Hello from the West of Ireland

[Kerryman]

Hello! I'm Stephen, a semi-retired professional photographer. Originally from the UK and based on the South west coast of Ireland for the last 25 years. I signed up to Taxi yesterday, having 'lurked' for a few weeks, watching videos and following the emails for requests. I decided I had enough tunes filed away to at least have a go at submitting 5 or 10, so here I am!

I've been playing in bands and writing music since the late 1970's, mainly as a hobby. That said, I've had a little bit of success on Spotify and with Pond 5. Also some recorded music has been live streamed by YT channels based in Australia, and I presented an audio visual show (with me playing my DAW!) at a Chamber music festival in County Kerry, Ireland in August this year. I'm mostly interested in writing instrumentals, probably aimed at TV, films and games - but I'm not closed off to other opportunities.

Interestingly, in the 1980's I subscribed to the photography equivalent of Taxi (The Bureau of Freelance Photographers - BFP) in the UK. It was a monthly newsletter that gave members contact details of magazines / books etc, that needed specific types of photographs. I sold a few (hundred) photos through them and also got contacts to editors that I would never have known about -some of whom gave me commissions.

The main difference with Taxi, is that submissions made to the clients were not approved by the BFP, I sent them straight to the client.

I am someone that has taught photography and worked as an editor, and so have been on the 'approving / not approving' side of the work so, I have mixed views about it. How do you feel about going through the approval process at Taxi? Do you think it hampers your progress or expedites it?

Stephen, Kerry, Ireland

[cosmicdolphin]

How do you feel about going through the approval process at Taxi? Do you think it hampers your progress or expedites it?

Screening definitley expedites your progress if you can deal with the rejection, interpret feedback and have the ability to write for the listings in the required styles. Others will get hampered by it as Music Licensing is a tough gig and often not what people think it is when they first get involved.

For example, appreciating you have some pre-written tracks sitting on your hard drive, it's a common mistake to try and use these for a bunch of listings when people sign up. This is generally a bad move for a number of reasons which may or may not apply to your tracks.

1. It's rare that those tracks will be what publishers are looking for right now. i.e. style wise

2. People often try to put square pegs into round holes and submit tracks that only have tenuous connections to the request

3. Existing tracks are not always clean/cleared for licensing i.e. If you tried to use a Pond 5 track for an Exclusive Listing or there are co-writers lurking in the background who have part ownership

4. The tracks may not be up to " Broadcast Quality " to meet the technical and mix quality standards

5. You may no longer have access to the project files to make changes and alt mixes required by a library as things change on our systems over time , plugins expire etc.

6. Older pre-Taxi tracks are unlikely to be in a cue format preferred by libraries and publishers. i.e. Little to no intro, edit points they can use, 90-120s run time, tracks that build so the editor has options

Those are just off the top of my head and why the best piece of advice given to me on this forum is " write to the Listings ". If you can do that you'll likely save $50 and have a much better chance or the music being forwarded.

Mark

[rrheinsmith]

I'm new as well Just saying hello.

Rick

[Kerryman]

Screening definitley expedites your progress if you can deal with the rejection, interpret feedback and have the ability to write for the listings in the required styles. Others will get hampered by it as Music Licensing is a tough gig and often not what people think it is when they first get involved.

6. Older pre-Taxi tracks are unlikely to be in a cue format preferred by libraries and publishers. i.e. Little to no intro, edit points they can use, 90-120s run time, tracks that build so the editor has options

Those are just off the top of my head and why the best piece of advice given to me on this forum is " write to the Listings ". If you can do that you'll likely save $50 and have a much better chance or the music being forwarded.

Mark

Hi Mark, and thank you for the detailed reply. I've edited your response to highlight point 6, as this is the one that especially applies to me. Most of the others, I have experience of and/or have a solution to hand (e.g. I've left Pond 5 for music - not for my video work - so the exclusive clause doesn't apply).

As for rejection, I've been a published book author/magazine writer and professional photographer for over 40 years, with a lot of success, if I say so myself. But, being able to pay the rent with photography and writing also means I've heard 'No Thank you', far more than I've heard 'Yes please'. It's just the law of averages; for every yes, there's probably a no - and I got a music rejection slip this morning as a matter of fact.

Growing a thick skin and moving forward is something I can do quite well now. But 20 years ago, I'd be ready to give up if I saw 3 'no's' in a row.

Personally, I find your point 6 the most interesting and potentially useful for me. With my background, I know how to work to a brief. Very specific commissions are the life-blood of a freelance photographer and writer, and I also worked in academia for a long time - essay writing is as 'tight' as it gets in terms of specific style and content.

But, I totally take your point that throwing a bunch of pre-written tracks at Taxi to get started may be as prudent as setting fire to your wallet, because they don't meet the criteria. Your point about writing cues with no or very little introduction is extremely helpful to me, as I've always written music with introductions. It's just the way it's done, right? Wrong. At least as far as cues for TV and films and games are concerned, it would seem. So that's definitely a learning curve I need to be on.

That said, in the 3 days since I've joined Taxi, I've made my first 10 submissions and I'm stopping for a while, to see how far off the mark they are. I wasn't totally uninformed, as I've been following the listings for a month and I've watched a lot of Taxi TV. Four of them, were written to the brief (same one). The other six were all re-written, to some extent, to either bring them in line with the required length and/or to reduce the intro length and also to make sure the endings were buttoned (mainly reducing tails in most cases).

I also re-mixed and mastered every one of them, to make sure that they sound at least as I think they should - bearing in mind I'm not a professional sound engineer - and I saved them to the very highest wav quality. I'm actually thinking about taking a mixing course, if that side of things proves to be an issue for me - based on feedback.

Thanks again for your reply, I can see you are a regular responder here, and I'm sure the forum is all the better for having you in it.

Stephen

[cosmicdolphin]

Thanks again for your reply, I can see you are a regular responder here, and I'm sure the forum is all the better for having you in it.

No worries, it sounds like you're taking the right approach with it. Good luck with the submissions and be sure to post up any success/failures

Mark

[JonathanE]

Hello! I'm from Canada but visited Cork and the Cliffs of Moher a while ago... what a beautiful country you have!

Mark has some really good advice there.

That being said, I myself did have a bunch of tracks pre-written that did eventually end up working for a bunch of listings that did eventually come up. Most of them were returned at first, but the same genre came up eventually again within 6 to 12 months, and so by the time the listing came around again, the feedback I had gotten from the previous listings helped me get it up to par for the next listings, and with some tweaking (and in some cases changes to the actual track, and overall just some improvements) the tracks got forwarded.

But that being said, the quicker route to success with taxi is just to write for the brief, although in my case, the tracks I had pre-written happened to be within a genre that came up a few times a year in the listings. But especially after the Rally, where things were definitely made more real for me, I'm writing more directly for the briefs

[GregD]

Hi Stephen,
Like you, I'm new to Taxi. I do find that writing for a listing or revising a track for a listing is a different kind of writing process. Not sure if I like it or not. Something to be worked on.
Gregd

[cosmicdolphin]

I do find that writing for a listing or revising a track for a listing is a different kind of writing process. Not sure if I like it or not.

Best if you can learn to like it as that's basically the whole gig if you're writing instrumentals even if/when you graduate from Taxi.

The libraries know what they want, so you have to be able to write what they want on demand ......basically it's a service industry.