Panel interviewed by Michael Laskow at TAXI’s Road Rally conference, November 2023
Music Supervisor Mason Cooper raises his hands in victory after making a funny comment on the, "Does It Feel Like Your Music Has Gone Into a Black Hole" panel at the 2023 TAXI Road Rally. He was joined by (left to right), Pedro Costa, Matt Vander Boegh, Craig Pilo, and Vince Nicotina.
Editor’s Note: We’re repeating the introduction to this panel at the beginning of each month’s section to give the discussion that follows some context.
How many of you have had music forwarded by TAXI and feel like it’s gone into a black hole? [Lots of audience members’ hands go up] That’s why we’re doing this panel.
We’ve got a bona fide panel of experts up here to help you understand if it is a black hole or it isn’t. On the left we’ve got Pedro Costa, who’s a music library CEO that started out as a TAXI member, so he’s seen the black hole from both sides of the coin. Next to him we’ve got Mason Cooper who’s a highly experienced music supervisor working on films and TV shows. We’ve got Matt Vander Boegh, who has become one of TAXI’s more successful members over many years. Next to him we’ve got Craig Pilo, who is TAXI’s head screener, as well as a composer and a music library owner himself. And then we’ve got TAXI member Vince Nicotina, who is the reason we’re all in here for this panel.
Every month, before the TAXI members’ Success Stories go out in our Newsletter, I actually get my eyes on them, and I read this TAXI Forum post from Vince.
“Recently, I’ve received a series of cue sheets, and got some nice payoutsfrom instrumentals in my ASCAP quarterly statement, too. It seems that my music was played all over the place in 2022, and I had no idea about it.
Some of the places I’ve had music in 2022 were Stromboli, a Dutch movie on Netflix; Celebrity and Somebody, Korean TV shows on Netflix; Emmerdale and Coronation Street, long-running British TV shows; as well as other TV shows in the U.K., France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Romania, Honduras, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia; and The Con on ABC, a true-crime show.”
Then Vince wrote a follow-up email. “In 2023 so far, I’ve had tunes in the finale of Grease, Rise of the Pink Ladies, on Paramount+. Had some stuff on German TV, but it’s probably too soon to know what happened overseas. The Paramount+ placement paid me a $1,000 sync fee. The true-crime show came from a deal I made through TAXI Forward, and my co-writer was somebody I met in the registration line at the Road Rally. My Paramount+ deal came from a library I learned about from a guy I met at the bar at the Road Rally.
This just goes to show that there really is a long gap of one to two years between when your music gets placed and when you learn about that placement. It takes even longer to get paid, so if you’re frustrated that you got some tunes in a library and they never got placed, just wait a couple of years before you do anything rash.
The rule of thumb is just keep making more music, getting it in more libraries. That’s the plan. I only have a little over 100 tunes in libraries, but the action is finally starting to pick up. Now I need to press for 200 tunes.”
Thank you, Vince for inspiring us.
Part 2 begins here:
Michael: Is it a true statement, industry-wide, that every music supervisor, every music library owner, everybody on the industry, pro side of the business has files of music they've heard and categorized by genre or maybe scenically categorized? And that stuff sits there on their desktop. You might hear something from TAXI and think, “Wow, I don't have a client that needs that. I don't have any clients I think would need this right now. But this is a great XYZ kind of cue. I'm going to stick this in a folder.” And then three years later, something comes in and you go, “Wow, I don't even really have that… Oh, but I do have that folder with that really cool thing that I heard from TAXI a few years ago.” That happens, right?
Pedro: It does happen, all the time. Another thing that I just thought of is the vetting process. We have a pretty rigorous vetting process when it comes to onboarding a new composer or artist into our catalog. So, as we go through the music, we do things like Shazamming it, for example. “Oh, this sounds fantastic!” Hit Shazam and, oh, that beat got used in somebody else's song. “Okay, see you later!” So there are a lot of different things that we go through during the vetting process that may end up getting those A-list songs that were on the list, removed from the list.
Mason: You mentioned about the saving files. As a music supervisor, I get forwards from TAXI when I run a listing with you. But I also sometimes get music from certain libraries or catalogs when they forward music. And either the little TAXI icon is still there or they let me know— especially if we have relationships—that this was from a TAXI search that the library found. So as a music supervisor, the black hole is, if I don't use it, I'm never gonna contact you because I'm focused on what I am using. But I will save genre or style or sound folders that will even have TAXI music in there from TAXI or from libraries that sent me that. So, I even have music from TAXI members in a folder as a music supervisor and I absolutely revisit those folders all the time.
