TAXI.com

How Much Competition is There at TAXI? Plus, Other Music Licensing Myths Busted! On This Week's TAXI TV!

Click the link below to watch LIVE on Monday at 4 PM Pacific!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ageLJuzNErY

7 pm Eastern (EDT) / 6 pm Central (CDT) / 4 pm Pacific (PDT) 12 am London (BST) / 9 am Sydney (AEST)

Dear Songwriters, Composers, Producers, and Artists,

For the entire 31 years we’ve been in business, people have conjectured about how much competition there is when they submit their music to TAXI. I’m going to pull back the curtain and give you actual submission numbers on this week’s show!

But wait! The submission numbers actually mean NOTHING because there IS no competition! And I’m going to tell you exactly why that is on this week’s episode.

Let’s Bust Some Other Myths!

There are other myths about the music licensing industry that I’ve seen dispensed as gospel on some sync-oriented YouTube channels. Just because the person giving out that information has a super sincere, silver-tongued delivery doesn’t mean the information is actually accurate!

I’ve been biting my tongue for a few years, watching a couple of these “experts” give out information that, in my opinion, is either false or 180 degrees out of whack with reality.

Funny thing is… I’ve recently seen one of these guys flip-flop and completely change his tune. I was happy to see that. But then I realized that the entire premise that he’s been using to sell his course and other products for years has been the opposite of what he’s saying now.

Did he have a “Come to Jesus” epiphany? Maybe! I hope so!!

But what about the people who based their decision to buy his course or other services and products BASED on the false information he previously dispensed with such certainty? I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt. I want to hear how you feel.

Ask Me Anything…

I also want to do a healthy dose of Q&A during the last part of this episode. We haven’t done that for a while, and it feels like it’s time! Please email your questions to taxitv@taxi.com by 2 pm (Pacific time) on Monday, and I’ll do my level best to answer every one of them!

Click the link below to watch LIVE on Monday at 4 PM Pacific!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ageLJuzNErY


To Join the Live Chat and Ask Questions During the Broadcast…
You’ll need to be signed up to YouTube (FREE) and be logged in to be able to join in on the chat during the show. Go to youtube.com and click the "Sign In" link in the upper right-hand corner of the page and fill out the short form to join. If you have a Gmail account, you’ll be able to link your YouTube account with it!

7 pm Eastern (EDT) / 6 pm Central (CDT) / 4 pm Pacific (PDT) 12 am London (BST) / 9 am Sydney (AEST)

See you on Monday,

Michael and the TAXI TV Team

I thought the whole thing was pretty cringey and embarrassing.

The entire video felt like it mostly consisted of Michael venting about rival channel/business Sync My Music and highlighting what he perceived as bad advice for Sync and misinformation about Taxi.

One of the first rules I ever learned when I got into sales some 30 years ago was "Never talk down about the competition. Ever." It just makes you sound unprofessional, draws attention to the competition, makes you look insecure, and runs the risk of insulting some of your own customers who may actually like and engage with both services.

As someone who has been both a Taxi Member and a Sync Academy Member, I've actually said many times that both services complement each other. Although there is some crossover, the core offerings are completely different.

Sync Academy is, at heart, a training platform to show musicians step by step how to make better quality music for sync. Taxi takes that music and helps get it into publishers, but if the quality isn't there, they don't teach you directly what to do. I have semi-joked more than once that they ought to make you take all the courses at Sync Academy first before they allow you to join Taxi, as you'd have to return a lot less music.

While Michael and Jesse have a difference of opinion on how to go about pitching the music, I have used both methods, and I can tell you both methods work if you do. I've had library deals from Taxi, and I've pitched albums to libraries myself and got a deal. There is no 'one way' that is the best way; it depends on where you are musically and in your career, but both are valid methods.

Michael seems to have taken great umbrage at some of Jesse's comments, which I don't think (a) were aimed solely at Taxi and (b) were taken somewhat out of context. For example, 5,000 people all going for one opportunity - I saw that video and took it to mean that if there was a huge $$$ opportunity, that industry-wide there would literally be thousands of tracks put forward by numerous publishers, sync agencies, and companies like Taxi to try and fill that one spot. It's not like any opportunity would be exclusive to a company like Taxi, and the chances of landing it are minuscule (that's not to say you couldn't learn something by taking part).

I hope Michael will refrain from embarrassing himself further. I've received multiple messages of the "OMG - did you see" variety since the video dropped, and none of them were very enamored with the constant talking down of the competition. A couple of people I know said it put them off watching more Taxi TV episodes.

Most of the other sync-related channels speak to each other and have appeared in each other's videos. I hope Taxi and Sync My Music can bury the hatchet and get along or at least just ignore each other and agree to disagree.

Mark