Panel interviewed by Michael Laskow at TAXI’s Road Rally conference, November, 2023
Music Supervisor Mason Cooper raises his hands in victory after making a funny comment on the, "Does It Feel Like Your Music Has Gone Into a Black Hole" panel at the 2023 TAXI Road Rally. He was joined by (left to right), Pedro Costa, Matt Vander Boegh, Craig Pilo, and Vince Nicotina.
Panelists:
Pedro Costa – Composer/Music Library Owner
Mason Cooper – Music Supervisor
Matthew VanderBoegh – Successful TAXI member
Craig Pilo – Composer and TAXI’s Head Screener
Vincent Nicotina – Quickly becoming a successful member
Audience member question: This is my fourth year with TAXI, and my third Rally. I’m trying to lock in, and I appreciate it when I get a return that says, “You were off because of this.” It’s after this third year that it’s all coming together for me now. I appreciate what Michael’s done here. TAXI [and the panelists] are throwing literally silver coins everywhere and all you got to do is pick one up off the floor or reach up to grab it. Michael mentioned that in the panel before this, Jay King was throwing gold nuggets. I mean he was laying gold bricks out there, and I stood up, I couldn’t even contain myself. I apologize, but it’s here! If you follow these guys there’s money coming out of their pockets! Literally, you just gotta pick it up and you just gotta take action! So I’m eternally grateful, and I’m so thankful, and this third Rally for me is exponential. It’s huge, so keep doing what you’re doing and listen and learn, don’t take it personally. Look in the mirror, take accountability, and do what Matt [Vander Boegh] did. Learn how to use Pro Tools and all of that stuff. It’s here for you so just do it and he [Michael] didn’t pay me.
Michael: I didn’t, but boy, I should! You articulated that so beautifully that I would really appreciate it if you’d send an email that’s as articulate and concise as that was? I would love to use that in the marketing for the Road Rally next year because you know what bothers the hell out of me? About 80% of our members don’t come and eat this “free meal.” There is no conference that I’ve ever been to—and I think I’ve been to them all—that even comes close to the Rally, and I’m not just saying that because I own the company. We bust our butts to put such incredible information up there. You cannot imagine the amount of work the staff and I do to get this together, and we do it all for you, for free, and yet 80% of your fellow members are sitting at home watching Netflix right now, complaining that TAXI never forwards their material. Blows my mind!
Mason: Hey Michael, I want to ask, “Is everyone here having a good time at the Rally?” [Applause and cheers] Okay, after this panel, guess what? There’s a lobby bar out there that used to be wall-to-wall people, and people are tending to go other places at night. The hotel rooms are for sleeping at night, only. I’m just saying that because all there are a lot of professionals; library owners, supervisors, and all the people were hanging out there and we’re like where’d everybody go? C’mon man!
Michael: Yeah, I noticed the bar was really skinny last night, and thought that was weird. But on the good side, the Jam Room and the Open Mics were fuller than I’ve seen them in years.
Audience member question: First off, I just wanna say thank you guys for everything. I’ve just been learning a lot. This is my second Road Rally. My name’s Alex. I have a project that’s been in a black hole with a sync agency. I signed a five-year agreement with them and we’re on year number six now. The person that signed us, unfortunately passed away, and there are new people in there and it’s been about seven months between me and my artist contacting them with no response. We can’t get anybody on the phone, no reply to emails. I’m seeing opportunities on TAXI that this project would fit well for, but I don’t wanna be one of those guys who’s sending a project out when it’s tied to something, but I have no clue how to get out of it without being able to get a hold of anybody.
Mason: That’s a legal issue. You don’t need a high-powered lawyer, but that’s as simple as getting an attorney to write one letter to them, and they’ll go, “Oh-oh, we got to answer this guy!” You got to take care of business, and protect yourself. Spend a couple hundred dollars for that letter from a lawyer, okay, and go write another song.
Audience member question: It’s my first Rally and I’m super happy to be here after just one year of being with TAXI, so it’s been great. Question for black hole stuff; do you get our information from TAXI or do you rely on what’s in our metadata, because I know WAV files also don’t carry the metadata so if you’re getting WAV files you’re not going to see what I put in there. So, do you get our information from TAXI?
Pedro: Yeah, we get it both ways, so the MP3s that TAXI sends has all your information in the metadata for those MP3s, but they will send an additional PDF with your contact information as well. So, it’s two sources for your information.
Michael: We got your back.
Mason: Hey, a reason I love TAXI: When Michael and I started talking in 2017, so I’m about getting back into this, is TAXI doesn’t take anything from you, but they make it so easy for us to contact you when they forward something to be able to license it correctly, and they do give us all this proper information. It was very impressive how the system works.
Audience member question: Hello, first time here. Thank you for all your feedback, all your work. It’s been a great conference. My question is, I have some instrumentals in my profile, and some I’ve sent. I have the ability to write music for any of those instrumentals. I see that most, for example, Christmas, I have a Christmas song, and normally when they ask for Christmas music, they want vocals to it, understood. But on the other songs that I have that are instrumentals, and they want perhaps instrumentals with vocals, I have in my profile, able to create lyrics according to the project if desired. Is that sort of a ridiculous thing? This is, again, first year, first rally. Does anybody ever hear an instrumental song, and if they want vocals with it, say, we need words to this. I like the melody. If it had words, is that...
