I really believe in the way we help each other to achieve our collective & individual goals here. This great culture is really coming from the top down...thanks Michael Laskow

I feel the way forward for the Taxi.com community could be where we focus on our individual strengths for the betterment of the whole. As a result, I see more people getting forwards and an overall [average] improvement in submissions.

Yes, I realize that very competitive members [not directed at anyone in particular] are not going to agree with me, but let me put it this way; "Given the choice, wouldn't you prefer to succeed with a little help, than fail all by yourself".

I'm personally hoping that improved & facilitated member collaboration (behind the scenes) will be an aspect of Taxi 2.0. I could imagine a members only area where we could listen to [a selection of] each others work-in-progress and collaborate (I mean only on work you are seeking collaborators for). This way, members could peruse and decide which projects they feel they would like to offer to collaborate on and negotiate percentages of royalties.

In some instances, it may be as simple as one member mixing another members work or one member recording a vocal for someone else's song. By it's very nature, there would be a record of who has listened to what and who has downloaded what (because we would have to log-in first). Therefore, providing some kind of accountability and security for the system.

I'm interested to hear others' thoughts on this...

Stuart

I agree with all of the above!

I used to be one of those people who wanted to do it all on my own but realized that, just as you say, it is better "to succeed with a little help, than fail all by yourself". Very wise words. We all have our strengths and our weakness and by helping each other out we are all going to end up with better songs, better recordings, better skills.

These days I am happy to collaborate with anybody who is interested. I would rather have 500 songs out there that I have a 25% credit in (for example) than 50 that are all my own work. And really the more writers you collaborate with the greater your chances of success because each of those people is going to have a vested interest in getting their song used.

So... yes. More collaborations and a place to tap into that in a more organized way would be a great thing.

I can feel my cold medication kicking in so on that note... thank you and goodnight!

Mark

Agreed. A members-only section of the bulletin board shouldn't be difficult to implement, and while we're at it, it would be nice to have the capability to embed a SoundCloud or YouTube window in our forum posts. However, there are other collaboration oriented platforms we can use, once we've made a connection here, so it's really just buying additional convenience, in exchange for some risk; this BB is searchable, unlike Facebook and some other platforms that are a 'walled garden'. It may not be such a hot idea to have our 'works in progress' available to the entire 'net.

At the moment, I can barley get people interested enough to listen to the finished projects, let alone the WIP versions.

Stuart

My observation is tons of people meet here on the forum and/or the rally and collaborate. I see it as more about building relationships than someone such as Taxi providing tools. My most successful tracks of late are collabs with other Taxi members- an outgrowth of meeting them at the rally after getting to know them a bit on-line.

With email, phone, file transfers by yousendit, FTP, and other, I haven't seen this as a "tools" issue.

Not saying I wouldn't welcome any collaboration tools from Taxi but I'm sure there is only so much they can do and I'd much rather see the focus on more and better placement opps for us.

Best,
Casey

amen to all that has been said here. I'm very interested in doing guitar or uke tracks for others as well as collaborating with lyricists and singers especially in exchange for real horn and string tracks.

got my vote for the private login only Peer2Peer

I agree it's very odd sharing WIPS with the world. Always seems more guests use this forum than signed in members!

peer2Peer being private could make a great bonus to becoming a member, it's one of the best things.

Yep cool 2! Mojo, enabling the adding of 'swf' in the BB admin for this section would be brill!

I agree this could be a good idea, under the right framework.

I look for collaborators all the time to complement my core compentencies. However, it varies a lot what I'm in need of (mostly drummers and singers), and I'm often too hard pressed for time to look people up, align ambitions and get the paperwork done. The few bucks you get a year for a tv/film track requires very streamlined collaboration processes.

So, I would be interested in a three-easy-steps kind of thing. Like a hook-up/produce/pitch type of idea, perhaps with screened collaborators?

This is a vey good point Casey! I guess my perspective is probably different becasue, in the 10 years I've been a Taxi.com member, I've never been to a Road Rally.

I'd love to of course, but it's just so far away from Australia (around 18 hours one way ).

Stuart

Some of this thread sounds like people are looking for collaborators. Other parts of it sound like people are looking for drummers and vocalists... not really collaborators, unless they're going to get a piece of the copyright and income. If it's players you need, we have had Musicians' Junction on the TAXI site since 2004. Admittedly, we quit keeping the tech on it up to date when we embarked on 2.0.

As for meeting true collaborators (as in co-writers), the forum is an excellent place to do that. We've looked at other online collab models that have come and gone, but none seemed like they were all that great. I guess that has been born out by the underwhelming response. Serious musicians don't use them because there are too many rookies who want to work with them and consume their time waving them off.

Filtering the good from the bad, or should I say the most serious from the less experienced is also a problem. I'm the world's leading expert on dealing with how (some) musicians react when informed that they aren't up to a certain level.

There ARE sites where you can hire top players to play remotely on your tracks, and I've heard some great work come from them. As for meeting co-writers... using a "mechanism" would sometimes, maybe often be somewhat analogous to a rookie getting off the bus in Nashville, and asking seasoned, hit songwriters to co-write with them. In REAL life, you need to show up in Nashville, keep your head low, stay humble, go to writers nights, go to every seminar there is, build your network one writer at a time, and after 5 years, MAYBE you'll begin to get some good writing meetings.

This forum and the Rally accomplish the same thing -- ORGANIC relationships that result in trust, and a level of understanding as to the capabilities of the co-creators you might want to work with. We've seen TONS of examples of how it's worked.

As for TAXI 2.0 having such a feature... it does have a social network in which you can give permissions, much like facebook. I won't say much else publicly, as the companies who imitate what we do read these boards pretty regularly, and they're shameless about copying us.

I WILL tell you that we just spent another month and a bunch more money building a feature that will help musicians do something they really need to do in today's music business, yet only a tiny percentage know that it needs to be done or bother to do it. So much of 2.0 is aimed at helping you get more deals and income, and not so much on bells and whistles. It seems like only yesterday that reverbnation was the cat's meow. Now it's soundlcloud. We're placing our bets on tools that help you get your music in the hands of REAL people in the industry, and making it easy for them to use your music.


Michael