Tag Archives: Music Business

“A talented engineer ” – dixit Michael Laskow of Taxi

Last Monday, the San Diego Songwriters Guild organized a Skype meeting with Taxi founder,  president&CEO Michael Laskow. “Taxi” is a company that creates an online forum to submit music for consideration to be used in TV series&films,  “pitch” it to recording artists or to try and get a record deal. After some interesting remarks and general guidelines about how to be successful in this business, Michael went on to listen to songs submitted by about a dozen local songwriters from San Diego.
He’s a great guy and has extensive experience in music production and recording. And of course, in music placement. So he was able to give a lot of feedback that was useful for everyone, even those who didn’t submit.

I sent in my track “Losing Time”, since it was already used in a couple of short films and I wanted to find out if that had just been blind luck or if Michael Laskow would also like it.

Guess what? He DID ! Michael’s first reaction (after opening his eyes again): “It’s really pretty ! It puts me in this … well… relaxed mood. I guess that’s what you were after.” And then he went on to say “it’s a nice aural landscape that you created.” After confirming that I engineered it myself he read from his notes: “talented engineer. That’s what I wrote down.”

So that was my start of the week. One of the biggest names in unsigned-artist music placement called me a talented engineer. And confirmed my music has exactly the intended impact on him.
Not too shabby !

Now off to more music creation !

And here’s the track Michael Laskow reviewed:

TuneCore founders kicked out

First of all:  here’s the link to the full story:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120815/15194320063/inexplicable-jeff-price-pushed-out-tunecore-despite-tremendous-success-helping-artists.shtml

And to quote Peter Wells, one of the co-founders who got kicked out:

Jeff is the heart and soul of TuneCore, and frankly, its brains. No one knows this space like he does, especially when it comes to publishing. I said earlier that TuneCore was having astonishing success–it is, and that’s due to a lot of hard work from a lot of brilliant people (whom Jeff found and convinced to come on board). It’s also due to Jeff’s vision and leadership. Why on earth would Jeff be asked to leave? Why now, in the face of so many successes, and on the cusp of doing for publishing what he’d already proven he could do for distribution? It makes no sense.

Apparently, even success is not a guarantee to keep your job. Not even if you started the company. I’m personally touched by this news, since I’m looking into starting a tech-based company myself at some point and it does make you think twice (at least!) about bringing in Venture Capital…

In general, this is definitely a blow for entrepreneurs who look up to successful peers as Jeff&Peter…

Curious what’s the reason for all this… I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.