Steve PMHTaxi Music is an independent A&R company that specializes in talent scouting and the commercial and artistic development of artists. It is based in Calabasas, CA. The company was established on the 15th of January, 1992 by Micheal Laskow, an engineer/producer in the 1970’s and 1980’s, in Woodland Hills, California.
Taxi helps artists and songwriters get their music out to recording labels, Ad agencies, music publishers, music libraries, Film and TV music supervisors, video game companies, among others. In this way, it connects artists to the music and entertainment industry.
As a producer, Laskow has worked with a lot of great artists, including Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Melanie, Cheap Trick, and many more.
It is from working with these artists that he identified a common problem among the many unsigned artists and songwriters he worked with. They would all spend a lot of time and financial muscle on coming up with demos that couldn’t even be heard by the top executives in the music industry.
That’s why he started Taxi Music; to help the unsigned artist to get discovered and signed to various recording labels.
He started Taxi in a one-bedroom apartment with seed capital from his best pal in college, Micheal Lubeger. After a few years of struggling, Taxi managed to break even and went on to pioneer the concept of independent A&R companies. Back then, such companies were just entities of recording labels. He brought something new to the table.
Key Features
Some of its key features are;
Music placement
Taxi acts as an intermediary between the various firms and the artists and composers. The artists and songwriters submit their work with Taxi music then their panel of professionals carefully analyze the work to determine if they fit what the firms are looking for.
Great A&R team
Taxi has an A&R team made up of professionals in the music industry. This means that all the music you send in will be heard by a pro in that genre. This is why a majority of the top recording labels and music publishers use Taxi to find new talent to sign.
Expert feedback
When using Taxi’s music services, an artist is able to get expert feedback on their work from the pro panelists. This helps the artist improve their work and increase their chances of getting signed to a recording label.
Wide range of opportunities
Members registered with Taxi music are given access to more than 100 different opportunities every month. These openings are of different varieties like Rock, Modern Rock, Jazz, Pop, Country, Adult Contemporary, Film/TV, Instrumental and more.
Important contacts
Taxi provides a long list of contacts that can help an artist grow in the music industry. It is up to the artists to find them and impress them with their creations. The only downside is that Taxi music does not allow you to share the contacts you have cultivated through their services as it goes against their terms and conditions.
Other Features
The Taxi A&R Dispatch
This is considered as an upgrade to the Taxi membership program. With it, you will get short notice instrumental requests from various music libraries that Taxi handles. However, this plan is only good for the robust instrumental composer that is already getting good forward deals from Taxi.
The annual convention
Members of Taxi music are given 2 free tickets for their annual conference. This gives the artists an opportunity to grow their networks and meet with music producers, supervisors of recording labels and the A&R executive panelists.
How it Works
Taxi works by informing the artists, songwriters and composers of the opportunities available to them.
Various recording labels, Ad agencies, music publishers, music libraries and film and TV supervisors inform Taxi Music of the type of songs, instrumental tracks and artists they require from them. Taxi then informs its members about these requests.
When a member sees a match for their work, they forward it to the Taxi A&R executives for review. The A&R executive team then carefully analyzes the work submitted to determine whether it is what was requested by the interested party. If it matches the needed work, the selected piece is sent to the respective party for consideration.
If the work impresses the interested entity, they will get in touch with the member who sent it in to negotiate the price for the work. If it doesn’t work for them, they will inform Taxi who, in turn, will inform you of the reason your work was turned down.
Pricing
To join Taxi music, you have to pay about 300 dollars annually for their annual membership plan. For subsequent years, members have to part with 200 dollars annually as membership renewal charges.
It also costs a further 5 dollars to submit each work for review by the A&R executive panel for consideration. Taxi claims that this ensures that artists and songwriters only submit work that is worthy of consideration by the A&R executives.
If you wish for your song to be uploaded to the Taxi music website, you are required to pay a fee of 2$ for every song. There is a further additional charge of 5$ for scanning the photos of the album.
To access the Taxi A&R dispatch plan, you will have to pay about 0.5 dollars daily on top of the yearly subscriptions paid.
Only existing members have the option of upgrading to Taxi dispatch, which is done by placing a call to +1818-222-2464.
Pros of Taxi music
- Your music is heard by music industry professionals. Taxi is globally recognized and respected, which is why most pros listen to music from them.
- You are made aware of what the industry requires and when it is needed.
