically, Taxi was legit back when they were pitching music to A&amp;R at record companies. But when that dried up, they moved into the sync world in which their methods are dubious at best. I submitted a few songs that fit their briefs as close as humanly possible, and, predictably was rejected citing bogus reasons (like for example, the chorus not coming in soon enough, which is total BS. One of the examples in their brief was a longer intro / verse than mine, plus the music supervisor will just cut the song anywhere they want. I did a few submissions, (were rejected) all with equally frivolous reasons. (and, I should mention, I had several sync deals prior, from just networking, or via a label I was on).

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• CU

  @CuteClassySaved · 2 years ago

  Thank you so much for your honest unbiased review. Appreciate this and will not be wasting my time nor my money.

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