how many tracks before your first placement?

A creative space for business discussions.

Moderators: admin, mdc, TAXIstaff

User avatar
Telefunkin
Serious Musician
Serious Musician
Posts: 2478
Joined: Fri Mar 20, 2015 12:37 pm
Gender: Male
Contact:

Re: how many tracks before your first placement?

Post by Telefunkin » Sat Jul 30, 2022 3:17 am

GCampbell wrote:
Fri Jul 29, 2022 5:12 pm
My takeaway- I need to write a lot more!
Yep!
Q: How long before I get a hole in one?
A: Keep playing golf and see. :)
Graham (UK). Still composing a little faster than decomposing, and 100% HI.

User avatar
cosmicdolphin
Serious Musician
Serious Musician
Posts: 4450
Joined: Thu Feb 18, 2010 1:46 pm
Gender: Male
Contact:

Re: how many tracks before your first placement?

Post by cosmicdolphin » Mon Aug 01, 2022 7:27 am

Telefunkin wrote:
Sat Jul 30, 2022 3:17 am
GCampbell wrote:
Fri Jul 29, 2022 5:12 pm
My takeaway- I need to write a lot more!
Yep!
Q: How long before I get a hole in one?
A: Keep playing golf and see. :)
Not too long if you're in charge of N.Korea ;)

User avatar
TheElement
Serious Musician
Serious Musician
Posts: 1108
Joined: Sat Jul 05, 2014 8:26 am
Gender: Male
Location: Bahamas
Contact:

Re: how many tracks before your first placement?

Post by TheElement » Sat Aug 06, 2022 8:53 pm

GCampbell wrote:
Wed Jul 27, 2022 4:42 pm
Hi folks,

Just a general question from a newbie (sort of)- how many tracks did you sign before you got your first placement? I'm referring to instrumental cues.

I say that I'm "sort of" a newbie, because I've actually been a Taxi member for almost 2 years, but have been pretty lazy and slow about submitting. In 2 years, I've only produced 31 tracks for Taxi briefs. Of those, most were forwarded (sometimes to my surprise) and 13 are signed (with 3 different libraries). I think I'm ready to kick things into a higher gear, but I just want to get an idea for what my general expectations should be in terms of landing actual placements. The first tracks I signed were released in March of 2021. So far I haven't seen any placements, and none of my mighty 13 tracks have showed up in my PRO. I realize 13 is a tiny number and I need to do a lot more, but I'm just curious what other people experienced when they were starting out.

I'm also open to any other comments or advice you might have for someone at my stage of things! I'll be renewing my Taxi membership for another 2 years soon, and am promising myself that I will write more, submit more, and also spend more time here on the forum.
Took me 6 months to get a forward and like 3 to 4 years to get my first placement.

But a lot get placements faster.

I was eager to fail fast and often as I knew the faster I failed the closer I would be to success.

Good luck
All the best!
Hollywood Music In Media Award Nominated Record Producer from The BahamasFacebook | Soundcloud

User avatar
cosmicdolphin
Serious Musician
Serious Musician
Posts: 4450
Joined: Thu Feb 18, 2010 1:46 pm
Gender: Male
Contact:

Re: how many tracks before your first placement?

Post by cosmicdolphin » Sun Aug 07, 2022 1:49 am

I've been posting yearly updates the past few years if you want to see the results: six-year-update-t148673.html?hilit=5%20year%20update

User avatar
GCampbell
Newbie
Newbie
Posts: 19
Joined: Mon Sep 28, 2020 11:27 am
Gender: Male
Location: Toronto, Canada
Contact:

Re: how many tracks before your first placement?

Post by GCampbell » Thu Aug 11, 2022 6:09 am

cosmicdolphin wrote:
Sun Aug 07, 2022 1:49 am
I've been posting yearly updates the past few years if you want to see the results: six-year-update-t148673.html?hilit=5%20year%20update
Wow, that's very interesting. thanks for sharing! Congrats on the increasing placements and kudos for staying so productive!

User avatar
GCampbell
Newbie
Newbie
Posts: 19
Joined: Mon Sep 28, 2020 11:27 am
Gender: Male
Location: Toronto, Canada
Contact:

Re: how many tracks before your first placement?

