Daniel Holter is a producer, composer and owner of Burst Records in Milwaukee. Daniel has thousands of songs licensed every year on virtually all of the top shows and produces commercial music for such varied clients as Goldman Sachs, GM, Microsoft, GE, and Gatorade. He also had the lead single on Columbia Recording artist Emma Roberts with his song, "I Wanna Be," as a result of a deal he made through a TAXI listing.
Dean Krippaehne is a producer/songwriter/musician, with more than 100 songs with several production music libraries. His recent placements include the ABC soap One Life to Live and ABC Family's Lincoln Heights. 2008 has also brought Dean a Billboard Top 10 album and two gold records in Europe. His cuts include Stefanie Heinzmann, American Idol's Sarah Burgess and America's Got Talent's Sarah Lenore, among many others. Virtually all of Dean's deals have been the result of connections made through TAXI.
Richard Harris, a songwriter/producer, signed to Peer Music Publishing. He is currently writing for artists on Atlantic, Universal, Motown, and EMI Records. He has had great success with TV placements and commercials. Recent placements include One Tree Hill, The Closer and Cold Case. Richard has also been a TAXI member and recently joined our A&R team.
Michael: Richard, so many people seem to have gear phobia. I think they'd embrace the technology because it makes it so much easier to crank out so much more music from your home studio. What's your take on it?
Richard: Yeah, it's certainly a lot easier. You only have to look at technology in the last 10 years—it's come leaps and bounds. We are lucky enough now that we can work at home, and what we can do in the box now is just phenomenal. I mean the point where you would have to go to a studio and book session musicians, and da-da-da. Plus the cost of putting together a track, and the time restraints these days just don't exist.
The technology side of it is fun. It's playing with toys, really. I'm on gear forums and blogs all the time looking at new gear-microphones and all that stuff. You kinda have to fall in love with all that geeky side of it. Technology is playing games. I mean that's really what it is, the set-top video game that makes music. And once you've learned how to do it, it makes your song sound better, and you can make songs all day long.
Daniel started his commercial music career in '93 working for a radio commercial production firm. He started his own production company in '94, creating music for commercial clients. He then started his own production music library. His first break was partnering with a small, L.A.-based library, which blossomed into a bigger deal with a larger national company.
In 2001 he purchased an old building for $200k with an SBA loan, and another $250k he borrowed from the local bank. He built a state-of-the-art studio where he could record his own music and start producing other artists for a record label he wanted to start. He started working with a very good friend, a composer/producer, and a few part-time freelancers who received some production money and the writer's share of the public performance royalties. He now has almost 20 composers worldwide writing commercial tracks from country to funk to heavy metal. Revenues have been increasing 16% a year.
Daniel recently signed a deal with a major publisher/music library. I can't tell you the exact numbers, out of respect for his privacy, but it's in the multiple six figures per year to produce 15 CDs per year. They gave him another chunk of multiple six figures cash upfront for a 50% interest in his existing catalog of 500 tracks. Sales from that are likely to hit $1 million a year by the end of the first year. He's got no responsibility to distribute or market the music. That's handled by the publisher and the library, leaving Daniel's hands free to concentrate on the creative side.
[Applause]
True story?
Daniel: Yeah, true. Well, fingers-crossed it's a true story. It's all projections.
Congratulations Daniel! I'm sure your story will inspire some people here today.
Richard, now you've seen TAXI from the member perspective and now the screeners' perspective. What percentage of the music that you hear when you're screening at TAXI—and I need you to be honest about this—what percentage of it is pitched at the right genre?
Richard: Oh, less than 50%. I think it's the toughest part of doing screening. You get to listen to a lot of music—and everybody that does screening at TAXI is super-dedicated to what they do—and it's actually not that easy. I mean, it's a really tough gig, because you are always looking to be positive; you're always looking to find the goods, and there is a lot of good stuff in there. But the hardest part is when you hear a good song—a great song, even—that's Country, and what they are asking for is Indy Rock music. I don't understand. It's really hard to respond to that, because you can still critique it—and we are asked to critique it still—and go through the process and say like, "This is where I think it needs to be improved," or "Look at this or look at that," or "It's really good, and these are the good bits about it," but you can't forward it. It's just because the bar is set pretty high. I always put in my last comments that you have to read the listings carefully. You have to read what comes out and make sure that what you're doing is exactly fitting it. Sometimes it can be Hot AC, or this that and the other. There are so many bloody categories these days, you know what I mean? But, thankfully, most of the listings come out with an artist attached to it—Sarah Bareilles or whatever it is—it's got to be that. You have to pay attention to that or you're just wasting money. If you want to get it critiqued, send it in for a custom critique, because that service is there, or you are just wasting your time and money, really.