- The annual TAXI convention gives you an opportunity to mingle with and listen to the industry’s top professionals. You may even get lucky and get signed to a record label if you impress the various supervisors present during this event.
- It provides professional feedback, which allows you to improve on your weaknesses. The A&R team is purely comprised of professionals whose feedback will help up your game.
- It saves you the time of having to develop contacts as it avails a much easier way of engaging the industry. Taxi music provides a ready contact base that you can take advantage of.
- Taxi lets you keep all the cash you get after you strike a deal. It does not require you to give them a cut from the pay you get after they connect you with the Ad agencies, record label, or TV and Films supervisors. Whatever you earn is completely yours to keep.
- It has a full-year money-back guarantee policy. When you are not satisfied with the services accorded to you by Taxi music, you can lodge a complaint and be refunded your money at any time.
Cons of Taxi music
- Only a few of the many registered users are able to get deals from this service. Close to 600 out of the 10000 users have been able to get their songs placed. Because of the many users present, only those with exceptional talent get offers. This is, therefore, a disadvantage to budding artists as some may get discouraged and give up on their dreams.
- Taxi music cannot get your musical wok placed directly. It only forwards your work to the interested party who has the final say on whether to accept or reject your work.
- It is an expensive service. The 300$ required to register is too high. Furthermore, Taxi music has many upsells which add to the cost of accessing its services
- Paying for feedback. Essentially, by paying to submit your work for review by the A&R executives and waiting for the critique, you are paying for the feedback.
Verdict
Taxi Music is a relatively good platform for artists that are looking to make it big in the entertainment industry. It has made it possible for musicians from across the globe to get connected to record labels, music publishers and Advertising agencies from the comfort of their own homes.
Plus, Taxi music serves as a gateway for the up and coming artists to get in touch with the decision-makers in the music industry. By providing professional feedback to the budding artist, Taxi music raises the quality of music available in the industry.
In this way, Taxi Music can save you a lot of time and financial resources if you are an artist looking for a breakthrough in this industry.
Its biggest problem, though, is its prohibitive cost. The membership fee is really exorbitant, especially to budding artists and songwriters. Plus, the numerous upsells one is required to buy to access the services are a discouragement to many people.
Other than that, I believe Taxi offers fantastic services and is a worthy try.
13 comments
I appreciate the pros and cons when walking into any agreement. Thanks for the information.
I have been a Taxi.com member for three years now. At first, I’d say I agree with a lot of what’s in this review, but as I continued to interact with this site, it became more clear that taxi is a universe of itself. It claims to have placed musicians with A&Rs and afford them careers making six-digits in music, but I didn’t see any success stories like this printed outside of the taxi forum.
It offers critiques on music before deciding to forward music to an A&R or pass it by. But as a professional in the industry, I know first hand that while any feedback could be helpful, this is not how professionals work. In reality, your song is accepted or you never hear anything. I honestly would prefer this approach, especially when taxi screeners started to let their flaws be known in their critiques. A few times I received critiques that were nonsensical. Like “that piano should be acoustic” said about an acoustic piano, or “that cello is too midi” said about a real cello. Instrumentation for world music was also met with confusion. Don’t ask to screen African music if you’ve never heard of a kalimba or a kora!
Finally, after songs are “forwarded” to an A&R, artists get little certificate similar to those your child gets when you pass kindergarten, but that’s it. Many artists on taxi.com go just that far. Forwarded to an A&R means nothing in particular at all. It just means a taxi screener liked your song enough to pass it to a company. You don’t get any word on who actually now has your work, which project it’s in line for or if it’s in a slush pile. Honestly, any artist can look up an A&R and forward music themselves. In my experience, I’ve actually gotten farther doing that.
Finally, after reading reviews like mine and developing some pretty big concerns about taxi.com, I contacted them. One nice thing I thought was that they are always attentive and have actual humans on staff who will speak to you. The vibe I got, however, was that the staff was comprised of the typical used car salesmen. After politely getting nowhere, I complained to the BBB about their practices, knowing that BBB is not consumer affairs, it’s just a private company that rates its members (kind of like Taxi does to us!). Then I was floored. The owner of taxi took my phone number from the BBB and called me. He kept me on the phone for 2 hours trying to sell Taxi.com to me. During this phone call I learned that taxi is a very small organization comprised of less than 20 people. My one customer complaint obviously was enough of a threat to tie up the company owner for two hours, begging me to take it down. During this call, he told me I “fit a profile” of people who complain. I simply didn’t use enough of taxi’s amenities to be happy with the service. Funny, because I thought this was a professional service, not a social media platform. Then he told me the negative reviews I had read online were obviously his competitors disguised as members. He told me a member of taxi worked as a screener (wow, conflict of interest much?). When I asked why I hadn’t seen any success stories outside of the taxi web site, he explained to me that absolutely zero of the successful taxi members had ever given them credit for their successes because “artists don’t do that”. What?!
