Empire State of Mind - source for royalty-free instrumental?

[Jent]

Hello, fellow Taxi members!

This is an odd last-minute request. I hope I'm placing it in the correct forum and I hope I'm not violating any rules of Taxi board etiquette.

My boss at work is doing a parody of "Empire State of Mind" for an in-house produced video that plays on his laptop at tradeshows as an attention-grabber. He is looking for an instrumental "karaoke-like" version of the song that is higher quality than a general midi file. He has the vocalist for the Alicia Keys parts and he's doing the rap portions (don't ask!)

I wondered if anyone here knew of a source for a high quality version of a backing track for something like this. He has a small budget but he does have a budget. He would particularly like to find a royalty-free professional cover that he could pay for.

If you know of a source for such things I would certainly appreciate the help. If you happen to have one yourself, all the better.

As I said, if this is in the wrong place I apologize. None of the other forums looked like the correct place.

James Mitchell (Jent)

[jnmorrison]

Well - not really the wrong forum per se.
I think this is actually the right place.
HOWEVER - this is what taxi does. So, you are kinda trying to undercut them on their own forum. SO - I'd suggest contacting them directly to see if they can help you.
OR search the internet for the multitude of talented producers that there are, and approach one of them individually to create the track for you.

Good luck.
Cheers,
Nick

[Jent]

It never occurred to me to contact Taxi directly about something like this. Do they actually do that? I've been around Taxi for about five years now and I didn't get the impression that they operated as a resource for music, only a "gatekeeper" for forwarding music to libraries and publishers and such. Perhaps I missed the boat.

I can't imagine they would take a listing from me for a one-off tiny project like this. Have I missed something?

I apologize if I appeared to undercut them. I'm only trying to find a resource (library, for example) for a pre-existing track and thought other Taxi members might be able to steer me there. I doubt it would be worth anyone's while to create a custom track for a dinky project like this, but I may be wrong.

Thanks for the response. Once again, my apologies if I offended anyone or stepped on anyone's toes (or business).