TAXI member, Jim Thacker, is experiencing what many—if not most—other musicians hope to accomplish. His music is being heard all over the world, and he’s landing some really nice sync placements on an ever-increasing basis. Some of them are in brand-name TV commercials!

But things weren’t always going the way Jim wanted them to! Is the same true for you?

Are you frustrated, disappointed, or just plain fed up with your music career? Are you doubting that it will ever happen?

Hearing why Jim’s initial approach didn’t work will probably resonate with you. Hearing what he did to turn things around will not only inspire you, but it will also show you a very clear path to success. All you need to do is commit to following it!

Enjoy, and thank you to Jim for letting me ambush you into doing this interview!!!

A year ago, Spotify decided they weren’t going to pay royalties on tracks that streamed less than 1,000 times. Instead, those royalties would go to other artists proportionately to their streaming totals.

Our friend Tony van Veen, CEO of Disc Makers, recently calculated that in 2024 alone, this resulted in $47 million in independent artist royalties being diverted to (mostly) the majors! He went public with this data, Spotify actually responded, and Tony put them in their place.

I’m excited that Tony will be our guest on Monday’s TAXI TV. We’ve been close friends for at least 25 years, and he’s one of the smartest business people I know. He’s also a true champion of indie musicians!

Tony and I will be discussing his findings – and whether there’s anything artists can do about it.

Very few music creators really understand what audio mastering is, what it does, and when you need it… or not!

There are plenty of people who think that mastering is some sort of “magical fairy dust” that, when sprinkled on a song or track, makes it much, much better. As if mastering can make a mediocre song become a hit.

It can’t, and it won’t. It can only make it a better-sounding mediocre song!

Join me for this week’s episode of TAXI TV, and by the end of the show, you’ll understand why mastering was invented, the physics behind how it works, what it does sonically to your music, and when you should use it, or not.

More and more music libraries and music supervisors are asking for stems and alt mixes because it makes your music much more “usable.” If you’re somewhat new to the music licensing world, you might need a little help in understanding how to deliver what the industry pros need, so we’re going to show you on this week’s episode!

TAXI Member, Greg Carrozza, is going to join us this week, and if the tech gods are with us, we’ll be showing you what stems and alts are, how to make them, and why they can dramatically improve your chances of landing more placements.

With any (tech) luck, we’ll be watching Greg’s computer screen in real-time as he walks us through the process, explaining what he’s doing and why he’s doing it! If you found our recent episode about edit points, button/stinger endings, and developmental arcs useful, we think you’ll learn a lot from Greg in this episode!

We plan to do the show and tell, and follow it up with lots of Q&A, so don’t miss this week’s show!

Our viewers love it when we do the “A&R Hot Seat” episodes, and here’s why…

“Michael, I’ve learned so much from the A&R Hot Seat episodes on TAXI TV! Can you please do them more often? My music has improved quite a bit because it’s much easier to be objective when deciding what works and what doesn’t about somebody else’s music rather than my own." —Timothy Reardon

We’ve been hearing the same thing from other viewers for years!

With that in mind, on this week’s TAXI TV, we’ll be making A&R decisions to test your A&R skills and see if TAXI's A&R team is as good as I think they are ;-) Here's what we'll be judging together.

TAXI # S250412AG - AUTHENTIC-SOUNDING REGGAE/CARIBBEAN INSTRUMENTALS

TAXI # S250320WY - TOP 40-Style COUNTRY SONGS

Highly successful TAXI member Matt Vander Boegh interviewed me a month or so ago, and the TAXI TV audience was blown away by the quality of the questions asked.

Here’s the dirty little secret: Many of those questions came from Matt’s group of musicians he mentors at monthly meetings at his house. Matt’s a Pay-It-Forward kind of guy!

I was so impressed with the questions from Matt’s Mentees that I’m flying to Nampa, Idaho, to do a live episode of TAXI TV from Matt’s house during his group’s meeting!

All questions are fair game, and as I said, it will be LIVE and in real time! If you want to hear unscripted, unedited, possibly embarrassing things about me, TAXI, and the music licensing part of the industry, this is your chance!

If you’ve ever wondered what an Edit Point, Buttoned Ending, Stinger Ending, or a Developmental Arc are, you’re going to love this week’s episode of TAXI TV!

We’re going to play examples from a Production Music Library and show you waveforms that should make things crystal clear. You’ll also get the chance to hear some tracks from a successful Music Library.

If you’re new to creating music for TV and Film, this could be an extremely enlightening episode. In other words, miss this at your own peril! We’re going to shave months off your learning curve.

Successful TAXI member, Jim Thacker stopped by the office when he was in Los Angeles, recently. He asked if I thought the TAXI TV audience would be interested in knowing what he didn’t know at the start of his career in music for sync.

He sent me his list of 10 Things he wishes he’d known in the beginning of his journey into sync, and I immediately invited him to be my guest on this week’s episode of TAXI TV.

Honestly, even many of TAXI’s experienced members don’t know and don’t use all the critically important things on Jim’s list! EVERYBODY should join us for this episode, and if you have friends who aren’t on TAXI’s email list, please forward this email to them so they can start their sync careers with these priceless “hacks” that could otherwise take them years to uncover on their own!

Win a FREE Book!

I’m going to give away a copy of Robin Frederick’s amazing book, Shortcuts to Writing Songs for Film &TV, but you’ve got to be in the Youtube chat room for the live broadcast on Monday at 4pm Pacific time to win it!

Andrew Jordan knows all about making career-killing mistakes because he’s either made them himself or has seen friends make them. During a recent phone call, he suggested that we do a panel at the 2025 TAXI music conference, the Road Rally.

I added the topic to my list of ideas, and also suggested that we do a TAXI TV ASAP because people need to know what these career-killers are sooner than later! And that’s exactly what we’re going to cover in this week’s episode!

Andrew’s a smart, hard-working songwriter, composer, and producer who strikes me as being practical, pragmatic, and realistic in his approach to creating music that the industry needs and licenses. I think there will be a lot to learn from him, so don’t miss this one!

Matt Vander Boegh has gone from Zero-to-Hero in the world of Music Licensing. Here’s a snippet of his bio from his website:

“In his 14 years of making music for TV, Vander Boegh has amassed a staggering 30,000+ placements on over 1,000 TV programs, including various major sporting events, Hollywood movies, high-profile reality TV shows, soap operas, commercials, and daytime & evening talk shows. He has nearly 5,000 cues and hundreds of full-length songs signed to oodles of high-end music libraries.”

To say that Matt has figured out what sync’s “secret sauce” is would be an understatement. On his popular Youtube channel, he often credits TAXI as the launching pad for his success. Even though he’s an unabashed “TAXI fan boy,” he’s agreed to join us for this week’s TAXI TV, where he will ask our CEO Michael Laskow the tough questions that others may have but have never asked him directly to his face.

Get tips, techniques, and answers to questions that most CEOs would run away from!