Do Famous Singers Pick Songs Up From TAXI?

[jeh]

I mean is Taxi only for Film/TV music or do composers of major artists pick great music pick songs from TAXI? wHAT ARE THE ODDS

[jeh]

Been waiting for a reply!

[Paulie]

I'm not aware of famous singers picking songs from here, but there are many listings where Taxi's customer is a producer for a major artist and is looking for new material.

[Len911]

The odds of getting picked up anywhere are fairly low, as are probably the odds of having a hit song. There are and have been many famous people screening at Taxi. There's been at least one I know of, and that was for Kenny Rogers, I mean as far as being a hit song, "Buy Me a Rose"?
The flip side is that there has to be the quality songs with the right timing, and exactly what an artist is looking for at a certain time.
But yeah, the connections are there!

[funsongs]

The smart and lucky ones do.

[VanderBoegh]

Hey Jeh, there have been quite a few instances of Taxi members landing artist cuts with famous singers as a result of Taxi forwards. There was a big thread on this years ago. Here's a link, along with a post from Michael Laskow himself talking about all the deals he could think of off the top of his head:

post493626.html?hilit=janiva#p493626

Also, one thing he forgot to list in his post was that the country song "I Loved Her First" recorded by the band Heartland was written by Taxi members and went to the top of the country charts.

~~Matt

[Freejay]

Good to hear there have been some successes for TAXI writers!

When I see the posts from a producer or A&R rep seeking songs for a famous or up-n-coming artist to record for their next album, I think "this looks like a really good way to have my best ideas appropriated with no compensation". A song being recorded for major release will likely pull in several more writers and go through multiple rewrite sessions. Why would a big production team NOT lift the best lyric and melody ideas from TAXI forwards instead of paying to license a song from an unknown non-A-list writer? Though of course this would be unethical, it's also a fairly low risk that one of us would recognize our work on the eventual release and bring a lawsuit, much less a successful lawsuit.

Am I being too cynical about the music biz?
Anyone have a perspective on this?

[mojobone]

Good to hear there have been some successes for TAXI writers!

When I see the posts from a producer or A&R rep seeking songs for a famous or up-n-coming artist to record for their next album, I think "this looks like a really good way to have my best ideas appropriated with no compensation". A song being recorded for major release will likely pull in several more writers and go through multiple rewrite sessions. Why would a big production team NOT lift the best lyric and melody ideas from TAXI forwards instead of paying to license a song from an unknown non-A-list writer? Though of course this would be unethical, it's also a fairly low risk that one of us would recognize our work on the eventual release and bring a lawsuit, much less a successful lawsuit.

Am I being too cynical about the music biz?
Anyone have a perspective on this?

This sorta thing does happen, but it's rare. Think it through in light of the fact that this is a relationship business, and you'll quickly understand why. Aside from being bad karma it's bad business; everybody's faking it til they make it and you never know who's legit, but when you nick somebody else's work and then the whole world hears it, your victim has a paper trail. This is particularly true of Taxi submissions, as opposed to stuff that comes 'over the transom' at a publisher.

Another reason is that you can't just swipe a bassline from this one, a beat from another, plug in a chord progression from a third and so forth. I mean you could, but are you likely to have a hit that way? Bear in mind, unconscious lifting of even some pretty huge hooks happens all the time; most recently in Sam Smith's Stay With Me. Composers steal from each other (and Bach and Shostakovich) all the time; just try to make sure when you take something, you change it enough that it's yours now. In other words, steal, don't borrow. You can really only copyright words and melodies cuz beats, basslines and chord progressions have to be recycled.

New writers are largely unaware of all this and can sometimes be a tad sue-happy, which is why it's so hard to get your music heard by anybody with both the cash and the authority to help you move the ball.

[admin]

That possibility of somebody appropriating your music always exists as soon as somebody hears your music in any circumstance. Great music always seems to "influence" other music, whether it happens intentionally or not.

Three words: Beatles/Chuck Berry. And of course, there are hundreds, probably thousands of other examples.

The only way to avoid the possibility of any ideas, parts, styles, etc. from being appropriated would be to never have anybody hear your music under any circumstance.

I've been in the music business since 1974, and during those 43 years, there have been very few copyright infringement suits that have gone the distance. I don't think people in the industry look for ways to find ideas they can steal. It invites trouble and can kill a career.

As for a bass line, lyric idea, or guitar lick being appropriated, that's been going on since the first drum beat was created and played by some indigenous tribe. It's been part of music creation since the dawn of time, and it will continue long after TAXI or the current music industry (as we know it) ceases to exist. Sometimes by intent, other times by osmosis. The next time you hear somebody hammering his middle finger on the neck of a Strat or doing a descending glissando on a B3, it's a given that somebody else came up with that idea decades before.

But to think that somebody would run a listing with TAXI and have a production team sitting around auditioning them all and thinking, "Why should we pay some unknown songwriter for this idea when we can just steal it and screw him/her out of their cut of the potential income" is pretty unlikely. There are laws that determine when somebody has been influenced by your work VS ideas intentionally and fully ripping it off.

The same concept is present in visual art. Did the SECOND artist who employed cubism steal it from the first, or was he/she influenced? Did a songwriter hear a cool line of dialogue in a movie and use the idea, concept, or some of the actual words three years later in one of their songs without realizing where they first heard it? Probably! Art doesn't exist in a vacuum. They might actually believe the idea was original on their part, having long forgotten ever hearing the dialogue or movie at all!

