JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Mentor Questions Forum TAXI

I'd like to add something here that I posted elsewhere in the forum: Taxi works IF you have well-produced commercially viable music that makes the grade in every way. It works IF you are willing to listen, and learn, and work hard at composing & producing. If you think you're 'God's gift' to the music industry, you will likely be disappointed. The people I know who are making it have been working on developing their craft for years, either as members of Taxi, using it as an educational resource to get their music to the right place, or as an additional method of marketing their already market-ready work.

As I said above:

The advantage to the Taxi member is to make solicited submissions via an organization that is set up to help you improve your submissions until they are making the grade. Most new members don't realize how high the bar is going to be, and most new members take awhile to understand how to read the listings and match their submissions to the listings. In addition, although production is less important for song pitches than it is for film/TV pitches, it is still crucial to have clean demos with great vocals & good playing.

You will find people who don't like the Taxi model, and you will find people for whom Taxi is not/would not be a fit. My personal feeling is that a Taxi membership should be just one of the ways that you approach the industry & pitch your music. As a 3 year member, I can tell you I didn't get any forwards in the first 2 years of membership, although I made many submissions. I decided to use my Taxi membership as an education tool. Because of Taxi, my composing skills and my producing skills improved to industry standard. I know, because in the spring of 2007 I finally got my first exclusive publishing deal through a Taxi forward to an LA music publisher.

In addition to this, the Taxi Road Rally (Taxi's free-to-members Music Conference) is one of the best music conferences you can go to. The price of a Taxi membership is the same price you'd pay to attend the Ascap conference. In my humble opinion the Rally is well worth the cost of a Taxi membership.

If you are interested in joining Taxi I recommend you a) sign up to get the free bi-weekly listings sent to you so you can see what kind of opportunties there are, b) get some professional feedback on your work from NSAI, Jason Blume, John Braheny or Pete & Pat Luboff (which you should do in any case if you are interested in pitching commercially viable work & want to make a good impression), and c) consider joining the Taxi forum to get some feedback on your work and some help on deciding whether Taxi is going to be part of your marketing / business plan for your music.