TAXI.com

Brand New Taxi member Here!

I had a backlog of material when I joined Taxi, so I submitted a bunch of stuff to a variety of listings that sounded "about right" based on the listing descriptions. I didn't consistently listen to all the referenced artists in the listings (my bad). I received overwhelmingly positive feedback about my music... but nothing was forwarded, due to submission stylistic differences.

I called the Taxi offices and I spoke with somebody who told me that the ads are all written by the same person, and therefore can be confusing when trying to differentiate styles. She suggested that I should always listen to the referenced artists and use those as my main style guide. She went on to say that most Taxi members only submit once or twice per month, and that made me curious: does that seem correct to you all? It seems low to me considering the volume of requests for submissions!?

Hey man! Welcome!

I'm not going to answer your question. Instead, I'm gonna tell
you what you need to hear.

Every Monday at 4pm PST, Taxi broadcasts a show on Ustream.
Watching this show, one QUICKLY gets a handle on the language of
the Listing. Stuff will organize itself before your very ears.
You'll be able to quickly say "Nope. Not for me" or "Hmmm. I might
have something that fits."

I look forward to hearing your stuff on "The Real Housewives of Guantanamo Bay"!

I can't speak to the general percentage of submissions of the Taxi population, but I can say that a targeted, well researched submission strategy is better than a scatter shot strategy. In my experience both with Taxi and with actual publisher clients, they typically aren't looking for "close but not exactly right", because they have a brief from their clients that they are trying to fulfill. If a publisher sends a bunch of "almost there" tracks to a music supervisor, chances are that supervisor won't call them next time. They want what they want.

Fortunately Taxi can serve as a good feedback mechanism (if we choose to learn from it) and good practice for pitching and learning how to target to briefs. Because I can say, also from experience, that it's good for the reputation (not to mention the wallet eventually) if you can make targeted pitches consistently. No one bats 1,000 but the good hitters don't swing at every pitch, they are good at waiting for the one they can hit. That comes with experience.

I have not been submitting very much to Taxi listings because I am pretty busy writing for clients I have established relationships with via Taxi, and I have to usually write specifically for listings due to a lack of back catalog (a double edged sword!). So I may not submit more than once a month and I try to carefully target my pitches. When I first started I wasn't as picky but I was also testing the waters. You've learned some valuable lessons with your strategy and now you can pull back and be more precise in your submitting.

At some point we reach a level of consistency where the music is of a high quality, and then it's about learning how to pitch it well. Sounds like you're at that point or very close to it.

Time for a slight course correction!

Cheers!

Mazz

PS: Welcome to the forum!!

Mazz, well put!

mazz wrote:I can't speak to the general percentage of submissions of the Taxi population, but I can say that a targeted, well researched submission strategy is better than a scatter shot strategy. In my experience both with Taxi and with actual publisher clients, they typically aren't looking for "close but not exactly right", because they have a brief from their clients that they are trying to fulfill. If a publisher sends a bunch of "almost there" tracks to a music supervisor, chances are that supervisor won't call them next time. They want what they want.

Fortunately Taxi can serve as a good feedback mechanism (if we choose to learn from it) and good practice for pitching and learning how to target to briefs. Because I can say, also from experience, that it's good for the reputation (not to mention the wallet eventually) if you can make targeted pitches consistently. No one bats 1,000 but the good hitters don't swing at every pitch, they are good at waiting for the one they can hit. That comes with experience.

I have not been submitting very much to Taxi listings because I am pretty busy writing for clients I have established relationships with via Taxi, and I have to usually write specifically for listings due to a lack of back catalog (a double edged sword!). So I may not submit more than once a month and I try to carefully target my pitches. When I first started I wasn't as picky but I was also testing the waters. You've learned some valuable lessons with your strategy and now you can pull back and be more precise in your submitting.

At some point we reach a level of consistency where the music is of a high quality, and then it's about learning how to pitch it well. Sounds like you're at that point or very close to it.

Time for a slight course correction!

Cheers!

Mazz

PS: Welcome to the forum!!

that's a good one and I appreciate Mazz's thoughts, cause he's way farther down the same road that all of us are driving down.

You'll likely get farther faster by writing specifically for the listings, unless you have a catalog item that's dead on target; the listings are as specific as Taxi knows how to make 'em, and they've been doing it a while. Reading and interpreting the listings is a skill that takes some time and effort to develop, but will, as Mazz says, pay dividends.