You might as well wait, but I know it's difficult, because when you're starting off you want so much to get there and arrive. But when you've arrived, guess what, there's more work, and there's more of the same thing. I have to deal with the same thing in my day-to-day life. When a label asks for a particular type of music, I have to supply a particular type of music. You know you have to learn that. So, read TAXI's listings and make sure that what you do sounds like what's out there and what they're asking for.
And the interesting thing about this is—at least with TAXI—it's low risk, because you're just going to get a critique and a return; it's not forwarded. But if you submit something that's off the mark to a client in the industry more than once, you're dead. That's it; you'll never work for them again. You can't keep sending stuff in that's not right, so you have to learn that pretty damn quickly, and, frankly, TAXI would be a good place to learn it because there's no risk there, apart from the fact that you lost five bucks and a little bit of ego. But you can't do that in the real world. Just read the listings. It's really pretty simple.
But a lot of our members say, "I don't like the fact that the industry—and TAXI as an extension of the industry—is trying to force us into pigeon holes. Why do we have to give you what they're asking for? Why are they asking for something specific? Why can't I just do what I do and have [the industry] guys love it?"
Richard: Well, yeah, that would be nice, but it's not real and it doesn't exist. But you can grab your guitar and go out and start playing the streets and a bunch of bars and everything else... you can play whatever music you want. And if it appeals to somebody, they might buy your CD and you're making money. But if you are into the commercial end of the business… I remember being in the audience here when I was a TAXI member and listening to what a panelist described as "commercial music." Music only becomes commercial when everybody decides to go out and buy it.
And the two aren't mutually exclusive. You could be doing film and TV stuff out of a bedroom by day, and still play live shows whenever you want!
Daniel, let's talk about being professional. How important is it to give you [in your role as a publisher] what you ask for and deliver it on time and be able to do remixes or go back and re-track something or remix it to your standards or specs?
Daniel: It depends on how often you want to work with me. I've got people who are incredibly talented and I'll never work with them again, because they are a total pain in the ass. I don't care how much money I can make with them. I am in a bit of a fortunate situation where it's not... If it's just going to be that big of a pain, I don't want to deal with it, you know? And it could be a hassle or the guy could be a jerk, one of the two. But there are also people that are total pains who are so good, and they are a pain where it's like I've got to tell them it's due September, and I know I'm gonna get it in December. But they're also not getting calls from me for those two months. They get two calls a year, because I know it's got to be perfect, and I'm just going to allow for it in my schedule and say I need it three months before, and he's going to turn it in three months later, which is part of the working order when I'm working with that guy. But I don't work with him very often at all. There are guys like that who call and say, "How come you don't call me more often?"
When I've got a major corporation expecting things from me by March 31. If I don't turn those in by March 31, I don't get my wire transfer. If I don't get my wire transfer, I lose my building. This is a business for me, and if people aren't going to play by the rules and be good business people, there's a limit to how much we can work together.
Can the really good guys who are reliable, and have been doing Film and TV tracks for seven, eight, or ten years make $100,000 a year?
Daniel: I've got guys who are in that situation who mysteriously decided to do something else, which is strange because they're cashing $40–50,000 worth of royalties every year. It boggles my mind that you wouldn't continue to build that. But they decided that they didn't want to keep doing it. But the really good ones, I hire. I've got guys on staff, and they're extraordinary people. Aside from being really talented, they are people I want to be around every day. And they're making great livings, even by L.A. standards. But they're in Milwaukee, where it's effectively twice as much money. We've been working on this new deal for five years—it's only six months old—and I've been telling them often as we were building toward it, when we were frustrated and I wasn't paying the bills and I was taking out loans to pay the bills, but still believing in the dream... I kept telling them, "If you guys aren't making six figures a year on royalties from this stuff, I'll be shocked." Because the material is that good and there's that quantity and I've got the track record to kind of know what an average track might generate per year with the distributors that we've got. But I kept telling them if they're not making six figures a year, just in mailbox money, I'd be absolutely shocked. So, yes, there's that kind of money available, there's no question. If you're serious about it and you're gonna do it.
