Wow, I've got a lot of work to do! 100-150 tracks? A LOT of work to do!

I was a Taxi member for two years and let my membership run out a couple of months ago. Money's tight right now, can't afford what you can't afford. When I was a member, I had over 40 forwards leading to signing several non-exclusive contracts. Then I started looking into other libraries, submitted some tunes, they liked them enough to offer me more non-exclusives. I presently have almost everything I've recorded, about a dozen tracks I consider good enough, on nearly a dozen different libraries, always looking for more. I'm still waiting for that elusive 1st placement at this point but Taxi showed me how to get this far so I can say, without reservation, that it was worth the money.

I need to get busy in the studio!

Thats a great story!

Now I am motivated to write new material!

Thank you.

Thanks, Casey. As a newcomer to this side of the business, you gave very helpful perspective.

Your welcome... Most of what I posted up top comes from our very own Matt Hirt (matto) who is the father of the "five year plan". Check out some of the links at the beginning of the thread- I think there are links to Matt Hirt videos.

Good luck!
Casey

Great info here, guys! Thanks for sharing! : )

Here is an live speech by Michael Laskow in discussion of this topic. Well-done, Sir Michael!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbPOxRrE ... ure=relmfu


With Appreciation,
Torch

This has been a fascinating thread. I appreciate every one of you. We submitted several songs to Taxi with mixed reviews between 05 and 07 and had no forwards. Finally, we had a placement on our own with a boutique library in LA, and then got our first forward (same song to that same library) about a month later via Taxi. So we thought - 'we don't need no stinkin Taxi' - we're rich, we got a song placement!! We thought you guys just weren't paying attention to all the rest of our glorious stuff. Well, we weren't exactly that insane, but we really didn't realize how far we had to go.
Anyway, fast forward 4 years. Some personal life got in the way of our music life but still, we've had a couple dozen song placements. However, it finally dawned on us.
That will never make us rich! It won't even make us not-poor.
One library is not enough for retirement. It's also not really "working" at our business.
So.... we're ba aaack

On a personal note, I'm not a performing member of the group, more of an organizer. I'm looking forward to getting reacquainted with a great team of people. I remember Hummingbird, Matto, Casey and others. I'm so glad you are still hanging around. Hummingbird, I recently read your blog, and that was partly what inspired me to sign up again.

I see from this thread how much the instrumental music is important in the ongoing income. We've never submitted instrumentals. We also haven't worked on a specific target on a fast turnaround. We just had a forward on our first submission in instrumental music, on a quick turnaround. It was very welcome.

I never really looked at the postings in detail to create a specific submission before. I have to say, I've thrown a few pieces at Taxi already this month that were less than perfect for the submission, but I intend to get better at it. I'm currently reading everything I can on the forum, and hopefully will have time to review YouTube information over the holidays.

I think I get it now. It's a process. It takes time to make a real living at it, a lot more time than we thought it was going to take. But then if we make music for the money, it would be much easier to become a doctor.

This thread is inspiring!! Thanks for being here.

Judy

http://www.taxi.com/mimiandteft
http://www.mimiandteft.com
http://www.meditationdna.com
http://www.caseyhurtmusic.com/

I wish I could figure out the secret formula. But really, I don't think there is one. I have just been making songs and submitting them. I have given up on finding a niche or targeting my music. I create what I have and submit it. I see no need in stressing out over this music thing since it doesn't pay the bills. It is nice to get songs placed and to make a little money here and there. That's about it for me.

Thanks, Casey, for the detailed post. I just signed with a library in November, and it's been WORK! Great work, mind you, but it requires a ton of regular writing. Since November, my songwriting partner and I have written over 50 pieces- our goal is 100 by our 1-year anniversary with the library (during the Road Rally, incidentally), and 500 pieces within 3 years.

With all our hard work, we haven't seen a penny or even a blip on our ASCAP statements yet, but we're working with the faith and understanding that the $$ will come later. We try to control what we have control over, and that is working hard on writing new music each day.

Thanks for the great post!
John C.
www.twojohnsmusic.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FguwMMsDZA

I strongly recommend watching Matt Hirt's videos. I'm not sure if it's 5 or 7 parts now, but watch them all! Matt, who lives and breathes this and is the father of the "Five Year Plan", is the real source for the info on how to make significant money with film/TV music.

Casey