Whether you were there to learn more about getting a record deal, placing your music in films and TV shows, or composing for video games, it was all there for the taking at TAXI’s Road Rally last weekend. What did our members think of it?

From our forum:

There is no way I could possibly ever put into words just how much this Rally, my 2nd one, meant to me. Saying “Thank You” just doesn’t seem to be enough. I’m still humbled and honored to have been given the Inspiration Award. It’s going to get a prominent placement in my studio for sure! My wife was just as excited about it as I was.

For anyone who’s reading this and wasn’t able to make it to the Rally yet, let me encourage, if you’re serious about your musical career, whether it be an artist or film & tv composer, stop reading this right now and start putting a plan together as to how you can make it to next year’s Rally. You’ve got nearly a year left to save up the money for the airfare and hotel. Remember, the event itself is FREE. I PROMISE you, if you’re serious about your career and you’re willing to invest the time & money it takes to be successful, then there is no better investment you can make as far as I’m concerned than to attend the Road Rally.

I don’t get paid to say that, nor do I need to get paid to say it. TAXI works and the Road Rally is a HUGE part of the picture. I’ll say it again, if you’re serious about your career, and I mean TRULY serious, then do what you have to do to make it next year. The amount of information you can learn, the connections you can make, and the opportunities you will have to GIVE BACK are truly priceless.

- Big Blue

Two of the weekend’s highlights were Hit Songwriter/Producer/Artist Jeffrey Steele being honored with TAXI’s Lifetime Achievement Award and his performance that followed and Hit Songwriter/America Idol judge/Warner Bros. Records V.P.of A&R Kara DioGuardi doing live makeovers of TAXI members Robyn Newman, Chase Thompson and Anthony Snape. To see more photos and highlights click here!

Jeffrey Steele, TAXI's Lifetime Achievement Award honoree performs a medley of his hits after receiving his award.

American Idol judge and Hit Songwriter/Producer, Kara DioGuardi enjoys TAXI member Anthony Snape's inspired performance at TAXI's convention.

Major Labels, Indie Labels, Pop Labels, Rap Labels, Christian Labels, and Country Labels are actively looking for new artists every day.

It’s easy to think that songwriters and artists can make it on their own with all the great self-promotional tools and opportunities on the Internet. But looking at this week’s  Billboard Top 100 Chart, I can’t find a single band or artist that has become successful on their own using the Internet as their only form of promotion. Yes, the Internet is a large piece of the music promotion puzzle, but it’s a piece, not a panacea.

Companies that sell music promotion tools and advice are cropping up everywhere you look. Can they help? Certainly some of them can, but as part of an artist’s overall marketing strategy. I have yet to see any music-marketing tool or music promotion plan that’s a magic bullet that by itself will deliver stardom on a silver platter.

Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Breaking Benjamin, Black Eyed Peas, Foo Fighters, Weezer and virtually all of the other artists I just looked at on Billboard.com have found fame and built their careers in the music business doing it the old fashioned way - writing or finding hit songs and signing with record labels.

Sure, it’s possible to have a video that goes viral on YouTube and drives sales on iTunes and other music download sites. But those events are few and far between. If you thought the odds of getting signed by a record label were slim, try and name ten acts that have had Billboard, chart-topping success based on the Internet alone.

The Sick Puppies were exposed to millions of people worldwide when their song, All the Same, was used in the massively popular Free Hugs videos. But they didn’t hit the Billboard charts until they had a veteran artist manager and Virgin Records behind them as their record label. Maybe that’s the magic formula for music promotion and marketing - simply create a video that goes viral on YouTube. That’s easy, right?

But the Sick Puppies are certainly an exception, and far from the rule. Even with millions of people listening to their song every day, exposure on Oprah, and just about every other media outlet worldwide, they still recognized that they needed a record label to take them to the next level.

How long have you been on MySpace? How about iTunes? Twitter? Facebook? How many sites do you have your music or your musical “brand” on altogether? How long have you been working the Internet music promotion thing with no substantial results? Is there a lesson to be learned?

Look again at the artists on the Billboard charts, and I think you’ll agree that there is a huge lesson staring us all in the face. Those artists are all signed to record labels. Illegal downloading may be killing the labels, but it’s been a slow death. More than ten years after Napster sprang up and illegal downloading began, Major Record Labels and top Independent Record Labels still look like a pretty smart option until somebody comes up with that magical silver bullet for artist promotion that millions of bands, artists, and songwriters have been waiting for.

Michael Laskow is the founder and CEO of TAXI, the world’s leading independent A&R company. He is also a multi-platinum engineer, record producer, and lover of great songs and talented artists.

