Contract Seems Unfair - Thoughts?

[Paulie]

...if my impression is even vaguely close to reality. I would personally would have a really hard time convincing anyone, and least of all myself, this is value for your money.

Taxi is a matchmaker and educaitonal platform. The goal, like you stated, is to introduce your music to libraries and supervisors. You pay the $5 per track, this plus membership fees is where Taxi gets its revenue. They get no slice of the pie once you are connected to their clients. Those clients then ingest your music and hopefully place it. These libraries have the relationships with tv/film music personnel, and like any agent in sports or entertainment, they get their cut. I'm not a fan of 50%, but it is what it is. One alternataive is for you to try to find the actual musical decision makers and then pitch your music directly. Good luck with that... 99.9% of them don't have the time or trust to deal with unvetted resources and personalies. The value proposition Taxi offers its clients is that they are pre-screening music so that the musical decision makers have a batch of quality music to review. It saves them time. Taxi shields its clients from the dirth of really crappy music out there that some people submit that has no business being submitted in the first place.

I guess it all comes down to what your musical goals are.

[crashgates]

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[Paulie]

I have no idea what that creepy meme is... can someone provide context so I can figure out if I'm being mocked or agreed with?

[Casey H]

It's Oliver Anthony whose song,"Rich Men North of Richmond", was a major viral hit. Crashgates is obsessed with becoming a Billboard charting artist following the same one in a million path.

The constant posting of his picture is annoying as heck and I wish it would stop.

[crashgates]

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[Casey H]

(1) He writes his own songs.

(2) Artists and their management will not listen to unsolicited song pitches. They will only listen to songs from trusted sources- mainly publishers and music attorneys. That's because the potential for being sued is so great. Part of being liable for a copyright violation is having had access to hear the song you are being accused of copying. So if they listen to someone's demo and don't have interest in it, they can end up sued by some unknown who swears that some notes or words in the song were lifted from their demo, true or not. With all the good trusted sources they have, why would they even take a chance? And again, this guy is a songwriter who writes his own songs.

(3) Your song, performance, and demo is very poor (not being rude, just truthful). Not gonna impress anyone with it. Even if someone important listened, they'd click it off in 10 seconds. I don't' think you 'get' how high the bar is for a song demo in today's world-- the writing, and the entire production.

There are people here, including myself, that would love to help you as much as we can. But since you reject the idea of years of very hard work, there's really nothing we can do. If you ever want advice other than the lottery ticket kind, let us know.

Best,
Casey

[crashgates]

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[cosmicdolphin]

So I was wondering would this track stack up

Like a jenga tower with most of the bottom pieces missing

[crashgates]

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[Paulie]

If you want help here, I suggest you stop spamming graphics... you are working your way toward a ban from the forums. We are here to help, but that's a two way street. Here's some honest feedback on "Missing You."

• The chord progression is pleasant, could use some more variety as the song progresses.
• Mix is not good… the keys are too quiet, vocals are too loud.
• Vocals are out of tune, the doubles make it worse. If you insist on being the singer you need to use pitch correction.
• The bass sounds dated and dry.
• I was hoping to hear some drums come in around 0:57, when you extended the chorus. The song form is unusual, non-traditional. Form matters if you are trying to pitch this to artists.
• The breakdown section around 1:39 has some wrong notes in it, or needs more support if you are trying to imply some different harmony.
• Inconsistent use of the sustain pedal, gotta clean that up.
• The lack of drums keeps the song dull throughout, you could use much more development. Try adding elements and/or changing things up in each section.
• Would have liked to hear some more stuff like a pad or more keys in the section starting with “Today is your birthday.”
• The hook phrase is repeated too much, and the poor vocal performance makes it even more difficult to hear over and over again.

Your web site mentions your "preference for combining the basic elements of the traditional singer songwriter music with a fusion of electronic pop/rock and dance elements.” I don’t hear any of that. This is not “singer songwriter”, nor does it come close to pop/rock or dance. You also mention that you are influenced by Rhianna, Sia, Lorde, Tones & I, Dua Lipa, Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Harry Styles, Billie Elish, Katy Perry, Lewis Capaldi and Ed Sheeran.” I don’t hear any of that at all.

This is certainly not pitch worthy, it could work as a scratch track to give someone you trust a framework to start with. Your best hope is that this gets ‘discovered’ for how bad it is and goes viral. But even then, it’s not catchy enough for that.

I listened to some of your other songs and the same feedback applies. Poor vocal performances, bad mixes and dated sounds. You can go for 80s synth sounds without sounding dated. Using current synths and proper mixing techniques will help you a ton. "Passion" reminded me a little but of “Cars”at times, “100 Degrees” is probably your best effort so far. But they all need work.

If you are serious about this, I suggest finding a collaborator that can help you with song form, singing and engineering. There are also plenty of great books out there that can help you with the various elements and form factors of successful pop music. None of what you have online today is worth spending $5 trying to submit to Taxi, you are just not there yet. But that doesn't mean you can't get there if you are sincerely willing to accept feedback and work on the craft.