Panel interviewed by Michael Laskow at TAXI’s Road Rally conference, November, 2023
Panelists (left to right) Pedro Costa, Mason Cooper, Michael Laskow, Matt Vander Boegh, Craig Pilo, and Vince Nicotina grab a pose after wrapping up their, "Does it Feel Like Your Music Has Gone into a Black Hole?" panel at TAXI's Road Rally 2023.
Editor’s Note: We’re repeating the introduction to this panel at the beginning of each month’s section to give the discussion that follows some context.
Moderator, Michael Laskow asks the audience seated in the ballroom: How many of you have had music forwarded by TAXI and feel like it’s gone into a black hole? [Lots of audience members’ hands go up] That’s why we’re doing this panel.
We’ve got a bona fide panel of experts up here to help you understand if it is a black hole or it isn’t. On the left we’ve got Pedro Costa, who’s a music library CEO that started out as a TAXI member, so he’s seen the black hole from both sides of the coin. Next to him we’ve got Mason Cooper who’s a highly experienced music supervisor working on films and TV shows. We’ve got Matt Vander Boegh, who has become one of TAXI’s more successful members over many years. Next to him we’ve got Craig Pilo, who is TAXI’s head screener, as well as a composer and a music library owner himself. And then we’ve got TAXI member Vince Nicotina, who posted this on TAXI’s Forum.
“Recently, I’ve received a series of cue sheets, and got some nice payouts from instrumentals in my ASCAP quarterly statement, too. It seems that my music was played all over the place in 2022, and I had no idea about it.
Some of the places I’ve had music in 2022 were Stromboli, a Dutch movie on Netflix; Celebrity and Somebody, Korean TV shows on Netflix; Emmerdale and Coronation Street, long-running British TV shows; as well as other TV shows in the U.K., France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Romania, Honduras, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia; and The Con on ABC, a true-crime show.”
Then Vince wrote a follow-up email. “In 2023 so far, I’ve had tunes in the finale of Grease, Rise of the Pink Ladies, on Paramount+. Had some stuff on German TV, but it’s probably too soon to know what happened overseas. The Paramount+ placement paid me a $1,000 sync fee. The true-crime show came from a deal I made through TAXI Forward, and my co-writer was somebody I met in the registration line at the Road Rally. My Paramount+ deal came from a library I learned about from a guy I met at the bar at the Road Rally.
This just goes to show that there really is a long gap of one to two years between when your music gets placed and when you learn about that placement. It takes even longer to get paid, so if you’re frustrated that you got some tunes in a library and they never got placed, just wait a couple of years before you do anything rash.
The rule of thumb is just keep making more music, getting it in more libraries. That’s the plan. I only have a little over 100 tunes in libraries, but the action is finally starting to pick up. Now I need to press for 200 tunes.”
Thank you, Vince for inspiring us.
Part 5 begins here:
Vince and Matt, we get asked this question, and I’m sure you guys do as well. How many forwards did it take before you got signed? I’m asking this a little tongue-in-cheek.
Matt: I’ll see people say this on the TAXI Forum, too. “I got a 32% forward-to-signing ratio.” Okay, who cares! Like there’s really no way to quantify that you might go one-for-one, and now you’re at a hundred percent. You might go one-for-two and now you got a forward to signing ratio of 50%, or you may go ten-for-thirty. There are so many variables involved in that chain.
You know, it depends on the libraries, the genre, the speed at which they need stuff to use. There are just so many variables that there is no math. Vince, any comments or thoughts about that from you?
Vince: I agree with that. There’s no formula, and sometimes I got a lot of forwards for a while and then I’d go through a losing streak and I’d get a lot of returns. It’s just very cyclical depending on what I’m writing for. I might be going for a new genre that I’m not that good at yet, and so I’m gonna get a bunch of returns and eventually I’ll start getting forwards. When I get forwards that’s when I know that song is ready. You know that’s one of the things I like about TAXI is that when you do get a forward you know you have a good song. You know there’s at least somebody who thinks it’s good for something.
And it’s on target for what you intended it to be on target for which is half the battle.
Vince: Yeah, you may never hear back, but now you know the next time you see a listing for that type of thing, maybe in another library, you know, hey, I got something that’s perfect for that. I’ve done that with a few things that got forwarded that went into the black hole, never heard back, and then later on somebody else needed a song like that, and I said, hey, I got one that got forwarded twice, never heard back, it’s available, here you go, and it gets signed.
Mason: Everybody out here [in the audience] thinks like the creative is the fun part. But, we’re in the music business. Two words okay, and that’s what that last panel was about. I’ve had forwards from TAXI for a movie I recently worked on, The Hill, the Dennis Quaid film that’s been out in theaters. I picked two of the forwards that came in from TAXI, and then I picked one I ended up using. I played it for the director, and he said, “Awesome.” But we can’t use your music without licensing it. I contacted the TAXI member, and they were so happy, but then said, “Oh I forgot that I used to be on RCA and this was on RCA in the UK and I think that they still have it,” so I can’t use it. “No, I’ll call them.” He contacted RCA. “Well, they’re not sure… they don’t really remember it because it’s been so long from the 70s, so it’s kind of like in a file somewhere or an archive but they can’t find it, so it’s okay to use.” I said, “No it’s not!” Click, you’re now a black hole right.
He pitched something that he didn’t know that he had the rights to so he couldn’t warrant it or indemnify us. Shame on him. But that was a TAXI forward. TAXI sent the brief out, they listened, they found the right song, and they sent it. But it landed in the black hole.
