S o you have a band, wrote original material, lovely music, did countless rehearsals, and want to make a living in the music industry. You know you’re good, but the rest of the world has not heard of you.
How to publish it? How do you get a recording contract?
The best way to get a recording contract is probably to embark on a tour, performing in hundreds of smaller or smaller venues and selling thousands of CDs from the trunk of your car.
Songwriters can move to the U.S., Los Angeles, New York, or Nashville, I mean the major industrial centers in the music world, pay the usual social taxes in those places, meet the right people and try to screw with.
But for the vast majority of musicians looking for a way to get involved in the music business, this way is unrealistic. Can you “take time off” from your life, work, family and friends to embark on such an adventure? And especially when you know that it is not sure that in the end, this path will succeed in reaching the desired goal, since they have not yet invented a certificate of insurance for success in general and success in the world of music in particular.
You need some “vehicle” that will take the music you have written from you and help you bring it to the right people in the music industry. Such a vehicle is a TAXI.
TAXI is the world’s leading company (so they say in their publications) specializing in providing real access to artists, songwriters, and bands to those people in the music business who have the power to make deals, sign and sign agreements.
How do they work?
Most of the record label companies, publishers, and music directors turn directly to TAXI to find new artists and new bands to sign them and find hits, instrumental pieces, and music for movies and TV, in TAXI lists of such applications, which are concentrated in what they call “Industry Listings” (see example below).
At this point, the music customer remains anonymous to avoid being flooded with piles of unwanted material (and at the same time, the customer’s anonymity forces you to go through TAXI, as a subscriber to the services they provide, which I will detail later), TAXI is used in your materials when matched to their music customer.
Sometimes you can see in TAXI lists a specific request that seems to you to have a good match between it and your music, and you can choose to transfer your material to TAXI in response to that request.
At this point, for your offer to be processed, you must be a subscriber to the services provided by TAXI. If you are their subscriber, the material you submit is transferred to the care of one of the 150 experts working at TAXI.
Each musical style is tailored to an expert who deals with the same type. A pop expert will be adapted to the pop lists and a rock expert to the rock lists. They promise that whoever listens to each of the songs you send to them will be the most appropriate person for the type of music you will send. The same expert will carefully listen to each of the songs you send to them.
When your music is marked as a worthy target for what the ordering company has requested and that it sounds good, TAXI will send it directly to the person who presented the request and attach your details.
At this point, they will let you know which company your music was sent. The people of the ordering company will check the material you sent, and if they like what they hear, they will call you: “Let’s make a deal.”
It is this process that makes TAXI such an efficient and powerful company. It ensures that you will always answer someone lurking, dawning on prey, or looking for exactly your type of music. It makes a lot of sense. Instead of rubbing sidewalks, knocking on door after door in an attempt to find someone who needs your music, TAXI becomes the creator, bringing it to you.
TAXI is not involved in drafting the agreement with the ordering company. It is made between you directly. They do not receive similar percentages, commissions, or payments if a contract is signed and do not bite a piece of your pie when you close a deal as different promoters do. They re-emphasize this point.
They add that if you want, they will be happy to offer you several good lawyers who specialize in the music business, but that will end their involvement. They are not a party to the agreement between you and the music customer, and the above attorneys do not represent TAXI but only you and you.
As a prerequisite, your music should be good enough to meet the task, it goes without saying, and there is no need to say much about it in words. And here, TAXI is doing a beautiful thing. If your music is not mature enough and still not ready to meet market demands, they will help you improve it.
You will get a helpful written response from them to help you write better. Or, as they present it, it is as if a team of professionals in the music industry is at your disposal, listens to your material objectively, and gives you his opinion, which includes constructive comments that will help improve the material submitted to them. This is a massive advantage without a doubt.
And the TAXI people are indeed professionals.
They are among the industry veterans who themselves are responsible for selecting, singing, and creating hundreds of hits. They are highly regarded as A&R people, performers, music directors, hit writers, and experienced record producers, and the company employs them for a very, very high salary. When you become part of TAXI, all of these work for you.
The service they provide is not free (do not panic — later in the article, you will find many valuable things that TAXI gives and that do not cost a penny), to use it, you must separate from the $ 300 they require as a registration fee for a year of TAXI membership and an additional $ 5 for each song you send. For an offer that appears on their industry lists, you are asked to submit one to three pieces).
However, they guarantee a full refund of the registration fee if at any point during the year you think their lists are not “the best in the industry,” or their responses to the material you submitted did not help you improve Your writing, or you approached them with a question or problem of some kind and were not greeted by “one of the friendliest and most helpful people” you have ever met in any business.
On the other hand, you must remember that they do not guarantee that even if you subscribe, you will get the desired contract. While their path may seem relatively easy and may even increase your chances of getting a recording contract, by no means is it an insurance policy, and there can certainly be a situation where you get nowhere.
According to the feedback they receive from subscribers who have been referred by them to various companies and have managed to close some deals, the annual average of their successes is 6%. But in their estimation, not all subscribers who close deals with their help return to them to report it, so their actual annual success rate is higher.
Anyway, if your music is excellent, your chances of getting a recording contract with them look good and even relatively high. As I wrote before, not everything they offer is paid.
For example, they offer you to receive bi-weekly e-mail lists with 100 requests (or opportunities, as they call it) for free. They also allow you to view their complete industry list sorted by musical styles, and they say it includes about 1,200 such opportunities at any one time, and that too for free.
Even if you are not a subscriber, so you can not complete their process, this list will give you information about the market requirements and what material is in demand.
Hence, you have a better chance of finding a record company that will be interested in it.
You will also find many valuable articles and questions and answers about the music business (such as: How to record a demo? Do I need a producer? Or a music director? Etc.).
The website also has sources on songwriting, recordings, the music industry, the music business, musicians, Taxi TV, the music industry blog, and more.
In conclusion, I liked the TAXI website and found a lot of interesting and helpful material. I believe that a musician who is at the beginning of his career, is interested in making a living from his music and is looking for the path that will lead him to integrate into the music business, will find there a lot of exciting and valuable information about the music industry and music market.
This may be a good investment of your time that may pay off for you, and by and large. In fact, on their website (https://www.taxi.com), you can find a lot of interesting and helpful material that will not cost you anything.
Good luck!
I invite you to follow me on my Bandcamp channel and enjoy my songs free: Or Mishal Bandcamp
Feel free to visit my website: Or Mishal
Have a pleasant listening.