Many of the people on our forum talk about the five-year plan. I think it's conceivable to make a few hundred, a couple thousand, a few thousand, maybe, if you're lucky in the first year or two. It is a ramp-up, but it's a cumulative ramp. So after 10 years that you keep getting better and more productive and learn more about what the market needs, I absolutely have seen so many cases of guys that make $100,000. Jim Long has introduced me to guys who've made a quarter of a million bucks a year doing it—doing what they love. I mean, that's lawyer money for making music.
Daniel: Yeah, it's ridiculous. Don't give the secret away. I'm not that embarrassed telling anybody here, but I just passed $1.2 million in ASCAP royalties. That's spread over a period of time. That's not each year. But I am a 20, 30, 40, or 50 percent writer on a lot of my tracks—on the majority of my tracks. I'm a really small slice, so that gives you some idea. We've got 3,000 to 3,500 songs out there now. That's the kind of money that is out there that people are making, and it's only growing with things like current TV, and, in addition to cable, there are all sorts of Internet applications for music now.
All right, Dean, tell them the helicopter story.
Dean: I was about 11-, 12-years-old, growing up in a small town called Puyallup, Washington. At that time the town was quite small. It was like a two-street town, a main street with a bunch of two-story shops on it, and a couple of other intersecting streets. It was a bright and beautiful Saturday morning. It was a beautiful day, I was really excited. I'm young. I get up, I've got my bicycle sitting outside and I grab my pillowcase and I go out to bicycle. I wrap my pillowcase around the handlebars, I get on my bike and I peddle downtown. It's about three miles to downtown Puyallup. It's a beautiful day, but there's something happening downtown. This is a big day; I've been waiting for this for a long time. I get downtown. I get about a block from the main town... and there were thousands of people on the streets. So, I get my bike. There is some kind of fence there. I take out my little combination lock and I lock my bike up. I grab my pillowcase—I'm all of 11-years-old—and I'm fighting my way through these thousands of people just to get to the right spot, just to the right spot in the center of the town. I get there and I'm waiting and I'm waiting, and then all of a sudden—you know there are bigger people all around me—I hear it. I hear this deep kind of rotary sound. And the crowd gets still, and all of a sudden, we look up in the air—thousands of us—and coming over the tops of the buildings is this helicopter. The helicopter comes over the top of the buildings—I'm not kiddin' ya—it comes over the top of the buildings, and all of a sudden we cheer. You know those little dandelions when they get white and you blow on it like that and a million little dandelion white things come out? All of a sudden we look up and from the helicopter there are thousands and thousands of little white things falling out of the sky. What they were, they were ping-pong balls. Now, they wouldn't do that in this day and age because someone would get hit in the head and they'd sue 'em, but this was back then. So these thousands of ping-pong balls are fallin' out of the sky... they're floatin' down. They hit the ground and everybody is scrambling. That's why I have my pillowcase. I am scramblin', I am filling it up with ping-pong balls. Why? Each ping- pong ball has a little mark on it, and each mark goes to a different store where you could redeem these for fabulous prizes, like you could get a Hot Wheels or a Barbie outfit or a candy bar or somethin'. So, I think I got 12 or 13 of those ping-pong balls and I think I traded the Barbie outfit with someone else. But it was cool anyway. So, we get all these ping-pong balls...
The reason why I'm telling you this story is, to me, this is what TAXI listings are—the opportunities. Man, these opportunities—the listings, the companies, the libraries, the film-and-TV stuff. The opportunities are there, they are all around us, they are falling out of the sky. But, if we don't show up, they're going to go right by us. All the ping-pong balls are gonna drop whether we're there or not and we won't get any of them. We have to show up in our studios, we have to show up writing, we have to show up listening, listening to music and being current, we have to show up business-wise, we have to show up here at TAXI's Road Rally. We just have to show up. We have to show up every day and in every way. And if you do, the opportunities are out there.
Thank you, Dean. Thank you, Richard. Thank you, Daniel. You guys were great. I hope you've inspired some of the folks in the audience.
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