Taxi Rejection #3

Here we go again, obviously not third time lucky ;-) Got some actual textual information this time though, making this rejection more useful that the previous two.

Submitted Songs

Christian Kelly

Amsterdam

Listing

CONTEMPORARY COUNTRY SONGS for a Male Artist a la BLAKE SHELTON are wanted by the Dir. of A&R at a Major Nashville Label. Great, conversational lyrics are a must. Familiar Country themes are welcome but must be told in a new and fresh, contemporary way. Uptempos are preferred but they are open to hearing mids and ballads, if they are amazing. Vocal and instrumental demo presentation must be top-notch! Please submit one to three songs online or per CD, include lyrics. All submissions will be screened and critiqued by TAXI and must be received no later than Tuesday, May 18, 2010. TAXI #S100518CO

Feedback

Taxi.com Rejection #2

Well here we are once again, with my second lot of feedback from Taxi.com for a couple of songs I recently submitted. As before I've posted the feedback and the songs themselves. The listing wanted songs about smiling, so I hastily knocked one up after seeing the ultra specific description and I also stuck in an old song of mine entitled Polly, which was a bit of a long shot but it's fairly poppy and makes a brief reference to smiles in the third verse with the lyric "look for your smile".

Submitted Songs

Polly

Smile

Listing

CONTEMPORARY SINGER-SONGWRITER-type SONGS about "SMILE/SMILING" needed by a successful Music Publisher based in L.A. who's gotten tons of great Film/TV placements for many TAXI members. Open to all tempos. Male or Female vocals are okay. No instrumentals please! Universal lyrics are necessary. Vocal and instrumental presentations must be top-notch! Recordings need to be Broadcast Quality (great home recordings should be fine). They offer a non-exclusive, 50/50 split deal - you keep your original copyrights. Please submit one to three songs online or per CD, include lyrics. All submissions will be screened on a YES/NO BASIS - NO CRITIQUES FROM TAXI - and must be received no later than Friday, May 21, 2010. TAXI #Y100521SS

Feedback

CD Baby

Apologies if this entry seems a slightly biased but I love CDBaby and I’ve used them since around 2003 when I released my first album, I’d actually had plans to release it via MP3.com which used to be an awesome site back in the day but unfortunately they got bought out and things changed so I had to find an alternative. After hunting around I came across CDBaby and a lot of people seemed to have a lot of positive things to say about them, so I decided to try it out.

The concept was fairly simple, I paid a one of set-up fee which I think was around $30 and I mailed them 10 CDs. They then set the product up on their site everytime someone purchased my album they’d take a small percentage and then deposit the rest into my PayPal account. Then when the CDs all sold, I just mailed them some more, simple!! So all I’ve had to do is put a link on my site to CDBaby, where people can purchase my music.

The site itself was setup by a guy called Derek Sivers, whom I actually met once at an informal CDBaby meet up in London last year. He was a professional musician and in the late 90s he wanted to create a way of selling his own CDs online and the whole thing grew from that.

As time’s gone on they’ve added other features and built up a number of partnerships with various digital download and streaming companies like Napster and iTunes, this additional distribution hasn’t cost me anything extra and unlike other companies like TuneCore it doesn’t expire, it just seems to sit there forever or until I want to delete it. It’s easy to set up too, you just log into your account, click on your album and select any digital distribution service you want you’re album to be available on and CDBaby do the rest. Once again they just take a small amount from each sale. They also now offer a digital distribution only service, so you don’t even have to have a physical CD, and they recently branched into singles too, which they’ll set-up for the low cost of $9.

I’m still using CDBaby today, and I still think they’re the best distribution company out there for an indie artist, although recently I’ve also started using BigCartel.com as I’m selling some slightly unusual items that CDBaby don’t cater for such as a limited edition single on 3.5” floppy, which I did for fun and as a cheeky marketing ploy!

Oh and I’d strongly recommend subscribing to the CDBaby DIY Musician’s Podcast, it’s a great resource if you’re looking for new ways to try and promote your music yourself.

www.CDBaby.com

Taxi.com Rejection #1

Okay, I'm gonna document my Taxi.com experiences via this blog, just as a useful guide to anyone else that might be thinking of using their services, I'm going to try and remain un-biased and actually link to the songs that I've submitted so you can make your own mind up about the feedback I receive from my submissions to them.

