JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Mentor Questions Forum TAXI

I am sure many of the publishers with staff writers wouldn't have need of TAXI very often. They are paying people to write and most can have their writers write to spec. Large labels with publishing arms looking for hits for their artists on the other hand would have far more reason to use TAXI. They want hits and aren't as choosy about where they might come from, especially if the writers aren't already connected to a publisher which would be the case with most TAXI members.

TAXI is but 1 single tool. It harms no one other than other companies who want to make money offering the same services. When people lash out against TAXI I always wonder what their motivation is. Usually it's lack of knowledge or they are competition. Publishers who are against TAXI see them as competition. The fact they are angry and negative indicates me that TAXI must be doing well enough in what they do for those folks to feel threatened. Labels with artists hungry for hits are generally happy to use TAXI as one more tool on their end. They know that checking out the solicited material won't be a waste of their time. And in the end, it's really up to individual TAXI members to write songs compelling enough to make the grade. TAXI is but a conduit.. not the writers of the songs. They can only work with the quality of material their members submit. Believe me.. I've heard a range of music that TAXI members submit. Sometimes it's brilliant. Often it's just not good enough to find success, with or without TAXI's placement efforts. Fortunately if you use TAXI correctly and are open to criticism and changing your approach to fit their opportunities (which is quite possile for commercial level writers who have learned) it's a wonderful tool. If you are convinced that the handful of songs you've already written prior to feedback are good enough and insist on keeping them just as they are and not adjusting your artistic integrity, you'll likely get nothing from membership. But if you think Art and Commerce are the same thing and that Commerce must accept great art and that great commercial music must be brilliant artistically, then you have little hope of finding success in commercial world in the first place.

Brian