TV Music Licensing pays songwriters and composers differently than Film Music Licensing does. Most songwriters don’t know that, and they ask me the question pretty frequently! The short answer is “yes, it pays differently,” in the U.S.

In the United States, composers of scores, background music and featured songs do NOT get paid when the music is played in a movie theater. In other words, there’s no back end, no performance royalty for music played in theaters. But there IS a performance royalty for theater play in many, if not most other countries.

So, while you won’t get an ASCAP, BMI or SESAC check for U.S. screenings of a movie with your music in it, you WILL get a check from your Performance Rights Organization months down the road from screenings outside of the U.S. Those checks are often slow in coming, as they need to go through the accounting systems of the foreign PROs, then go through the accounting system of your U.S. PRO.

BUT, you WILL get paid for your music if it’s in a Film that airs on a TV network in the U.S., so all is not lost. If you have music that ends up in a film that’s a huge hit, and gets tons of play on major and cable networks, month after month, year after year, you will see some nice checks hit your mailbox from those.

I’ll get into the difference between pay scales for music in cable vs network shows in another blog post. That’s a complicated matter and will need more time than I’ve got at the moment.

Talk to you soon,

Michael

Learn how to make Broadcast Quality Recordings and Tracks at TAXI’s Road Rally, November 5th-8th..

How to Choose the Right Music Licensing Companies

It seems like so many songwriters and artists have given up on the dream of getting a record deal with major record label. Flying around on private jets and trashing hotel rooms is a dream now long forgotten. Film and TV placements are the new “record deal.”

Most musicians don’t know how to choose the right music licensing company or companies, because they haven’t done their homework yet. They haven’t learned how to know which company has the best chance of getting them a film or TV placement period, and they often have no idea which company has the best track record for making the most money for the songwriters ad artists they work with.

Truth be told, it’s not all that hard to set up a web page that looks great, add a database that hosts music, post up a couple of success stories (true or not), and bammo, you’re in business as a music licensing company! Doesn’t matter if you’re in the cow pastures of Wisconsin, the heart of Hollywood, or the plains of Africa. Nobody does due diligence any more. “If they’ve got a cool web page, they must be real!” Uh-huh!

Things to watch out for:

Open submissions — Not ALL companies that allow any old Tom, Dick or Harry to submit to them are schlock shops, but many are. Accepting music from any and everybody seems appealing at first, but it also means that the music supervisors and music editors are going to hear a lot of mediocre music (at best), and quickly leave the site with nothing in hand.

Rating and filtering by fans and competing musicians — Music supervisors want filtered music. They want only the very best music. In many cases (but not necessarily all), music that has been selected or filtered by competing songwriters or artists doesn’t stand up to the quality of music that has been pre-screened by real music industry professionals. Why? Two reasons: The musicians doing the filtering have never worked at a music supervision company, a film company, a TV production company, a record company, or a Film or TV publishing company. They simply don’t know how high the bar is set. They also may not know that just because they personally like a particular song or instrumental track, it doesn’t mean that it will work well for TV or film music companies.

The second reason is that some less than ethical people will “vote down” the competition. It’s become somewhat common for musicians who want their music to rise will ask fans, friends and family members to visit the music web sites that have “contests,” to give them high scores and give the competition low scores.

Companies that are too quick to accept music into their catalogs – There are companies who will sign almost anything. even though the deals are often non-exclusive, it can be a sign that the company is just trying to fatten the catalog or music library for a later sale, and is more interested in quantity, not quality.

Companies that don’t have solid, long-term relationships with the industry — Music supervisors have go-to people that they’ve worked with for years. They trust their ears. They know they can rely on them for great music. If you can’t find solid evidence that those relationships exists at te company you’re about to sign with, you might want to keep looking and find a company that does!

If you’d like to lean more about how to get started licensing your music through production music libraries and how to pick the right film & TV licensing companies for your music, watch this series of short videos I did with Matt Hirt. Matt is a long-time TAXI member, and through diligent work, persistence and getting his music picked up by the best music licensing companies (mostly through TAXI, if I can be so immodest)  he’s created an income that any songwriter, artist or composer would be happy to have.

Watch the video. I promise you’ll learn just about everything you need to know about music licensing in a very short time.

Enjoy!

Michael

Film and TV Music Licensing Opportunities For Independent Musicians

Running opportunities for Film and TV placements in our Music Industry Listings back in 1992 made me the laughing stock of the music business. It was unheard of for Indie artists and songwriters to get their songs placed in network TV shows or better yet, feature films put out by major Hollywood studios back then.

