Not bragging...not excited

[sonicart]

Hi guys,first post here. I've just been going through my taxi database as I review whether its feasible to continue with the service when it comes up for renewal. Myself and my songwriting partner - like most people here - take our writing very seriously. I have given up work to do music full time with the intention that the extra hours will be rewarded with 'the break'. In fact a Michael Laskow email around the turn of the year encouraged me to that very thing which I was contemplating. This has involved relocating (countries not just towns!), rebuilding my studio setup and a whole bunch of other related sacrifices in order to 'do what I want to do'.Here's the rub:32 Forwards, no commissions.Now, we have had commissions elsewhere, occassionally with well known companies/organisations, we did a small project for Disney for example.Having read some other posts, I appreciate that I was perhaps a little scattergun with the submission approach, apparently 24 subs per year is the average for online users. I submitted 265 times over 18 months! But - in defence of that, the tactic to get 'forwards' worked.Bottom line, I'm not sure whether to roll up the sleeves and take on the Dispatch listings also, and fly from Europe to the Road Rally in November (thus adding another outgoing from my pocket to follow the $2,000+ I have already paid to Taxi) or whether Taxi simply doesn't make financial sense for me to continue in, and I am best exploring other avenues to get my music heard.Has anybody else had 32 forwards and no paying work?Note to moderator: I deemed this to be the most appropriate place to post this message, apologies if you disagree with my choice.

[bbm]

Sonicart,We've been TAXI members for about 11 months. We've had 18 forwarded songs (some of them are the same song to different listings) from 64 submissions (we have another 7 pending at the moment).We've had one offer from all the forwards and unfortunately it was something we had to turn down. Some of the forwards are recent enough that it's too soon to know one way or the other.We plan to renew when our year is up in September, because even though we have not made any money directly from TAXI so far, we have made some valuable contacts, and after all access is what this whole business turns on.In the case of the song we had the offer on, we just couldn't tie the song up for the length of time that the music library wanted (because it is part of an album project that we are actively shopping and the library only wanted it if they could have it exclusively for 3 years), but as a result of the contact from the forward we're now able to work directly with the music library on other material.When we are forwarded we research the company we are forwarded to, and in some cases we do follow up. For instance, we had another forward that we researched and found that the producer had a web site where he invited submissions, since we knew our material had been forwarded to him via TAXI already (in fact we're told he screened it himself) we sent him an email to introduce ourselves. The producer was selecting material for a recording artist. Our song is in the Que for the artist, but regardless of whether it is selected for that project we've now established a relationship with a producer we didn't know before.From our point of view the money we spent on TAXI this year has been a good investment. Only time will tell how good.Cheers!bbm

[jh]

Hi Sonicart,Let me assure you that frustration is very common among TAXI passengers. I´ve been TAXI member for 13 months and I´ve had 7 forwards out of 36 submissions (27 different listings) and no deals so far. Once I read an article about this woman who´ve had 2 big deals out of 12 forwards. Very good proof (to me at least) that you need luck which you and I haven´t had yet, but let´s keep things positive !!! Negative thinking won´t help us a bit. Anyway your post got me wondering that if you haven´t got a deal out of 32 forwards but it´s possible to have 2 deals out of 12, then.... In theory you could have thousand forwards without a single deal, but I guess it´s about the same probability when you get a deal from your very first submission (and the song is the first song you ever wrote)... My friend is interested in betting and he is always talking about "statistical loss" which means that when team has lost all of their games, there´s growing possibility that the team will win the next game (the possibility to win gets bigger every time they lose) So every time you don´t get a deal from forward, the possibility is getting bigger and bigger that you will get the deal from your next forward. It doesn´t sound very logical, but that´s how it goes. (well at least my friend thinks so )I don´t know how much probabilities have to do with music, but if I´ve had 32 forwards I would feel very confident about getting a deal very soon. Sometimes math comforts (Counting probabilities is how I comfort myself sometimes instead of blaming myself and others "Bad songs, bad a&r people, bad publisher etc..." )

[johnnydean1]

What are we supposed to spend our money on...................................................................................................................... ..........................................................................................Wine........................... ......................................................................................................................... ...............................Women..................................................................................... ................................................................................................and...................... ......................................................................................................................... ......................................................................................................................... ......SONGS!