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great stuff cameron! as someone who is still pretty newbie, very helpful and to the point. have you really had any success with TAXI? from people i’ve spoken to, i know it’s legit… but it seems to me that just brute force networking is far more effective than any pay-to-play service like that….
Glad you enjoyed the read. I have yet to use taxi as most of my production work is directly-for-hire by my clients, but I’m friends with quite a few who claim it’s brought them plenty of success. I think it really comes down to the type of music you’re working to get into the “system”. A lot of the librarian services literally act like large catalogs for TV networks to shop for music through, I imagine at some level the vehicle for all the behind-the-scenes composition and production operates in a similar fashion for Pop and EDM, or in general the higher up the industry you go, you start to run into more restrictive positions. Today, Hit factories live on through “camps”. Check out this article on NPR about the current practices by the top pop industry labels and producers to build “hits”. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/05/137530847/how-much-does-it-cost-to-make-a-hit-song
yeah i’ve read through that article before actually 🙂 i’m curious.. practically speaking where does your work mostly come from? i.e. strangers that you’re cold e-mailing/calling/craigslisting? or references from previous work that you’ve just built upon over the years.
Colleagues and personal relationships with those in the production field. And like Andy stated, I live in a small town in the central valley of California. I get repeat work from the same production crew in LA and also try to network locally to expand. Every job I’ve done with these guys has lead to meeting new people also in production, and that’s helped expand my network and just within these circles there’s a greater flow of projects being discussed that could possibly end up on my plate.
I can say from experience that using TAXI as well as certain other services is a way to diversify and reach more segments of the market. Its also totally geographically dependent – if you live in LA or NYC, networking is great. If you live in a small town in the midwest, maybe not so much, in that case you have to work all the angles.