Michael: So Matt, address this. I'm not saying this to stroke you at all, but in the 32 years I've been running this company, I really couldn't think of another member who has more resiliency and drive, and just forward motion. You don't seem to let anything get you down. How have you dealt with the feeling that most, if not all, the people in this room share, which is, “Damn, it's frustrating. I never get forwarded and then finally they forward something, and now it's been three weeks, and I haven't heard anything from the library. And in the member’s mind, because it's their piece of music from their heart and their brain, and in their mind's eye, there's somebody that probably got that e-mail with the music from TAXI and they just tear right into it. They can't wait to get to it and they need it right now, and the member is expecting a phone call or an email in the next 24 to 48 hours and they don't get it! And a week passes… and two weeks pass, and a month passes. And then it's four months. How do you, with your incredibly positive attitude, deal with that?
Matt: I used to not deal with it so well, actually. When I first got started with TAXI, my first 68 submissions were returns. 68! And I got to thinking, “I am not cut out for this. I must be way more horrible than I think.” I didn't think I was all that good to begin with, but I thought, “God I must really suck!”
Michael: And you didn't think it was TAXI's fault? You honestly thought that maybe you weren't good enough?
Matt: Oh, no, I blamed you guys for half of it. [audience laughter]
Michael: All right, just making sure, because I knew you had a great attitude. I didn't know it was that good.
Matt: Yeah, at some point you have to be a little self-reflective and say, “Maybe it’s me. It's not you, it's me.” But, how I eventually got over it, was I just got the mindset that I'm just going to make so much music that I can't even keep track of it. And that's been my business plan for the last decade, is just make so much music that I don't even remember what I've got and just get it out there as soon as I can. And if I work on a custom brief one day and I send it out and it was for a commercial for $5,000 or whatever, then I've forgotten about it the next day because I'm already working on something else. And then a week or two later I might hear yes or no—usually no—from the company, sometimes nothing. But it doesn't even matter because I'm on to something else. And so, I think the lesson that I can share with everybody is just make so much music that you don't even know what you've got out there, so you won't be disappointed when you don't hear anything. [audience applause]
Michael: That's great. Vince, as a newer member, you’ve clearly learned the lesson as evidenced by your forum post in the email that you sent. What advice, what feelings have you had? How do you deal with that feeling that your music has gone into a black hole because you haven’t heard anything back from a library you’ve been forwarded to by TAXI?
“If you’re patient and you’re persistent and you keep making music and you keep putting it out there, sooner or later you do get those callbacks.”
—Vince Nicotina
Vince: I think I've had all the feelings, the ones that Matt mentioned and a lot of other feelings, besides. So, you know, I’ve gone through stages of thinking it's the other person's fault on the other end, somebody ghosted me. You know, I got my music into the library, but nothing's happening with it. Or I sent an email to somebody who's going to collaborate with me, and I never heard back, and so sometimes I feel angry. Sometimes I blame myself, and I think I'm not good enough. So I've been through all of those things, but, you know, I've learned some of the reasons why people don't return your emails. Sometimes things happen in their lives, and they get overwhelmed. They're so busy. I know what some of the library owners go through now, because I know some of them. And they're incredibly busy, and they're trying to juggle all these things.
But the most important thing is I learned that eventually they do get to you. So, if you’re patient and you’re persistent and you keep making music and you keep putting it out there, sooner or later you do get those callbacks. And you don't really know it's going to happen until you've been through the process. So that's what that letter that I put on the forum was about; I went through 2022 feeling like nobody is using my music. But they were using my music. It was actually being streamed on Netflix, on all these TV shows. I had no idea, because the process takes so long, especially for the international placements. By the time you hear about it, it already happened six months to a year ago!
Michael: So now that you know, because you've met some library owners and become friends with them, hung out with them at the Road Rally, had a beer with them, have an open door to email them or talk to them, is it easier for you to push those feelings down and say to yourself, “Dude, you're letting your imagination run away with itself. It's all going to work out in the end.”
Vince: Yes, yes, absolutely! I've also learned that you can remind people, you know, “Hey, I emailed you a month ago.” If you're polite about it and you know them, you can do that. But I've also learned to trust the system. I spent a long time worrying that I did something wrong, my metadata is wrong, and I would double and triple check all my metadata? Did I spell my name right? But now I trust the system is going to work. Eventually I will get paid.
Michael: Yeah, and you're right about the international stuff. Yesterday when I interviewed Adam Taylor, the CEO of APM, he addressed something that’s very closely related to this, which is; the international library community and the PROs really need to get their act together. He said, “I could use my ATM card in China, and instantly get money out of the machine. It talks to a server somewhere and in 10 seconds the transaction has been cleared, and I've gotten the money out. Yet it takes two years to get paid for a placement that happened anywhere outside of the U.S. Doesn't make sense.”