Post by GCampbell » Thu Aug 11, 2022 6:14 am

TheElement wrote:
Sat Aug 06, 2022 8:53 pm
Took me 6 months to get a forward and like 3 to 4 years to get my first placement.

But a lot get placements faster.

I was eager to fail fast and often as I knew the faster I failed the closer I would be to success.

Good luck
All the best!
Seems like you're in the right head space! At my current rate, I think I'll be 100 years old before I get my first placement, lol.

User avatar
cosmicdolphin
Serious Musician
Serious Musician
Posts: 4450
Joined: Thu Feb 18, 2010 1:46 pm
Gender: Male
Contact:

Re: how many tracks before your first placement?

Post by cosmicdolphin » Thu Aug 11, 2022 11:21 am

GCampbell wrote:
Thu Aug 11, 2022 6:09 am
cosmicdolphin wrote:
Sun Aug 07, 2022 1:49 am
I've been posting yearly updates the past few years if you want to see the results: six-year-update-t148673.html?hilit=5%20year%20update
Wow, that's very interesting. thanks for sharing! Congrats on the increasing placements and kudos for staying so productive!
No worries, will update again at the end of the year 8-)

User avatar
markhimley
Committed Musician
Committed Musician
Posts: 926
Joined: Tue Jan 19, 2016 11:56 pm
Gender: Male
Location: Midwest, USA
Contact:

Re: how many tracks before your first placement?

Post by markhimley » Thu Aug 11, 2022 6:24 pm

How many signed before I got placements? - For me it took 12 tracks to get my first placements. I signed my first deal in August (I think) of 2017 and signed a 12 track album as my first batch. Within ~2-3 months of that album getting released the placements started rolling in and it only picked up from there. Everyone's experience will be vastly different.

If the question was phrased differently.. How many tracks written before getting placements? Probably 100+.

Some great advice and tips listed above.

My advice:

- Focus on making great music and work with great companies/publishers.

- Keep in mind it's a marathon, not a sprint.

- Do your research. Watch TV/Ads/Films/Trailers or whatever your target is. Find the publishers that supply those end clients. Study their catalogs. Study some more. Use reference tracks and do your best to create something that would fit in their catalog. Be very intentional and begin with the end in mind. Taxi listings are a great form of research and practice as well.

- Make friends in this industry and learn from those further ahead than you. You can save LOTS of time by learning from other peoples' mistakes.

- Be a nice person. It's a small industry. Nobody wants to work with a jerk or someone who's entitled, or worse yet someone who makes their life harder in any way. I.e. don't use samples and loops and pass it off as your own music.

- Write, submit, forget, repeat

Hopefully that's helpful, just a few things that came to mind when reading this post.

Cheers on your success so far and wishing you all the best

User avatar
GCampbell
Newbie
Newbie
Posts: 19
Joined: Mon Sep 28, 2020 11:27 am
Gender: Male
Location: Toronto, Canada
Contact:

Re: how many tracks before your first placement?

Post by GCampbell » Tue Aug 16, 2022 4:03 pm

markhimley wrote:
Thu Aug 11, 2022 6:24 pm

If the question was phrased differently.. How many tracks written before getting placements? Probably 100+.
Thanks Mark, I appreciate the words of wisdom! Also a good point you make here. And congrats on getting placements so quickly on your first album. My mighty 13 tracks are spread across 6 albums, I don't know if it's more advantageous to be doing entire albums. I guess since I'm mostly writing to Taxi briefs, the forwards usually end up being included on an album with a bunch of composers. I suppose the next step for me is to continue to work with the libraries I'm in and pitch full albums to them somewhere down the road.

User avatar
GCampbell
Newbie
Newbie
Posts: 19
Joined: Mon Sep 28, 2020 11:27 am
Gender: Male
Location: Toronto, Canada
Contact:

Re: how many tracks before your first placement?

Post by GCampbell » Wed Aug 17, 2022 12:23 pm

Well folks, I'm happy to report that I got my first tunesat detection today. So I guess my answer to my own question is 13 (haven't signed any new tracks since starting this thread).

The library hasn't registered the track yet, to my knowledge. From what I've read in the forum this is nothing to be concerned about, but should I at some point send them a message? If they're giving out blanket licenses, they might not be aware that the track was placed, no? Or am I just being overly eager?

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 7 guests