Does the client really know what they want

[tobytune]

Please excuse in advance my long rant here.
I would like to entertain that the listing client may not know what will really work for their TV/Radio/Film spot. Sure they list possible styles only because that is what music happens to be current rather than what would really work their production. I would like to give some examples....

Years ago, Before Internet (BI), I ran a recording studio that recorded V/O and would search music/efx libraries and put together soundtracks. Because I had-in house- 70 music libraries, ad agencies, film producers, etc would book time to do music searches for their productins. I was a library junkie and I knew every song in every library. Here's an example of one of my sessions...

The client brought a tv spot of a chicken getting plucked. Four suits sat in the room and each had an idea. Suit 1 said - "I want some guitar like Turkey in the Straw" or something. After an hour of playing everything he asked, suit 2 said "How about jazz?". Another hour went buy playing what he wanted. Suit 3 said "How about rock"? This went on for another suit. In the back of my mind I knew the perfect piece but at $145 an hour for search, I let them do their thing. Finally, after severe burn out, I played them some stripper music. Bang Zoom, it was perfect. The spot wound up winning a CLEO award. No credit for me.

Another exampele- I get a call for some acoustic guitar for a spot. No picture but they told me what the spot was about and wanted guitar. I sent them 5 songs as requested but, as usual, I also sent a couple that I thought would work. About 50% of the time, clients would pick what I suggested. That guitar piece they wanted? They wound up using a sax quintet.

My point being that perhaps the screeners could look beyond the request and consider the alternative that might work better.

[SubRivers]

I understand the argument that screening can be too restrictive and picky on genre boxes.

But - Imagine the scenario you described
Your client doesn't know what their spot really requires but you have worked it and convinced them it needs stripper music.
So then you run a listing for stripper music with Taxi to provide your client with options.

Taxi then sends you gregorian chants, ukelele happy clappy, jazz, rock and country under the assumption that you didn't really know what you wanted.

Which is why it errs to the restrictive side of interpretaion.

[tobytune]

Well, I didn’t try to convince them, I just suggested it and they liked that approach.

But here is another idea……suppose the client didn’t know what the possibilities are so they ask Taxi to list their :30 video of the spot and ask the Taxi members to interpret it and pick the one they like.

[cosmicdolphin]

But here is another idea……suppose the client didn’t know what the possibilities are so they ask Taxi to list their :30 video of the spot and ask the Taxi members to interpret it and pick the one they like.

You're right they don't know what they want - How can they know until they try it to picture ?

But on the whole Taxi are not supplying music for specific TV Ads, so there isn't a room of suits waiting for Taxi to send them a folder full of possible tracks.

Generally the libraries will see that they are short in a particular genre, or they know one of their clients has is editing a new season of a show that uses a certain style , or they have a bunch of stuff that's 5yrs old and they feel it's gone stale and needs a refresh. That's when they will typically reach out to Taxi and put up a Listing.

Our tracks are just going into the library ready to be selected at some future point in time ( or not ) ....then one day along comes a client with ttheir chicken plucking advert and it's the job of someone at the library to do the music search like you did back in the day, as like you rightly said they should know the catalogue inside out and be able to reccommend something that fits. But the Taxi Listing is usually happening before all of this is even a twinkle in the chicken pluckers eye.

Occassionly they can't find what they want and a Dispatch Listing may go out with a short turnaround and if you work direct with libraries you might even get a link to the scene/ad sometimes but on the whole, as someone else said on this forum we are just backfilling the library for stuff that might be needed down the line and not for stuff that's being edited in immediately.

[Telefunkin]

Well, I didn’t try to convince them, I just suggested it and they liked that approach.

But here is another idea……suppose the client didn’t know what the possibilities are so they ask Taxi to list their :30 video of the spot and ask the Taxi members to interpret it and pick the one they like.

Who is the Taxi client though?
My thoughts...
- TV editors might be upset by pre-release versions of their shows finding their way into the public domain.
- In isolation, 30s of video gives little flavour of the general style of a show or series.
- The existing Taxi listings often have video that could be used, if video really helps (but I'm not sure it would).
- Not all composers would be any better at writing to video than writing to a written brief.
- In a lot of cases, music editors have a pick list (bin) of tracks that suit the style of a show, and they choose what is appropriate because that's the job that they are good at and get paid for. Its not really our job (unless asked to write to screen).
- If the submissions are too 'literal' then they won't necessarily have general applicability for other uses.
- The editor might re-use the same track (or other parts of it or other mixes of it) elsewhere in an episode or in other episodes.
- Its not just single use but also re-use of tracks that brings in earnings.
- As far as I can tell, its libraries that are most often the 'client' here (with a few exceptions).
- Libraries don't necessarily have access to any video.
- As mentioned, library listings can be based purely on update, or expanding popular styles, not always with specific shows (and certainly not specific scenes) in mind.
YMMV.

[AlanHall]

Sounds like you got yourself a business opportunity here!

But here is another idea……suppose the client didn’t know what the possibilities are so they ask <your organization here> to list their :30 video of the spot and ask the <your organization here> members to interpret it and pick the one they like.