Taxi Reviews

[Robertj64]

Hey All,

Is it just me or are the reviews a lot slower in coming? I have two submissions from July 2nd. I have others that are leaning over a month. I just wanted to know if everyone else has the same thing going on. I think the listings also have become less populous. No doubt that it is a result of COVID 19. I hope everything is alright with Taxi.

[Zaychi]

Michael indeed said in a forum post that screening is delayed because of COVID and people working from home.

I didn't notice any less listings coming along recently?

[ComposerLDG]

My experience is the exact opposite. The last three listings I submitted to reported 2-3 days after the listing deadline.

[cassmcentee]

#1 Just Relax
#2 Screeners Vary, they work on different time schedules, not all the same...
#3 Your genre might fall into the lap of a busy screener

[RayTully]

This topic has been on my mind lately, so I wanted to give some thoughts here as a new member.

I joined 2 months ago. 20+ year musician, mostly rock but well schooled, and brand new to music licensing. Focusing on instrumental cues, which I am also brand new to.

My main interest in Taxi was the review system, as a sort of fast track education into this business. With no expectation of getting anything forwarded for quite some time, I planned to use the reviews to learn the ropes and see where I should improve. I find Taxi TV extremely useful and fun, but I am VERY busy in life and probably only catch 2-3 hours a month.

I've submitted 7 tracks to Taxi, which I spent a lot of time writing specifically for the listing. Going to speak loosely here as I don't believe there's datestamps on the reviews (though maybe I could line up the email notifications?).
I've had a couple come back in less than a week, and the rest are taking 4-5 weeks. Longer than I thought!

That said, I've been very pleased with the brief but kind and actionable feedback I get. And I've managed to avoid the dreaded "too midi" so far!
As a newbie though, the length of the review time has been frustrating. Obviously it's so difficult to put things into action when there's such a lag time, and kind of drains the motivation to slave over a song for a Taxi listing in my limited time if I still have so much pending feedback out there and may just make the same mistakes.

I'd been figuring reviews would 2 weeks or so, based on honestly nothing in particular.
I guessed things were slower due to covid (and hopefully an uptick in business from homebound musicians?), and also after searching around the forums learned things take longer than I thought in general. So although frustrating for a new person, no hard feelings really.

Was in the dumps about it briefly, but came up with a strategy and am a happy guy again. Unless something just perfect for me comes along on Taxi, I'm going to sit back and wait for a "batch" of reviews to come back. Meanwhile, I am practicing writing and mixing a LOT, and sending the tracks off to the stock music marketplaces (Songtradr, Pond 5). Of course with the risk that some of those may be a good match for an exclusive Taxi listing I'll have to pass on.

But it's been worth it, as I've got so much practice writing MORE music FASTER. And I feel like I will do so much better on my next "batch" of Taxi submissions.

TLDR: Taxi review time is rough on a newbie, too hard to integrate the feedback. Still happy with Taxi, in hopes it'll get me into some pro libraries eventually. Until I get much better in tune with Taxi, I am going to oscillate between a flurry of finely-crafted Taxi submissions, and a flurry of more quickly-written open market submissions to hone my chops.

Sorry for the long one.