Mason: Yeah, a quick question and then a process comment. The question is, because I don't know the answer to this, if I put a listing in TAXI and things get forwarded to me, on the forwards, do the writers get told, “Hey, this is forwarded”?
Michael: Yes, but we quit telling them it was forwarded to Mason Cooper because with the advent of Google, people started getting carried away and their personal anxiety level got to a point where they did some pretty dumb stuff because they could find your email address.
“I'm super busy, the music libraries are super busy. You should be super busy with what you do, which is writing the next song.” —Mason Cooper
Mason: And we [music supervisors] appreciate that. But at least they know it's been forwarded, but they’re not hearing back. Got it.You know, it hit me hearing, especially Vince and Pedro talk, that life is a team sport. I just came up with that for myself. But, you know, you're writing and you're pitching and it goes to, let's say, it goes to a library and then they pitch it to me. What you don't realize in the process for a supervisor is we then have to go through lots of songs that fit lots of reasons creatively, budgetary, licensing, legal, production. Then I have to go to the director, who likes it, but then we have to go to production to make sure that it fits within the parameters that we need for worldwide licensing… that the rights are in hand. There's a whole process that goes on, let alone if it's a TV show and a studio wants to get involved, and at the very end of the day, yeah, we actually decide to cut that scene out. So, do the TAXI members ever hear that? No, they didn't because here's a safety valve for you. We cannot use your song in a film, television show, video game, or anything without licensing it from you. We are not going to put ourselves in any legal jeopardy. So not hearing means it's potentially still in play. When you hear from us, that's awesome, that's positive, but it's a process, and just staying in the game as both of these guys talked about; write, submit, and repeat, as you say, just keep doing it. I'm super busy, the music libraries are super busy. You should be super busy with what you do, which is writing the next song.
Michael: Great advice, but everybody wants to know, “Why can't they just let me know that they're not using it, and tell me why? Why are they not using my music? Don't they have 30 seconds to pop off an email and tell me, “Sorry, I’m not going to use it?” Let's start with Pedro. Why is that impractical and unrealistic?
“Once it's locked and the license is signed, that's when I let them know.” —Pedro Costa
Pedro: That kind of fits in with what I was just thinking about what Mason was talking about. In a way, like how earlier we talked about TAXI protecting you from putting the wrong foot forward, there's other things that we're doing to protect the people that we work with, our writers and our artists. When I first started the company, I was pretty excitable about a lot of things as well. So, if Mason reached out and said, look, they're considering this song for this show, I would probably reach out to the artist and say, “Hey, look, we're going to get a placement.” And then what if it didn't happen? Then it would be a massive disappointment, well, for me, but also for the artist, right?
Michael: And their 27 friends and relatives that they immediately told. [audience laughter]
Pedro: So we don't do that anymore, obviously because we don't want to disappoint anybody. Once it's locked and the license is signed, that's when I let them know. Yeah, you have a song coming up on this film or in that TV show or ad or whatever it is.
Michael: It's just everybody has that same feeling and that same question. And my heart breaks that people have that feeling because we're in the business of helping people become successful. And oftentimes, TAXI has to take the bullet for the industry not getting back to them. But I completely understand your situation. And Mason, do you wanna chime in? Why is it that you don't answer? Everybody whose music you consider for a slot, just one slot in one film, and you've listened to 74 different pieces of music and the 75th one was the one where you went bingo and your director said, “Yep, good job, Mason. I love that one, let's put it in.” Why don't you send an email to the other 74 entities, whether they're composers, artists, or libraries, saying, loved your piece, thanks so much for sending it, but it didn't go in because why don't you do that?
Mason: I want to, I would love to, because this is a relationship business. I could even, you know, think about it as you ask that, I could bcc those 74 people and do one email, so it actually isn't 74 emails. However, who here has been to this year, any year, any of these TAXI panels where they do song screenings, okay? Probably a lot of you. Yeah. Whether it's been your song or something else, okay. Honestly, I'm going to just get to the root of this. Very seldom does somebody want to hear, “No, that doesn't work,” because that generates the follow-up question. “Well, why not? What can I do?” Exactly. So that conversation starts. That's where, if I did that one email to 74 people, I'm going to get probably 72 emails back, asking “Why?” And all of a sudden it starts. It's a time factor.
Michael: Right, and then it's, “Well, I've got something else that might work,” and you say, “I'm sorry, I'm up against the gun and the slot's already been filled,” and you become the a-hole. Right?
Don’t miss Part 3 of this panel in next month’s TAXI Transmitter!