| At a large record
company in the 80s, it was common for the A&R Department to
receive hundreds, or even thousands of submissions a week on cassette or
CD from wanna-be recording stars. The A&R Department is the
department at a record company that is responsible for signing new
recording artists and to make sure that signed artists are producing
product that can sell. |
| The A&R department knew
that they can't really expect to discover stars by listening to these
tapes. They knew that only 3% of the records fully produced and
released (with tens of thousands of dollars invested) would be
successful and that they would receive thousands of submissions for each
act they even signed. If all of the workers in the A&R department
did nothing but listen to a few minutes of each tape received, the
majority of the tapes would be left unheard. |
| So what did the company
do with all of these tapes? An office worker recorded the address
of the sender and sent out a form letter that started, "Thank you for
your submission." The tapes went into boxes and piles. If
someone had a few minutes during the hectic work day, they would listen
to the first few seconds of the first cut of a tape before discarding
it. When they ran out of work for the new intern, tapes were
reviewed. There's a story about a record company that installed a
cassette recorder in the executive restroom; they left a box of
"submissions" so the executives could screen a few tapes while "sitting
on the throne." |
| Because of scenes like
this, most large record companies now won't even accept unsolicited
tapes from people. Today's large record company wants these tapes
somehow screened by a professional before spending the time to properly
review them. If an entertainment attorney, an established manager,
a music publishing company or an A&R executive sends a tape with a note,
"Hey listen to this," the tape gets paid attention to. |
| About ten years ago,
Michael Lascow started an "independent A&R service" called "Taxi"
that professionally screened, provided feedback to the member and even
submitted the tapes that were liked onto record companies. After
ten years of operation, Taxi has become an important "player" in the
industry, well recognized for the quality of services that it passes
onto members and provides to participating record labels. The
company provides a wealth of free industry information through their
website and through monthly articles published in
Recording Magazine. |
| A brand-new screening
service, Inside Sessions was
launched in October of 2001. The service offers you a guarantee
that a Universal Music Group A&R staff-person will listen to your tape
or CD and, if you buy the correct package, you will receive back a
critique on your submission. Once you join, they have a structured
"course" that you can study consisting of video and audio "bites" of
recording stars and industry professionals giving you advice on how to
go from "Demo to Deal." |
| How Do They Work? |
| You should really visit
their websites to find out about them, but I have included short
descriptions of my understanding, gained by my viewing of their
websites. |
| Taxi will charge you
$299 for one year of membership (or as many as three years for $599).
With this you will get unlimited submission rights to specific industry
calls for submissions (but will have to pay $5 per submission).
They will either give you back a critique of your submission (if
requested) or they will forward your submission onto the listed record
company or (in the case of song demos) to the music publisher or record
producer. They will put on a yearly music convention where you
will hear advice from hall-of-fame writers and producers. They
publish a regular, information-packed, newsletter but you can read this
for no charge before you join. |
| Inside sessions will
charge you either $69 for a basic package which gives you access to
their video and audio sound bite courses and three submissions in one
year without feedback or $99 for the plan that gives you ten submissions
with feedback. You also get a Cd that will allow you quality
viewing of the courses (one for music production and one for publishing)
without high-speed Internet access. |
| Are They Worth It? |
| As long as you closely
judge "when" you should join, they are likely to be well worth it - this
goes for both services. If you went to a studio to produce a CD to
locally release and submit product to companies, you'd likely spend at
least $2500 on studio fees and another $1200 on manufacturing 1000
copies to sell and to promote with. Some of you will say that you
can "record free at home," but realize that you spent thousands on your
basement gear or that you don't have good enough gear to pull it off.
My point is that these membership fees are reasonable because they will
help you produce a better product and sell it. |
| But do realize that you
need to be ready to take advantage of what these services have to offer
before investing your hard-earned dollars. Purchasing before you
actually have created some music and have gotten introduced into
recording it, will minimize your gain from using these types of
services. Tom Gelardi advises you to wait until "Step 3" in his
article,
The
Right Steps On The Road To A Hit. |
|
The Best
Benefit |
|
Probably the most important benefit that these companies can give you is
written feedback on your submissions. Every basement music maker
feels that they have more talent in their little finger than....
All of their friends and their family agree. But will others, who
know nothing about you agree, and agree strong enough to buy?
It's valuable for professionals
in the industry to tell you what they feel about
your potential and what your weak
points are. |
| The second
benefit you will receive is advice from top industry
professionals. But all advice is not in the areas that you need to
start with or need to learn about first. Its hard for top
executives to talk to the level of a person just starting out but they
do provide valuable information. The Taxi service seems to have
one-up on the timeliness of the information provided because they are
publishing new articles each month, but the advice from Inside sessions
seems somewhat better organized. Most of the Taxi information is
free where you will have to purchase the service with Inside Sessions.
|
| The
third benefit is a long shot in anyone's book, and something not even
worth considering as a posibility at the start, - an offer from a
record company or publisher. If this unlikely event was to occur,
the more-established Taxi works with many record companies and therefore
would seem to have a better chance. |
|
Which Service Would You Recommend? |
| I've
already answered this - both. If I had to choose, however, I
wouldn't hesitate in contacting Taxi. I say this for several
reasons. The biggest reason is that Inside Sessions is less than
four months old! They haven't proven that they provide a valuable
service yet, although it is possible that they will "try harder," being
the "new kid on the block." |
| A
second important reason that I would put Taxi at a higher priority level
is because of the unlimited submissions policy at Taxi. The
submissions feedback from the service is probably the most valuable
service of these companies, in my opinion. |
