TAXI.com

Hi! My name is Luke Icard!

I've been producing EDM and dance music related beats since 2010. My love for music began at a young age. My mom paid for me to take piano lessons when I was just 10 years old. Since then, I went on to learn the drums, and a little bit of guitar in there too. Over the years as youtube began to have more creators, I started really getting into music production, mixing, and mastering. My friends and family have always said my music could be in movies so here I am!

I was already contacted by a music library, but they wanted about 10 songs for an exclusive deal, (before I joined taxi), and I said no because I didnt want to take them down from streaming platforms.

I joined taxi last week and I've already submitted to a couple listings.

I"m mainly a self taught producer, but I lived in Nashville for two years learning the ins and outs of recording and mixing.
After Nashville, I moved back to Charlotte, NC to start my own music business. I enjoy recording, mixing, mastering, and especially producing.

My first serious release as an EDM artist was with EDM(.)com, and got over 46,000 plays on their soundcloud. It's my most successful release with over 8,000 plays on spotify.
Its called "Night Walk".

I have 564 monthly listeners on spotify under my artist name, Luke Icard. I release music under my government name

I make anything from deep house, to progressive house, to drum n bass, to dubstep, to moombahton.

I have written 4 albums, and I try and have a release every month. If you'd like to listen to my music, you can check out my soundcloud.

I am looking forward to what I am going to be learning about taxi and meeting new artists and composers!

Here is my soundcloud link

https://soundcloud.com/lukeicardmusic

Hey Luke, welcome fellow newbie! I only joined a week or so ago and based in the south of England, just getting used to how things work. Some of the Taxi youtube videos with Michael are super helpful, only submitted 2 tracks so far so just getting started. Love your track Night Walk by the way, great sound and perfect for the summer, I instantly found myself thinking up lyrics for it! I'm a composer, song writer and singer and write a mix of music from Pop, Folk, Funk to Contemporary instrumentals. Hoping to book flights to come over for the convention when they decide if its going ahead in LA. Good luck with everything!

Hey Luke, welcome fellow newbie! I only joined a week or so ago and based in the south of England, just getting used to how things work. Some of the Taxi youtube videos with Michael are super helpful, only submitted 2 tracks so far so just getting started. Love your track Night Walk by the way, great sound and perfect for the summer, I instantly found myself thinking up lyrics for it! I'm a composer, song writer and singer and write a mix of music from Pop, Folk, Funk to Contemporary instrumentals. Hoping to book flights to come over for the convention when they decide if its going ahead in LA. Good luck with everything!

Welcome Luke!

"Luke... it sounds as if The Force is already at work from within you..."
So - here's a 'Welcome" from a lurker in The Peanut Gallery.

Welcome on board Luke and good job on your success so far!

Lmao thanks everyone!

Sounds like everything you've learned musically and production wise will stand you in good stead for writing production music. Good luck with it.

What you'll probably need to learn apart from how to tailor your tracks for sync, is the business side of things.

I think a lot of folks who are Taxi members would gladly remove a collection of tracks off of streaming if a good exclusive library wanted to sign the them, as streaming makes barely any money compared to sync, and libraries are hard to get into so that's something to think about going forward.

When you say one release a month, is that a track or collection of tracks for an EP ? Library music is a volume business so I think at least a track per week is a good number to be aiming at so you can build up a decent sized catalogue. If it's only one track a month that wouldn't really make much of a dent compared to the number of tracks needed overall.

One other bit of advice you will come across a lot is make sure to write for the listings rather than trying to submit pre-existing tracks. This helps ensure your tracks are on target for the listing and also ' in the clear ' to be signed to Publishers i e. unreleased and not on Spotify etc as this can be a deal-breaker with exclusive libraries ( which is most of 'em these days )

There don't seem to be many of us on forum that make EDM so I look forward to hearing how you progress.

Mark

Welcome Luke! I checked out your Soundcloud and you have a lot of music that can easily be placed on tv shows. Someone said earlier that they would pull their streaming music down if an exclusive library wanted the tracks. Depending on the library (assuming that it is an established library with a good track record of placements) I would agree. Pull the music down and get it into a library. One single placement can pay more than all of the plays of a ten track album, easily.

Good luck!

Welcome Luke, I'm new here to the Forums too.
Been listening to your collections on soundcloud while doing other things. Its fitting of music I like listening to while working (non-music work.)
I also listen to Trance playlists at times. You cover that too.

The late Vangelis, in an interview once talked about how he enjoys composing every day for himself but went on to mention that working for scoring movies that it's very hard.
On the side of writing for Cues there are Taxi TV videos showing how easy it is. lots of useful information.

For someone like yourself with so much of your own directed work in the last few years, and I suspect you know this, but subtle mindset habits... don't let ego mess with you.
Of course, I don't know you and could really be out in the left field, or more like sitting on the bench.