Craig: I’ll take this one. As far as TAXI goes, unfortunately there is not a lot of time for back and forth. So, my advice to you would be to get it as close to what the pitch is asking for the first time. Then if you get contacted from a library and they ask, what else do you have? Cause I love the music. I’d love to hear your vocal thing. That is the time you would offer it. But unfortunately, and we do get this question a lot, there just isn’t time for back and forth. But there isn’t time for us to make a comp, there isn’t time for revisions, no matter how easy they are. Oh, it’s a great song, but if it only had this, and then the composer emails me and says, oh, it’s a quick fix, I’ll do it for you. It’s too late. There just isn’t time for a revision process. But again, if you put your best foot forward and one of us accepts your music into our library and says, hey, these instrumentals are great. Do you have anything with vocals? I’d love to hear it. That would open up the door for you to submit at a later time. So, I hope that answered the question.
Audience member: It did, thank you.
Pedro: Were you also talking about your TAXI profile? You have that information in there?
Audience member: I have it on each of the instrumental songs, yes.
Mason: I would say this from a music supervisor standpoint; the answer is “Oh I love your instrumental. Where’s the vocal?” I would never do that. We don’t have the time for that. You’re giving us the final.
Audience member: Exactly.
Mason: But I would say now as an old publisher and as a musician person, you have the lyric, go get a singer, go do it, and have it. Why aren’t you doing that? That’s your next song you’re writing, the vocal version, have it, create.
Audience member question: I think this question is for Craig. There’s a question earlier kind of by reading between the lines on the listings. Do the screeners ever come to you for a clarification on why a specific reference track is on a listing? Because they want to be on point.
Craig: Yes, they do. And we’ll communicate that with the A&R team. If I’m not sure, I’m not too proud. I don’t know everything. I assume that the reason the brief was written was because the supervisor doesn’t already have what they want. The brief is created because the music that they want doesn’t exist. So as Mason said, you have to read between the lines. If there’s a question about the references that I myself can’t answer, I’ll reach out directly to the source or the rest of my team because nobody knows everything. And we all want to get it right. So yes, to answer your question, I will seek out clarification if I don’t know the answer. Because it’s a team effort to get it right. And we want to get the best music we can to the client.
Mason: I work with Tom a lot, so I’ll send him my information for the brief, and then he’ll sometimes take my samples, or sometimes I give him 10, but they cut it down to three or something. Once in a while, he’ll come up with his own, because he’ll read between the lines, but he sends it back to me to make sure it works. And sometimes I’m like, no, no, it’s really, I mean this because of this, which clarifies even further for TAXI’s team. And other times I’m like, “Ooh, awesome, I love what you did, just to help clarify it, thank you. So, we’re all helping each other.
Craig: Yeah, and Tom and I bounce things back and forth all the time. And I’ll, like I said, I don’t claim to know everything. I don’t claim to be the ultimate infallible authority. I’ll say, hey Tom, listen to this, is this right? And he’ll be like, Craig, you’re on point. Or Craig, you’re smoking crack. You know, one or the other, so.
Michael: I thought he kicked.
Craig: Hey, hey, you miss all the good stuff. But my point is, we try to get, we do what’s necessary to get it right. And if I’m unsure, I do absolutely ask for help, yeah.
Audience member question: Real quick. This is for Craig, I was just hoping if you could offer any insight, sometimes if a brief is calling for an instrumental, but it gives samples with vocals and it clearly says these are vocals and we want an instrumental, but what should we try to focus on there as far as you mean close to that melody or any insight you would have as an expert on your end of what that means?
Craig: And that’s a tough one. I totally sympathize with you and I understand why. Why can’t TAXI just put references up there that are instrumental if it’s instrumental music we’re seeking? Again, it doesn’t exist. So, they’re asking, and this happens a lot with Hip Hop. They like the groove, they like the beat, the instrumentation, the overall production, but they want it to often fit under dialogue for a lot of reality television, so they can’t have the vocals because it would interfere with dialogue already in the show. So they want the groove, they want the instrumentation, they want the mood, that similar production, without the vocals because it would often conflict with dialogue that’s happening in a show. And I know it’s hard.
Audience member: Instrumental melody line or…
Craig:Probably, but nothing too busy that would interfere with dialogue. So, you can’t just have a track with nothing going on, but you also don’t want it to get too busy that it interferes with what’s going on in the show.
Audience Member: Great, thank you.
Michael: I’d like to add that we could get references from other libraries and put them up in the Listing, but then everybody would see the name of that other library and they would get 500 emails because our listings go out to the general public. Therefore, those other libraries would get hit with a ton of emails. But we do encourage the libraries that we work with, that if they can give us something from their catalog that they want more of, and do it in a way where we can put it in Dropbox or something where you hear the actual track that they would like to reference, but there’s no way to track it back to them or any other library we do encourage that.
Michael: Was this helpful? (Audience applause) Awesome!
And just know that all of us in the industry want you to succeed, because if you’re successful, they’re finding the music they need. Matt and Vince; you guys are just shining examples of people who’ve crossed that chasm of not understanding the whole process in the beginning, but figuring it out and that’s why I wanted you guys on this panel. And Vince, thank you for inspiring this panel!