Taxi isn’t illegal. They do what they say they do. But I do find them unprofessional, unethical and just not good at what they do. They have yet to give me a reason not to feel this way.
Thanks for the review. I’ve been thinking back and forth about whether to sign up, and its weird how little info there is about Taxi online. Literally NO reviews on youtube other than videos with the owner in it! I couldn’t find anything really on reddit either although usually there is tons of comments about music business etc. Very strange.
Read this – esp the 'cons'.
https://promusicianhub.com/taxi-music-review/
Thank you!!!!! I am not going to give them my money!
I’ve been a TAXI member for over 6 years and have had over 100 forwards. Never heard back and I believe I never will. At the forums people mention that they, after a forward, hear back in 1 day to 18 months after a listing is due. If I ever hear back I will let everyone know that TAXI works, if I don’t hear back after another 100 submissions then TAXI is a scam and ML will be held accountable.
Sad. You deserve better!
I am a relatively new member to TAXI and, thus far, can confirm the $300 membership fee combined with the $5 per submission fee is high, and likely will not be renewed in a year by me. The concept of the service is a great one, and the site offers a variety of very specific listings (sometimes laughably specific from its clients), but a sore point is the feedback one receives from its screeners: it is akin to the dolts over at SubmitHub who offer wildly inconsistent and almost flip reviews that verge on the nonsensical. Of course, no one likes anything other than positive feedback, but well thought out industry critiques would be better received if they were actually thoughtful and relevant; more times than not what they are is dumb and petty opinion, and in no way helpful. More than likely, this was a $300 plus lesson.
Read this – esp the 'cons'.
https://promusicianhub.com/taxi-music-review/
So sad. I do hope you pursued getting your yearly membership refund.
Don't waste your time and money with this joke of a company! SCAM ALERT!!!! Completely over priced and zero follow through on forwards. For that price they should be following up and communicating with you about a forward. I was with Taxi for 12 years and had a ton of forwards and never got a single email or call or anything from anyone. Starting approaching libraries on my own and immediately started getting deals faster than I could sign them. Since then I've made great money and worked with everyone from Netfilx to Amazon and in between. I gave them Taxi thousands of dollars to do absolutely nothing. DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME AND MONEY WITH TAXI!!!.
Oh and the owner is a complete narcissistic asshole.
Hi thanks for the advice. Can you perhaps point me in the direction of going direct to companies to pitch my work? Greatly appreciated thanks.
I agree with Trevor. Don’t waste your time. I even question whether the opportunities are legitimate. I had over 100 forwards. No responses. When I questioned Taxi as to why the “publishers” never even respond to a forward, Taxi replied that the publishers are busy and can’ t take time to reply to the 10-15 forwards they get for an opportunity. I call BS.
As far as quality reviews, that is a joke. I have been a composer in the film/tv market for over 10 years and the feedback I get from Taxi reviewers is so vague, it is best to just ignore it. I literally have had the same reviewer forwarding and returning the same track for the same type of listing:
Example:
(Title of the Song)
What I like most about this song:
Nice mix and progression for the overall track. The tension needed was there and the mood matches the listing. I especially like that short pause/rest at 01:16.
I think you could improve this song by
None, this is fine as is. Nice work.
I forwarded this song because
Track passes the criteria needed.
And on another submission to an ” opportunity” with the same description as the first, here is the feedback I received on the same track reviewed by the same reviewer.
What I like most about this song
The synths here sound great. The track feels like it’s headed on the right direction.
I think you could improve this song by
This feels too repetitive and 01:16 feels like it’s an abrupt way to end that section.
I returned this song because
Composition has room for improvement.
Notice how the same reviewer liked the pause at 01:16 in one review and in the returned track thought it was too “abrupt.”
If you want to pay hundreds of dollars a year to practice your craft and get useless feedback and no deals, Taxi is for you.
If you are serious about succeeding, go a different direction.