Nobody seemed to know much about Production Music Libraries (which are Film & TV music publishers) - what they did, how they worked, or what kind of music they needed to license to TV or Film productions. I knew because at one point in my career I managed the largest audio post-production studio on the planet, and we used tracks from the best Production Music Libraries every day.

We used them for background music on TV shows and commercials. We used library tracks under voiceovers for radio spots. We licensed music from Production Music Libraries for Industrial Videos… you know, those cheesy videos that widget manufacturers and big pharmaceutical companies put out.

The point is, it just wasn’t cool to license your music for anything but records. Indie musicians and major label artists all turned up their noses at the very thought of having their music in a TV show or movie.

Funny how all that’s changed! Now, even the Rolling Stones and the Beatles will license their music for film, TV and video game projects. Major labels are more than happy to license music from their acts for TV shows, simply to get some exposure.

And who do you think was one of the earliest pioneers of helping Indie artists, bands and composers license their music? Yes, TAXI, the company that everybody in the music business laughed at. Trust me, they are definitely not laughing any more.

As a matter of fact, hundreds of companies have tried to imitate what TAXI does, but they all lack one very critical element - human ears. TAXI filters the music companies ask us to find. We use industry experts under our roof to find the very best. While the music supervisors like using music from Independent artists and songwriters, they don’t want to search a database full of less than wonderful music.

It takes more than a website and a database full of mediocre music to get the job done well.

That’s exactly why I created TAXI, and that’s why we are still the world’s leading independent A&R company. People from the TV, Film and Music industries don’t have the time to filter. We do it for them. We give them what they ask for. We give them what they need. We give them top notch music from the very best Indie artists, songwriters and composers.

The irony in all of this was best demonstrated when I asked an A&R person from Interscope Records this question during our annual, members-only convention, the Road Rally, last year, “What do you think is the best thing the people in this audience can do to get on your radar? Where do they start getting your attention so you’ll sign them to a record deal?”

The answer he offered up? “The best thing you can do is try to get your music placed on a TV show or in a movie!”

Wow, seventeen years later and TAXI is finally cool. That A&R person was right of course. Getting your music placed in TV shows and Films is just as much about the exposure as it is about the money. And if you do it persistently, and for a period of years, you’ll be able to turn it into a full-time gig because the money can really add up over time.

More specifics about how to make money by placing your music in Films and TV shows in a future blog!

My staff and I often get asked if there are Film and TV licensing opportunities for songwriters and artists who make Christian music. The answer is “yes,” though maybe not as frequently as secular music.

But fear not! Because the overall market is smaller, the number of people producing Christian Music is also smaller. It’s proportionate. You could end up being a bigger fish in a smaller pond!

But there’s an often overlooked aspect to all this. Most artists and songwriters also do mixes without vocals as a matter of course these days. If your Christian lyrics and vocals are subtracted, guess what? You’ve got yourself an instrumental track that could be licensed in any TV Show or Movie, religious or secular!

I just saw an article on TAXI as it relates to the Christian music Industry from a musician and author named Abbie Stancato, who’s doing a series of articles on the music business for a site called, Everyday Christian, called, “So You Wanna Be a Star?”

Check it out. Mikey likes it!

Giving Your Tracks the Right Title Can Get Your Music in More Films and TV Shows

You might think that writing great songs and instrumentals is the best way to license more of your music. You could be right, but here’s a really simple tip that I’ll bet you never thought of — give your songs and tracks better titles that make them easier to find.

Imagine that you’re a music supervisor searching for music to license for a Television Show or Movie. As you type in your database query, “uptempo, male, country, instrumental,” trying to find the perfect track for a rodeo scene, the database spits back 231 options with titles like, Country Instrumental, Male Country Instrumental, Country Kicker, Texas Hold ‘em, and so on…

If you had titled your track, Rodeo Rider or Rodeo Ruckus, the music supervisor’s eyes would be much more quickly drawn to your track than the others because the title is specific and conjures up a visual image. Remember, music supervisors may be music people, but they work in an industry of visually oriented people. Also noteworthy is that a good portion of the music selected for Films and TV Shows is actually temped in by video editors — most definitely PICTURE people.

Here’s a great exercise to help you learn how to choose better titles. Watch a TV show or movie and take notes about the types of scenes you see: a break up scene, a car chase, or a crime scene investigation. Next to each of them write down where they each took place: a beach breakup scene, a San Francisco car chase, and a crime scene investigation lab. Get the idea?

Your titles? Beach Break Up, San Fran Car Chase, CSI Lab.

Make it easy for picture people to SEE where they should be using your music and I can almost promise you that more of them will!