Since joining Taxi I've gone through all their listings, submitted a few songs that I thought were relevant and every couple of weeks I've gone through the new listings and done the same thing. I've just now had my first response, and it was a negative one, I submitted 3 songs for the following advert:

"ELECTRONICA SONGS - with vocals - of the 1990s - in the wide range of The Prodigy, Chemical Bros., Moby, etc., needed by a Music Publisher who has signed and placed tons of TAXI songs in various Film/TV projects. Original songs only that have a 1990s style and feel of the artists referenced are what's needed. Universal lyrics that can fit a number of film and TV scenes are what is being looked for here. Excellent vocal and instrumental performances are a must. Please submit one to three songs online or per CD, include lyrics. All submissions will be screened on a YES/NO BASIS - NO CRITIQUES FROM TAXI - and must be received no later than Monday, May 17 2010. TAXI #Y100517EL"

These were the songs:
Normal
Something You Forgot
Quiet Dreaming





They were all rejected on the basis of "Recording", I haven't had anymore feedback than that, as your feedback from Taxi just seems to be a form with some check boxes, which looks like this:



So, I went on the Taxi forum to get some more info and received some really good advice from other Taxi users and some suggestions on improving the recordings. I'll follow this advice and in the meantime, I'm gonna keep plugging away!

Hodge Plays Mario Kart

Okay, so a couple of weeks ago I watched the incredibly entertaining King of Kong documentary for the first time, after being recommended it by a friend. If you’ve never seen it, I’d highly recommend checking it out. It basically charts the progress of a Steve Wiebe who’s desperately trying to become the world greatest Donkey Kong player.

The whole thing got me thinking about my good friend Andrew Hodge and the fact that he often claims to be the world’s second greatest player of Super Mario Kart on the SNES, apparently he did an online search for the fastest lap times on Rainbow Road (The most difficult Mario Kart track) and he was about a second slower than the fastest lap time ever recorded.

Now, King of Kong heavily featured the website Twin Galaxies, who are the official score keepers for all things video game related are even recognised by The Guinness Book of World Records, so I logged on and looked up the fastest lap time for Rainbow Road, and told Hodge. Turns out that Hodge is quicker! Several seconds quicker in fact!

You can check out the video of Hodge smashing the world record here, and in dedication of this momentous achievement I’ve written a song in his honour simply titled Hodge Plays Mario Kart, which you can download here.

Joining Taxi.com

This year I've been pretty much flat out on the whole music thing, with an ultimate goal of turning my passion into something that can support me financially. So along with the constant song writing, recording, video blogging, podcasting, twittering and sending out CDs etc.. I've now decided to bite the bullet and join Taxi.com

I've had a few tunes used in independent productions in the past, its something I'd like to do more of, and Taxi claim to be-able to help with that. I've toyed with the idea of joining for a while now, I've spoken to a few members and received some fairly positive feedback overall, although there are a few negative forum posts out there too.

So, I've shelled out $300 (USA) for a years worth of their service, introduced myself in the Taxi forum and begun the process of submitting songs! It'll be interesting to see how it progresses. In the meantime I've actually learnt a fair bit about tv/film music placement from their online resources and I'm attempting to write some slightly more tv friendly tunes, and cutting back on the "naughty words" lyrically ;-)

Aidy.com

8 Bit Antics

I'm a bit of a geek and a retro gaming enthusiast, and whilst recently visiting Bletchley Park I came accross a CD in the gift shop called The Boy With The Digital Heart by Pixelh8. I've been listening to it a fair bit since, if you're not aware of what he does, he reverse engineers electronic toys and random computer game sound effects to make instrumentals. Any how, this has inspired me to do something similar myself, and after reading a few tutorials I've discovered I can get the old 8-bit Mario, Double Dragon type sound out of Reason by tweaking the SubTractor so I'm in the process of re-recording one of my old tracks Seattle's Filled With Stars, which I'm gonna release next Friday at Aidy.com.