FAQ - How useful and legitimate are independent A&R agencies such as Taxi?
Keep in mind that, although companies like Taxi provide a legitimate service of shopping your music to industry executives, it will cost you. A few agencies will also include evaluations, live events, news pages and other bells and whistles but it’s best to consult with your manager or attorney to determine whether or not you should sign up for such a service.
Member Comments
Sign up for http://www.taxi.com ‘s newsletter and see what they do.
The newsletter shows what companies have a demand for. If you produce broadcast-ready music, their customers may be interested. If you don’t, they’re probably not interested, unless what you produce is so special it can get through the Taxi screeners. The screeners review members’ submissions and, if they think the quality is what their customers are looking for, they forward it. If not, they don’t.
Someone said you can get a refund at the end of one year if you don’t feel it was worth it. I haven’t read that myself so I don’t know. I don’t produce broadcast-ready music so I’m not a member. But I do enjoy reading the newsletter. Sometimes it specifies songs a la artists you know, or songs you know. Sometimes it specifies singer/songwriter style songs.
There’s no magic there, no easy-open door. It’s a matter of supply and demand. They specify the consumer’s demand; you can either supply it, in the opinion of Taxi screeners, or you can’t.
One of the benefits of http://www.songwriter101.com is getting free feedback on your product. If you want to know what members think of its ‘broadcast readiness’ just ask. If you want to know if they think it is a la of any artist you have in mind for it, ask. If you want to know if the lyric or melody or production hooked them enough to want to buy it, ask.
Sometimes their opinion is based on their own tastes. Sometimes it’s based on critical analysis of what they value in a song and whether yours has it. Sometimes its based on 7 seconds of consideration and the mood they’re in that day.
You are, or need to become, the best critic of your product. What do you think of it, based on your tastes, based on how it stands up to the competition, based on how it hooked you, the first listener? Were you really hooked or did you just start writing and it felt good so you accepted what you wrote as a song without really critiquing it for qualities of lyric, of melody, of the ‘prosody’ of lyric and melody, the qualities of the recording, the instrumentation, the production?
Can your product compete in the market? Do you have market research, feedback from consumers, especially those willing to give you their hard-earned money to own a copy of your song? That may be a sign the song has those qualities demanded by large numbers of consumers, and some of Taxi’s customers will want to ‘partner’ with you to use it for their artists, their films, their television show, their commercial ads. If you have no market research, it may be too soon to expect Taxi or a publishing company or Artist & Repertoire (A&R) representative or an artist or record label to be interested. If you’ve sold 10,000 copies yourself, they might be very interested.
If you don’t know the commercial aspects of bringing your art to market, you’re in luck. Start studying now on Songwriter101 to educate yourself about it. Maybe a few months, or a few years from now you WILL have what the market demands.
If it was easy everyone would succeed. As Mitch Ryder and Detroit sing, “It Ain’t Easy!” But it sure is fun.