I recently had a member of TAXI’s forum ask what the difference was between a production music library and a music publisher. Great question! Here’s the answer I posted:

Production Music Libraries and Publishers are both publishers, and it’s my observation that the best music libraries get most of their best placements by doing hand to hand combat — meaning that they develop relationships and actively pitch. Another observation is that Film and TV music supervisors really don’t like to search databases for music. They’d rather email or call a human, have them cull a few tracks they think would work and pitch them, whether by email or in some cases, in person. The world’s biggest and best music libraries have sales forces all over the world.

A straight up music publisher like Warner Chappel or Universal Music Pub might have as many as 250,000 (or more) titles in their catalog (spanning decades) and a staff of creative people who act kind of like TAXI, in that they tell their writers which songs are best, give their writers some creative advice and hand-holding, sometimes in the form of pairing up co-writes, as well as pitching their songs to artists, and yes, even film and TV opportunities.

A couple of major differences are that publishers like Universal typically don’t sign single songs. Instead, they sign songwriters, give them an advance against future income, and the songwriters need to turn in a song or two per month (that meet the pub’s standards), depending on the number of co-writers they will be splitting the income with.

To get a staff songwriter deal, it typically takes having a song that’s already been cut to get the publishers interested. Once they know there’s an income stream, they’re much more interested. They often want a piece of the existing cut. Another way to get a pub deal is to get a record deal and be the songwriter in the band, or for yourself if you’re a solo artist. Once you’ve inked the record deal, a publisher will often offer you a pub deal because there is some probability that the record will generate mechanicals, and with tons of good fortune, performance income as well through airplay, etc.

A big difference with libraries is that they typically don’t give advances (unless you’re creating custom projects/CDs they commission you to create to order), and many of them offer non-exclusive contracts on single songs. I think it will be quite some time before the majors do non-exclusives, as they’re interested in building equity. Exclusive rights build equity, much like equity in stocks or real estate. Eventually, they cash in their chips and sell off the entire catalog for what is called a multiple, similar to selling a business for X times net profit.

Gotta stop now before I write a book. Hope this helps,
Michael

I just wanted to let you know that Mega-Hit Country Songwriter Jeffrey Steele will be our honoree this year and our keynote interview at TAXI’s annual convention, the Road Rally.

Jeffrey Steele at TAXI's 2003 Road Rally

Here’s a list of his professional accomplishments:

• 2007 BMI Songwriter Of The Year
• 2007 BMI Song Of The Year, “What Hurts The Most”
• 2006 NSAI Writer Of The Year
• 2005 NSAI Writer Of The Year
• 2003 BMI Writer Of The Year
• 2003 BMI Writer Of The Year
• 29 Top 10 Songs
• 24 Top Five Songs
• 8 No. 2 Songs
• 8 No. 1 Songs
• Currently for 2008: Rascal Flatts “Here” climbs the charts.
• Recently for 2008: Rascal Flatts “Everyday” #2, Phil Vassar’s “Love is a Beautiful Thing” #2, Craig Morgan’s “International Harvester” #8 and Cascada’s pop smash, “What Hurts the Most” #1
• One of Billboard magazines Top 5 Writers, 6 years in a row
• Over 35,000,000 airplays on radio and television
• Over 500 songs cut in an 8-year period by over a 100 artists
• 95 singles released off more than 75 Gold and Platinum records
• Over 50 million records sold
• More than 50 writers awards
• 2007 CMA Triple Play Award (3 no 1 songs in a year) “Brand New Girlfriend”, “My Wish”, and “What Hurts the Most”
• 3 Grammy nominations as a writer and as a musician
• 1991 Academy of Country Music award, Band of the Year
• Judge/mentor on season 6 of NBC’s, “Nashville Star”
• Star of the G.A.C. T.V. reality show, “The Hitmen of Music Row”
• Multi Platinum Producer of artists like: Montgomery Gentry, Keith Anderson, and John Waite, with 2 no. 1 songs and 6 Top 10 songs.

His Songs:

My Town, Speed, Something To Be Proud Of, Hell Yeah, Gone, Chrome, I’m Trying, Brand New Girlfriend, What Hurts The Most, My Wish, Me And My Gang, These Days, Everyday, The Cowboy In Me, When The Lights Go Down, Unbelievable, Big Deal, She’d Give Anything, A Cowboys Born With A Broken Heart, They Don’t Make Em Like That Anymore, Everytime I Hear Your Name, Couldn’t Last A Moment, Help Somebody, Love Is A Beautiful Thing, International Harvester.

To learn more about becoming a TAXI member, getting two free tickets to this event, and to see the schedule of events for this year’s Rally, please click here.

That’s all for now,

Michael