I could put 10 music supervisors on that stage and introduce everybody in this room personally to each one of them, and everybody in this ballroom is thinking, “Wow, that would be my fantasy.” But you know what? They probably wouldn’t take music from people because they would run into that scenario because people are just so incredibly desirous of getting their music placed that they either forget or they hope that somebody will just overlook things like you just mentioned. They don’t understand how dangerous that is. That’s why supervisors use libraries; because they know that they’ve done that due diligence.
Pedro: I was just going to give a bit of a plug for the work that publishers do, such as us, is going through all of the vetting process and making sure that we have all of the documentation to make sure that when a track goes to Mason or any of our other clients, and we tell him it’s one-stop from us, 100% that it is. And if, for whatever reason we missed a loophole, we also have errors and omissions insurance to back it up. So, we do the due diligence, we have the insurance to make sure that what he’s getting is not going to end up in a situation like he just described. And then you become a black hole for him and for us as well.
I used to say there’s no industry blacklist. I mean, there isn’t like a place that all of us who are on the industry side secretly have a password to and we go there and there’s a list of people who’ve done really dopey things like that. But anecdotally, there is kind of a blacklist. And many of us colleagues and friends. If something blew up in my face, I would tell them as a friend or a business colleague, I have no reason to protect the evil-doer that did that dopey thing. If anything, I’m protecting them in the future. I don’t make a point of sending out an email to everybody I know in the industry saying, “Somebody did something really dumb, make sure you steer clear of that guy.” But things get mentioned by all of us from time-to-time in phone conversations, at industry events, in emails, etc.
On the converse side though, people do say, oh yeah, Matt VanderBoegh, and this is true, you know, Matt VanderBoegh is a home run hitter. He’s reliable, he’s responsible, he conducts business like a real business person, so the good word also spreads, so it’s worth endeavoring to be a good business person so that your reputation precedes you and that does well for you.
Pedro: There is a difference, though, between somebody who maybe was, like you called them, dopey, and maybe forgot something, a little detail, and then we cleaned it up. It was an honest mistake, and that’s fine. But then there are certain people in the industry who are actually trying to do a lot of illegal things, and their name gets around very quickly within private Facebook groups where industry people talk and they’re all being hit up by a person who is maybe trying to license music that actually doesn’t belong to them or some other scheme like that, so those names do get around.
Imagine this being asked by a TAXI member. “My music has been forwarded for a particular listing. How long should I wait before I start pitching it to other TAXI listings?” Matt, how long should they wait before they pitch it to other listings?
Matt: Zero minutes and zero seconds. Yep!
Vince?
Vince: Yeah, I agree, I don’t think there’s any reason to wait on pitching it to more listings.
Pedro: A good comparison is do you just apply for one job and wait or do you send out resumes to multiple jobs?
That’s a great analogy!
Audience member question: I was just going to say, until somebody offered me a contract for my piece of music, it’s available. So don’t pitch it to one thing and wait a month before you do something else. Fire away. As long as the product you’re shopping is quality. Until somebody offers you a contract, it’s available.
And the best thing is, when Pedro calls you up and says, hey, I got this piece of music through TAXI, and you say, “Oh, I’m sorry, dude. Somebody else just signed it last week.” You’ve sent a message to Pedro that you’re good enough for another library to sign, so that gives him a little more confidence. Not that he wouldn’t be able to make that decision on his own, but you know, we all love validation that our feelings about a piece of music weren’t wrong. And…
Pedro: It adds a bit of FOMO. This must be a really good composer or artist.
Yeah, and the next thing you’re gonna say is; “Well, can you create other stuff that’s in that same category?” So yeah, you can’t get hurt by just pitching like crazy.
All right. Next question.
Audience member question: This is for the whole panel. My question is about when we get briefs from TAXI, they’re always accompanied by references, and I’ve caught myself sometimes thinking, do I need to read between the lines because this reference, you know, not putting aside references that are big bands, like references that are seemingly unknown people, to me at least, I’ll hear a reference and I’ll go, this reference seems to be hitting all the brief points, why aren’t they using the reference? Do I need to read between the lines and do something different than the reference, or do I base my writing on what the reference is?
Mason: I’ll answer that one. If we ever said, and gave you three in a brief, there were three examples of an artist with that song. It is reading between the lines of the genre, the style, the mood, emotion, ambiance, all of that. Sometimes instrumentation, if it’s specific. I don’t need his piano, but if everything’s piano, you might go, oh, they’re leaning that way. But really, what I don’t want is a song that sounds like that. Don’t imitate it, don’t mimic it. There’s a Rihanna song. I don’t need a song that sounds like Rihanna. What you would do is, I always use this concept, create your playlist, a Spotify playlist with those. Maybe other, then you can add to that playlist and go, what’s coming up as similar songs to these songs? I’m gonna create a six or seven or eight song playlist. I think I have two songs in my catalog. How do I add that to the playlist so I can see if it fits in that same mood, genre, vibe? It’s like creating your own Pandora list. So it’s really reading between the lines, but don’t be specific to those. That’s why brief is so hard. That’s why it’s hard for us to express it to you. Because it really is, if a brief is too wide, you’re going, well, I get there’s a thread, but it’s pretty varied. That’s hard. So that’s where we have to do our best to try to be as narrow as possible. So you’re reading between the lines, and they’re small lines.
Don’t miss the final part of this panel in next month’s TAXI Transmitter!