Resubscribed for a third year - my progress so far
Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2022 9:35 pm
I pulled the trigger on resubscriptions for Taxi and Dispatch and thought I'd make a post on what I've achieved so far via Taxi and see if others have had a similar journey.
I'd been aware of Taxi for maaany years, maybe early 2000s, but never thought it would be for me as I make fairly obscure music (electro-industrial/EBM/aggrotech). At the start of 2020, a friend sent me a screenshot of a taxi listing looking for "Aggrotech" tracks which actually used one of my band's tracks as a reference. Simultaneously, I was just starting to start work on other soundtrack bits like an animated YouTube series. Knowing that there was an appetite out there for my kind of music in soundtracks was really eye-opening so I thought it would be worth trying.
I made a couple of tracks and submitted them. They both got through the Taxi screener and sent through to the client, who was a music library. The client contacted me and wanted to take the tracks, and since it was such an obscure genre that they weren't likely to find other composers working in, asked if I could make a full album for them and I said yes.
While this was happening, I was posting about all this on Facebook and a friend contacted me as he worked for a videogame developer and they were looking for a composer. I made a couple of demos for the game and was then contracted to make the full score. I put the above music library album on hold and completed the videogame soundtrack.
While this was happening I got hooked on writing for Taxi listings. I wrote a track for a "Cyberpunk" listing and that got a Forward by Taxi and landed in another music library. I also submitted some of my band's tracks for an non-exclusive "Industrial rock" listing, which got Forwarded and led to a music library licensing 6 of my band's tracks to their library, which they have forwarded to shows including Better Call Saul, though haven't had any placements yet.
Other Forwards I've gotten have been for orchestral-hybrid trailer-style tracks and tension cues, though I haven't heard back from Clients for these tracks yet. From the discussions on this forum, I can see that trailers is the most competitive area of music licensing, so I consider it a journey with a big learning curve ahead to land trailer tracks.
Finally, I got back to finishing that full album of "Aggrotech" tracks for the first music library I mentioned earlier this year, and they published it last month - woo! Two of the music libraries my works are published in are corresponding with me about further collections and I'm working on a new batch of "Industrial cinematic electronica" tracks for one of them. These feel like long-lasting relationships that will lead to lots of future publishing opportunities.
So all up in the first 24 months, my works have been published in a few music libraries with ongoing relationships to work on further albums, and I got a bunch of additional Forwards, all directly from Taxi. But beyond that, it's opened up the door to working as a game composer (albeit non-directly) which I'm really trying to focus on and take further.
The reason I chose to keep going with my Taxi subscription is for any tracks I make that aren't quite right for the music libraries I'm now working with, but also that I just love the process of getting feedback, taking it in and learning from it. I feel like I've grown as a composer and producer rapidly in the last 24 months from working with clients and submitting to Taxi listings and really taking in the feedback. I've been telling all my composer friends about Taxi and am very happy to keep going.
I always warn anyone about Taxi that their work is most likely to "just" end up on a music library, as direct-to-supervisor listings are rare, so they can manage their expectations. Composer friends often want to get their tracks placed directly into a movie/TV show or land a trailer straight away, and I always tell them that Taxi is not the way to get that. But with patience and the willingness to take it as a learning opportunity, it's a very good option to put yourself in a position where you tracks could be picked up.
I'd been aware of Taxi for maaany years, maybe early 2000s, but never thought it would be for me as I make fairly obscure music (electro-industrial/EBM/aggrotech). At the start of 2020, a friend sent me a screenshot of a taxi listing looking for "Aggrotech" tracks which actually used one of my band's tracks as a reference. Simultaneously, I was just starting to start work on other soundtrack bits like an animated YouTube series. Knowing that there was an appetite out there for my kind of music in soundtracks was really eye-opening so I thought it would be worth trying.
I made a couple of tracks and submitted them. They both got through the Taxi screener and sent through to the client, who was a music library. The client contacted me and wanted to take the tracks, and since it was such an obscure genre that they weren't likely to find other composers working in, asked if I could make a full album for them and I said yes.
While this was happening, I was posting about all this on Facebook and a friend contacted me as he worked for a videogame developer and they were looking for a composer. I made a couple of demos for the game and was then contracted to make the full score. I put the above music library album on hold and completed the videogame soundtrack.
While this was happening I got hooked on writing for Taxi listings. I wrote a track for a "Cyberpunk" listing and that got a Forward by Taxi and landed in another music library. I also submitted some of my band's tracks for an non-exclusive "Industrial rock" listing, which got Forwarded and led to a music library licensing 6 of my band's tracks to their library, which they have forwarded to shows including Better Call Saul, though haven't had any placements yet.
Other Forwards I've gotten have been for orchestral-hybrid trailer-style tracks and tension cues, though I haven't heard back from Clients for these tracks yet. From the discussions on this forum, I can see that trailers is the most competitive area of music licensing, so I consider it a journey with a big learning curve ahead to land trailer tracks.
Finally, I got back to finishing that full album of "Aggrotech" tracks for the first music library I mentioned earlier this year, and they published it last month - woo! Two of the music libraries my works are published in are corresponding with me about further collections and I'm working on a new batch of "Industrial cinematic electronica" tracks for one of them. These feel like long-lasting relationships that will lead to lots of future publishing opportunities.
So all up in the first 24 months, my works have been published in a few music libraries with ongoing relationships to work on further albums, and I got a bunch of additional Forwards, all directly from Taxi. But beyond that, it's opened up the door to working as a game composer (albeit non-directly) which I'm really trying to focus on and take further.
The reason I chose to keep going with my Taxi subscription is for any tracks I make that aren't quite right for the music libraries I'm now working with, but also that I just love the process of getting feedback, taking it in and learning from it. I feel like I've grown as a composer and producer rapidly in the last 24 months from working with clients and submitting to Taxi listings and really taking in the feedback. I've been telling all my composer friends about Taxi and am very happy to keep going.
I always warn anyone about Taxi that their work is most likely to "just" end up on a music library, as direct-to-supervisor listings are rare, so they can manage their expectations. Composer friends often want to get their tracks placed directly into a movie/TV show or land a trailer straight away, and I always tell them that Taxi is not the way to get that. But with patience and the willingness to take it as a learning opportunity, it's a very good option to put yourself in a position where you tracks could be picked up.
