Not on target? Help with reading listings.

[anne]

Ok, that is a common question that I see coming up on this board a whole lot lately. Having been there myself, and having learned how to answer that question by studying the following items, courtesy of that taxi site, the rallys, and the many board members who have come before me, I am sharing the ways in which you can learn to figure it out yourself, too. The usual caveat applies here - this is only based on my experience and I don't work with or for Taxi in any way. I'm a member and that is all. OK, so here are some things in the listings that trip people up when new to submitting to taxi that make people write subjects like I wrote for this post...GENRE!!Genre for music submissions is more organized than it appears at first glance. I'm not looking at any listings now but here is an overview of the genre hazard -1st you need to know what genre you are in AS IT RELATES to music supervisors.- not your friends, cd collection, napster search, or even the radio.Before people start saying the screeners don't know what rock is, or what downtempo electronica is , or whatever, you need to be sure you are talking the same language. You will quickly find out why your submission has been returned as "not being on target for the listing"Taxi is not the one who has to like the song here folks, their client - the music supervisor / producer / publisher etc looking to use your music is the client!If you are not willing to take the time to learn to speak the client's language then you should be doing something else. So, this lesson's homework is to go look up some music supervisors and look at the music they place, look at the music they label "rock" or "aaa" or "singer / songwriter" and learn their language. Do it now before you send out any more submissions.That was lesson 1. Lesson 2 will follow. Since I've hijacked this thread (sorry viking) I will go start a new one called pitching f.a.q.sIf you aren't willing to learn to speak the language of the "customer" than you won't get past this very important first step.

[anne]

Topic 2 - "a la" or "sounds like" or "in the style of" or "reminiscent of" . The example I'm using is tv/film but it should apply to all of the listings. These mean different things, but the best way I found out to interpret this is:1. look at the different songs or artist referenced. 2. see what they have in common. 3. don't be shocked to see something like the current listing with "seventies style a la john denver, eagles, and the carpenters" . At first glance you may say "huh?" but think harder4. dig a little further into those artists- what do they have in common, besides the era and style listed. Lyrical content on some songs? Instrumentation? Recording style? Listen to some songs, look at some videos, see what was a hit for them all in the same few years span and study those songs to see why those names would have been referenced together as representing a particular type of music.5. write down your answer so you can look at it while writing, rewriting, recording: )

[anne]

There is more to come but I have to work now : )Just for reference, there is some stuff in review corner / DENIED where I started to write this down - I'll be carrying that over later. Again - and I say this clearly - I DO NOT WORK FOR TAXI IN ANY WAY, and this is based on my learning and experience in being a member for the last few years only.I say everything from my narrow little point of view and I may be wrong in what I say. There, now when you read the rest of the "how to read the listings" suggestions, you'll understand where I'm coming from. I will post more later on

[anne]

Hummingbird posted a great point on the "denied" thread and I'm putting part of it here as it goes to point number one, genre.From Hummingbird....Lots of good answers above but I wanted to add one thing. For example, I just got 4 excellent tracks returned. Why? They were forwarded before! Well, I'll tell you why -- I did not "hear" what the listing said and I submitted great tracks that don't have the specific thing they are looking for. Duh. I should know better.Further, I have been at the Road Rally at panels, and they have CDs from members, sorted into genres (and the members choose what genre box their CD is going in) and the panel will choose a genre & they'll pull a CD from the box and I was SHOCKED that 90 PER CENT of the time, whatever is pulled from that genre box ISN'T that genre. Never mind specific things like 'electronica a la so-in-so". Sittin' there helped me appreciate WHY companies will come to TAXI to get submissions screened. "Mer - thanks. There is a lot to developing the feel of reading , and mostly it is just practice. If you can make the rally, do it. Last year Matto and Dave Walton conducted a panel about this very topic.

[mer]

This is great, Anne, and I look forward to more...-Mer

[mojobone]

This is certainly an area where I need some work. If you'd asked me twenty years ago when I had it all figured out and knew my Punk from my P-Funk, I'd have had a different story, but the landscape definitely changed while I was busy making other plans.

[crystallions]

Thanks for posting this. Lots of great advice.

[anne]

So I have an example for you all. I recall a listing from long ago that mentioned both Mott the Hoople and NY Dolls in the "along the lines of" bands. Here is where researching band's recordings (I use rhapsody's free account for this) pays off. Now, to someone a little older than I am there may be no problem finding the similarity between the two bands, but because of the timing of my coming of age, I could not see anything (as I didn't do my research). My recall of NY Dolls is heavily overshadowed by Buster Poindexter, and I never really looked too far past that because that is the extent of my direct experience . My recall of Mott the Hoople is that of "all the young dudes" and then "once bitten twice shy". I failed to see anything in common between the two bands with those periods of their careers in mind. I was listening to some NY Dolls last night and realized that the instrumentation was the same as the MtH's "once bitten twice shy" instruments, although the songs are completely different. So I had Bob play a few more tunes from his collection of both bands and the commen thread between the bands became stunningly obvious. Had I bothered to do the research at the time of the listing, I would have had a song suitable for submitting, but I didn't bother because I thought I knew enough.The lesson for me (and this post)? Don't think you know anything just because you recognize the names of the bands and can name a few songs.If Taxi lists bands together in a listing, dig until you find the similarity or the common thread between them. It may not be that they sound alike, as in this example. It may be the general content of the lyrics, the instrumentation, or the style or something else - all I'm saying is that the connection may not be obvious at first, but when you do your research, it can jump right out at you. Hope that helps illustrate a point in interpreting listings for some of you. I'm always surprised how much I have to re-learn this step to be on-target