If they intentionally stole a big enough chunk of the dialogue for their song, that might be something that could be prosecuted, though I'm certainly not a music attorney or well versed enough in copyright law to give a 100% accurate opinion on that.

All that said, I don't think there are production teams waiting for the next great idea to roll off the conveyor belt of TAXI member music. And if I'm wrong about that, they'd also be watching conveyor belts from every other source they get pitches from.

If they ARE going to steal, they'd do better to steal from hits of the past, and say their music is influenced by '70s rock.

I can only remember three times in the last 25 years when a member thought his or her music/copyright had been infringed. In two of the three cases, their music had never even been forwarded by TAXI. If it was stolen, it had nothing to do with TAXI. In the third case, the Tim McGraw song the member thought had infringed his song had a copyright registration date that preceded the creation of the member's song by several years. None of the situations ever made it to a lawyers office because there was no infringement.

But they do point out why copyright registration is important!

Rest assured that TAXI's record keeping goes back to day #1, and that adds a layer of protection (as pointed out in a post above). If you want to completely avoid ANY possibility of somebody hearing your music and using an idea or outright stealing it, then the only way to do that (in my opinion) is to not let anybody ever hear it.

Hope this helps,
Michael

[admin]

And I forgot to address the original question about whether or not TAXI members have had songs cut by big artists. Here's a post from another thread. I don't respond often, but when I do, they tend to be long.

Here is an answer to a somewhat similar post located elsewhere on the Forum. I couldn't locate it, but had it in a Word doc. I hope this helps!
Michael

The number of available slots for songs and instrumentals on TV shows and films is astronomically higher than the number of slots for songs to get cuts on albums or artists to get signed to rosters on major or good indie labels.

Think about how many channels you have on your TV, multiply that by the number of hours in a day, and multiply that by the number of pieces of music in a TV show, and that alone tells you why so many more TAXI members get TV and film placements.

Think about how many “real” record labels are out there, the number of artists on their rosters, and the number of songs per album, and you’ll quickly see that there is no comparison to the number of opportunities for TV and film placements.

It’s also noteworthy that that a VERY small percentage of our members actually post on this Forum (sadly, most people are lurkers), and only a small percentage of our members who come here take the time to tell us about their successes. So, even with all the success stories that DO show up here, there are so many more that they’re uncountable at this point.

It actually depresses the hell out of me that we have so many killer opportunities to GET cuts and record deals, but a MUCH smaller percentage of our members pitch to them. I think most people think it’s easier to get a film or TV placement, which it is, by FAR!

Combine that with records sales being practically non-existent (only one gold record last year, if memory serves correctly), so most people just don’t try! Trust me, if somebody has a REAL hit song, or is a REAL hit artist, and is what labels and radio are looking for, TAXI has no problem getting it into the right hands.

It’s a holiday weekend here in the U.S., and I’m heading out the door, but off the top of my head, here are some song and artist deals I remember:

Jenna Drey got signed to a $100,000 Indie label deal (she had a dance hit, but I can’t remember the name of the song).

The Matches got signed to a Major/Indie deal (their record didn’t do so well).

The band, Fisher got signed to Universal (the record stiffed).

Bobgoblin signed to MCA (the record stiffed).

Adam Watts and Andy Dodd got a cut and had an international hit with Jesse McCartney’s (Beautiful Soul) and they each signed publishing deals with Disney Music Publishing as a result of that, which has led to them having cuts on TONS of records that have resulted in their songs and productions on 45 million records and tons of film and TV cuts.

Crossfade signed to a Columbia Records imprint and went Platinum.

Sixpence None the Richer had a placement on Dawson’s Creek, which led to their having a huge hit with their single, Kiss Me, and a Platinum Album hanging on our wall at TAXI.

Elliott Park had a Number One with “I Loved Her First” which resulted from a publishing deal he got through TAXI.

Erik Hickenlooper and Jim Funk had a Number One with Kenny Rogers’ “Buy Me a Rose” through a publishing deal they got because of TAXI.

Daniel Holter had a song cut on Columbia Records (I Wanna Be) that was released as a first single from actress/singer Emma Roberts.

Jim Funk and Erik Hickenlooper’s “Buy Me a Rose” was cut again by Luther Vandross and went top 10 (pretty sure about that).

Brian Allen got signed to an EMI distributed Indie Label Y2K Record (the record wasn’t released… I think EMI killed its distro deal with the label).

More than a dozen TAXI members have had cuts on compilations with an international label with Universal distribution in foreign countries.

Chuck Henry got signed to a New Age label (Etherian records, if memory serves correctly). The label went out of business, but referred Chuck to another label, and he did really well on that label.

Dean Krippheane has had at least one, if not more songs cut by Swiss artist Stefanie Hienzmann on Universal, and if I remember correctly. The song is “Do Your Thing,” was a hit, and I’m pretty sure the album went Platinum.

Scott Free had his song Badass cut on Janiva Magness’s last record. She’s considered the modern queen of blues.

There are others, but I’m doing this from memory, and now getting yelled at by my family for working on a Sunday/holiday (again

I encourage you to pitch to the label/record/producer opps!!!! Those are very real opportunities, and people tend to ignore them.

Best,
Michael