Tim,

The answers you will get on that question is as varied as the people you ask. There are people that swear by Taxi and have gotten some listings, forwards, etc.

There are as many people who feel they have been shamelessly ripped off and could have as easily flushed the money down the toilet.

The reality is somewhere in between.

In my conversations with Micheal Laskow, the owner of Taxi, he said "It is totally incumbant of the quality of songs and the quality of demos."

We are in a hyper competitive world. There are one billion songs a month downloaded on the Internet, over 30 million artists on the Internet. Today, there were about 1000 songs written. There are a quarter of a million being pitched at any one year. To put that in perspective, BMI and ASCAP actually pay significant money on around 200 songs a year. That is less than a per cent of a per cent of a percent of a percent of songs.

The reality is that most music has become FREE and there is no money paid for it at all. It is an ongoing fight that people like NSAI, RCAA, ASCAP, BMI, etc. fight on a daily basis. That is what we face in all of this. Getting people to pay for something they have come to view as free and getting that money to the proper people.

In my opinion TAXI does some very good things. They get people to thinking about the competition. They attempt to get the level of writing and the numbers of songs up. through Quantity comes quality. When you are spending money on proper demos, pitching fees, etc. you start to think about spending that money wisely.

It gives people focus. It has the TAXI road rally and other opportunities for people to meet face to face and to interact. Many of the writers I have worked with are far better for the experience. It is as close to the big time as most people will ever get.

But a career is not made up of one thing. Hit writers have publishers song pluggers, artists they write with, dozens and dozens of avenues. Some use TAXI and similar services.

I can say they are a credible service and attempt to live up to everything they claim to be. But there are many things involved, and you should talk to others who have actually used them, and investigate them yourself.

This is a personal relationship business. The closer you get to reality and get to know people, the better you are. The farther away from the personal source, the more difficult it gets.

MAB