Just like most musicians will never be stars, although some will gain some local or regional fame of sorts.... so too with writers.

Out of a few thousand writers, a small handful will write tunes good enough and be in the right place with the right people and turn it into a career. Out of all the TAXI people, there's a small handful who are full time and paying their bills and taxes from writing for film & TV. There are a greater number who are part timers and make a few thousand dollars a year from placements. There's an even larger group with one or two placements and signings..... and who haven't covered their costs at this point quite yet.

Obviously if you're making money and that covers your dues, you would stay. There's a pretty heavy turnover rate in the music publisher/library world..... new ones come and old ones go all the time. Some of the libraries I am signed to have been sold to other companies. I get updates and listing emails from the libraries I am with. That's where I now work on placing my new cues.

There's more than one road to the destination. Taxi is but one of those roads. Call it a toll road if you like.


After thought to edit:

DO the math..... you want to make a full time living writing cues for film & TV? What does that mean? For sake of discussion... lets say $50,000 gross a year. That's reasonable.

With a cue price payout of $5 a play for a short spot in a TV show, that would require 10,000 plays a year or 27.4 plays a day 365 days a year. Throw in a few cues that pay out $200 or more a play and you can reduce the $5 plays a bit. Obviously, to reach that level of plays, you need thousands of cues out there signed, and being used daily. Anything less and you will not be able to pay your bills. So, if you have a few hundred cues, and think you're going to make a steady income.... think again.

The big dollar payouts are normally one time license fees. TAXI loves to advertise them but in all the time with TAXI and even now just getting their emails, I do not think I have ever heard of a single TAXI member scoring one of the big payouts of $25k or more on a national TV commercial.... I might be wrong, but I can't recall hearing that news. So you write a song for a big name car commercial that is going to run nation wide in a publicity campaign. They will buy the rights outright for a one time payday. It might be $25,000 or it might be $5000.... split that with the publisher 50/50 if there's one of those representing the song.... or keep the full amount on a direct to end user deal and split it all with the tax man.... however, those deals are few and far between and are akin to winning the lottery because the competition for those spots is brutal with a foot in the door going to any writers who have already worked with the company in the past.

Got to go to my day gig, which does in fact pay the bills.... TTYAL....



Last edited by Guitarhacker; 09/10/15 02:07 AM.
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