My First Year of Membership in Review

[TerrellBurt]

With a week away from renewing my membership, I decided to review my first year. Here goes nothing...

Listings I submitted to: 59

Forwards: 16

Pending: 3

27.1% forward/submission success rate.

Deals from forwards: 1. This was the documentary film placement with Owen Chaim I posted about in "Success Stories." The total number of songs that I licensed to this film are 3 (Two collabs with Owen and one collab with Axel). This past Saturday the music supervisor for the film asked for my address so he could mail me the sync fee check for $200. I'm assuming that will arrive sometime this week.

First deal: Signed my first deal with a library five months after joining TAXI. This was a library I became familiar with through collaborations. Since that first deal, they have signed five of my songs in total. This is the only library that I am currently in but with the help of Matt VanderBoegh, I have a good chance of being in 3-4 more libraries before the end of the year.

The expenses outweigh the income so far but collaborations have not only allowed me to grow my catalog but to also save money. I've gotten free mixing and mastering all because of collaborating so I highly stress the importance of collaborating with other TAXI members.

I have also become a more efficient writer in the past year and I attribute that to the forums, TAXI TV (I always catch the reruns and rarely watch it live), and the screener critique. I'm attending my first Road Rally in November and I am sure that I will gain even more information to help me become more efficient. I also want to invest in MasterWriter.

Overall, I believe my first year as a TAXI member was great and plenty of seeds were sown for long term development. I'm looking forward to what the next year has in store. My goal this past year was to get some songs signed to a library and to get at least one placement. Thankfully, I achieved that. By this time next year, I want more songs signed and at least 2-3 more placements.

I'm learning the key to TAXI submissions is not just matching the listing, but doing that AND making that match top notch. I've gotten discouraged when forwards didn't wind up becoming deals. A forward is only the first step and shows that you understood what a client was looking for. But just because a song is forwarded doesn't mean it is quality enough to land you a deal. If you can read and understand the listings and make the best music possible, TAXI will eventually pay off for you.

[Paulie]

Well done Terrell!

[Russell Landwehr]

I would call this hitting the ground running, Terrell... Good Job in the first year.

See you at the Rally

Russell

[mojobone]

Great post!

[mojobone]

For those of you keeping score at home, the average forward rate at Taxi is about 7%. Above average is good, especially if you've worked hard to get there from somewhere underneath, but the industry only has time for home runs, to use a baseball analogy that few of our European allies will grok. Collaboration is the key, and networking is the path to the key. And at this point, I'm gonna resist the urge to include a Legend Of Zelda reference.

[TerrellBurt]

Thanks guys. Also forgot to mention that I'll probably submit to less listings for my second year to better my average. I was all over the place this past year and learned which genres I'm better at.

[joyfrost]

This sounds like a perfect first year to me! Nice work!

[Russell Landwehr]

Thanks guys. Also forgot to mention that I'll probably submit to less listings for my second year to better my average. I was all over the place this past year and learned which genres I'm better at.

Yeah. That is my plan as well. I was all over the road. And I found that I could get forwards in MANY genres, but I've decided to focus a little more with my long term goals in mind.

[Russell Landwehr]

For those of you keeping score at home, the average forward rate at Taxi is about 7%. )

Very interesting, I thought that rate was the number of forwards that got signed... Hmmm... This sheds some new light on things.

[TerrellBurt]

This sounds like a perfect first year to me! Nice work!

Thanks Joy. Hopefully we can collab on something in the near future.