Page 1 of 1

Forwarded songs screened by Publishers

Posted: Tue May 09, 2023 10:03 am
by KBee
Hi,

For song listings where it's a Publisher that will be doing the screening (not a Taxi screener), I'm wondering how that works? As per, do all Publishers have an in-house team of songwriters? Say a Publisher hears a song from a Taxi listing, kind of likes it, but there are other parts of the song that don't really work or need to be improved (the kind of song a Taxi screener wouldn't forward) ...would the Publisher doing the screening ever Forward a song like that knowing that his/her songwriting staff could improve the song .....or does that sort of thing only happen in the movies?

-KBee

Re: Forwarded songs screened by Publishers

Posted: Tue May 09, 2023 11:21 am
by Casey H
KBee wrote:
Tue May 09, 2023 10:03 am
Hi,

For song listings where it's a Publisher that will be doing the screening (not a Taxi screener), I'm wondering how that works? As per, do all Publishers have an in-house team of songwriters? Say a Publisher hears a song from a Taxi listing, kind of likes it, but there are other parts of the song that don't really work or need to be improved (the kind of song a Taxi screener wouldn't forward) ...would the Publisher doing the screening ever Forward a song like that knowing that his/her songwriting staff could improve the song .....or does that sort of thing only happen in the movies?

-KBee
It's one person from that publishing company, such as the owner, doing the screening in those cases (AFAIK 99.9% of the time). Pitches for artists are incredibly competitive and getting a cut as an unknown songwriter is just about the hardest thing possible in our industry. That's one reason many of us switched over to Film/TV where there are many more opportunities. Of course, that requires high quality productions/recordings as much as a good songs.

With the number of great songs presented to these publishers, no-- they would not send it back for improvements, they would just move on to the next song. The song is either absolute greatness as is or nothing.

HTH,
:D Casey

Re: Forwarded songs screened by Publishers

Posted: Wed May 10, 2023 9:58 am
by KBee
No matter what the music genre is, just about all of the Listings show that a Taxi Screener will be reviewing submissions .....however from time to time I do see that there are some Publishers (or Music Library owners, etc.) who choose to listen to the submissions themselves without using a Taxi Screener, is there any special reason for that?

Also, in any such listings where it says time permitting that the Publisher, etc. (or someone from their staff who is trained by Taxi as a screener) 'could' be ears on, does it ever happen where the Publisher (or staff member) is actually listening to the songs ......or because the Publisher might have had a hectic schedule, it winds up where it's actually a Taxi Screener who did the listening on some or all of the submissions?

**********I get that it's competitive and everything, it would be nice though that once in a blue moon, a Publisher shakes things up a bit and decides that at least every once in awhile, that if they are actually listening to the songs themselves, instead of always clicking on 'Return', instead if they would take on a Taxi-submitted song that has potential, and the Publisher would get his/her in-house songwriters to work their magic on such songs. :)

KBee

Re: Forwarded songs screened by Publishers

Posted: Wed May 10, 2023 2:43 pm
by cosmicdolphin
KBee wrote:
Wed May 10, 2023 9:58 am
it would be nice though that once in a blue moon, a Publisher shakes things up a bit and decides that at least every once in awhile, that if they are actually listening to the songs themselves, instead of always clicking on 'Return', instead if they would take on a Taxi-submitted song that has potential, and the Publisher would get his/her in-house songwriters to work their magic on such songs. :)
I'm afraid that isn't how the industry works.

Re: Forwarded songs screened by Publishers

Posted: Thu May 11, 2023 4:01 pm
by SubRivers
It is very hard to seperate and judge in isolatation a song from it's presentation/production.
Great songs in history would struggle if the presentation was off when they were demos.

Re: Forwarded songs screened by Publishers

Posted: Fri May 12, 2023 10:53 am
by KBee
Thank you very much to Casey, cosmicdolphin and SubRivers for your input; it's helped me to wake up and smell the coffee on how things work with song submissions/forwards and I appreciate that, as well I really want to improve my songwriting skills more than ever so that one day I finally get a Forward :)