Billy Darnells Blog

Hi Everyone,

I hope this finds you all healthy and happy.

Ironically, this blog isn’t really about me, or my music. It is about a new law that representative Jim Cooper, in cooperation with the major recording labels, is sponsoring in the Tennessee legislature that would require all radio stations to pay a “Pay For Play” tax directly to the Major labels if they wanted to play their artists on the stations radio programs.

It seems that the labels feel they have  taken all that they can from the artists, and the publishers, and now have turned their sites onto the next victim of their ravenous greed.

Over the past 5 years many of us watching the current landscape of the music industry change, have heard the nay Sayers talking about the downfall of the music industry as we have known it. They have forecasted the demise of the Major labels but the reality always appeared to be the Major labels were a long way from a downfall. They held the clout, the financing, the contacts, and what most believed to be a  non written contractual relationship with Clear Channel broadcasting which controlled 98 % of the radio stations in the United States, and Canada,  because of this they were able to dictate to mainstream radio. The Clear Channel monopoly allowed the Majors the comfort of knowing they would no longer have to compete with the traditional music of the past, and increase the odds of  their artists songs being a hit.

Now the Major labels are watching their artists walk away from their contracts because  they have taken such a big slice of the pie, that the artist can no longer see the light at the end of the tunnel. Most of them have eliminated their middle management, and no longer seek out new talent to lose additional dollars on. (The word on the streets of Nashville is, if you want to be a star now a days, just bring your own management team, and 1.5 Million dollars with you to the majors, and you’ll get your 15 minutes of fame. They do not however guarantee fortune.) CD sales have diminished greatly over the past 5 years, and they have priced themselves out of the concert market, and even the concept of combining several marque acts into one show hasn’t helped. Most of the majors have turned to licensing their catalogs as their main source of income, however, apparently the income from that source leaves much to be desired. Why else would you bite the hand that feeds you?

The question is , have they gone too far? Will this be the final straw that breaks the camels back? It may very well be. Radio stations are asking” Did they really forget that if we don’t play their artists, they don’t get heard, and consequently they don’t become big stars?” Even Clear Channel’s management has questioned the concept and publicly stated they are not in favor of that action. Many broadcasting associations have said this will force smaller market stations to stop playing music and turn to a talk radio format.

There is another alternative. Thanks to the computer, the internet, and  great software, their are many independent artists recording great songs, of radio broadcast quality. Why not turn to them for your music needs? They are eager, willing, and ready to go from internet streaming to mainstream. You would still have to pay the standard royalty fees but you would be partnering with a subject that would truly appreciate your support, and your efforts.

Could this be the big opening that many internet artists have been waiting for? Will this be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, and brings down a reign of anarchy that has stifled diversity, and creativity, in the  Country Music industry for years?  If your involved in the industry we sure would like to hear your thoughts on this proposal. If your a small market, or for that matter, any station, a radio programmer, a DJ, an artist,  or a fan, please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comment section.

I personally feel that this action by the major labels may be compared to the shot that was heard around the world. There is a good chance that many radio stations, and DJ’s, will revolt by refusing to play the Major Label artists any more, and if Clear Channel takes that attitude, the majors will become minors in a heart beat. This could really backfire in a big way.

Billy Darnell

Hi Guys and Gals,

I thought I would get back here and give you some insight as to how things are going given the fact we have some early initial numbers to analyze.

Up to this point we have sent out over 250 emails to radio stations and DJ’s worldwide. Posted an international press release that will be seen by 9,000 interested parties, started a facebook page announcing the free downloads, along with updating our myspace page.

The first week we had over 200 downloads, and over the past week about another  100. We have no way of knowing but we believe that most of those downloads, probably about 90% if not greater,  went to Radio Stations and DJ’s.

The visitor numbers at the web site are up significantly, with the most increase in the new or unique visitors, almost 100 more than any previous month. The number of visits are also up a bit from the previous numbers from the months before.  About 85% of the new visitors bookmarked the site, and we have been visited by over 25 countries worldwide. Usually that count is 20 to 22. The largest increase of visits by country was the U.S., Great Brittan, Russia, and China. Amazingly the most visits monthly has always been the United States by a large number over other Nations or countries. I think that’s due to overall population numbers more than anything. The reason it strikes me as strange is most of our air play comes from European countries.

So what does all this mean? Well, it’s a little early to read too much into it, but initially there are a few conclusions we can draw from it. We were looking for increased exposure in all categories, DJ’s , Fans, and financially. It looks like we have a good start at accomplishing that goal, and that is about the most we can see at this point, but that’s a good thing.

The process will be a water fall kind of effect. The downloads will give us additional exposure if, and when, the DJ’s,and Radio programmers, start to work the songs they have downloaded into their play lists. We have been monitoring the play lists available, and at this point there is no significant increase in the number of plays we are getting, however, it does take some time for DJ’s and Station managers to get those new songs worked into their programming. We should know more within the next few weeks.

As the number of plays increase so will the exposure to listeners worldwide, which hopefully will generate a greater number of Fans, and create a little interest in other artists recording those songs.

I might add, in relevance to that, so far there have been no donations logged at Paypal, and no licensing activity at all, but I imagine it will take a while to see an increase, or any activity, in those areas.

We will continue to work at driving those numbers by running classified ads in free advertising venues and other forums through out the net, along with starting some personal appearances on Pal talk.

The free downloads can be obtained at:

http://www.4shared.com/account/dir/15150148/762d447c/sharing.html?rnd=34

Feel free to visit the site, and share that link with anyone you feel might have an interest.

I think up to this point we are headed in the right direction, but one of the things I am greatly anticipating is what the effect will be when we post a new single ( Which we are currently working on ) at the website. I think that will be very telling when it comes to how much greater interest we have really created.

That’s about it for now. If you have any comments on this subject,  or ideas on how we can improve the exposure to our music, please feel free to click on the comments link below. we always enjoy hearing your thoughts or views.

Until next time I hope the good Lord blesses you with good health, and much happiness.

Hello Everyone,

Well the changes we talked about in the last Blog are done. I know we gave you all the impression they were forth coming in the near future and at the time we believed that was an accurate reflection, however, changing the merchandising concept opened up the flood gates for many other opportunities that took a lot more time to analyze and consider. This was a major move, and a major change in direction, and we needed to weigh all the pro’s and con’s of the concept. After much consideration we came to the conclusion the good out weighed the bad, and that’s when the real work in planning began. If you haven’t been through the web site recently you should take a look at all the pages before you proceed to read this blog, it will help you to better understand the rambling…lol.

Just making the changes in themselves wasn’t enough, we had to develop a course of action that would make the world wide music community aware of what we were doing, and with their help, what we hoped to accomplish in the process.

A press release had to be written up, hundreds of Email addy’s had to be gathered, and the social websites had to be updated to reflect the changes. Along with the change in the marketing concept we decided it was equally important to evaluate the current web site and make long over due changes in that direction also.

We also had to find a site that tracked the free downloads so that we could track the numbers and information that will allow us to analyze trends, and help us to evaluate the effectiveness of the campaign.

There has been much thought, and a lot of work done to get to this point, and there is a lot of work that still has to be done.

Some of you may be wondering why we felt the need to go in this direction and the answer to that is pretty simple. The most prominent reason is under the old traditional merchandising concept we just weren’t achieving the numbers to give us the exposure we needed.

That’s not to say over the past two years we haven’t made major inroads into the world wide music community because we most certainly have. Actually we have accomplished a great deal given the financial limitations we have worked under.The music has been widely accepted by Country Music Fans, Radio Stations and DJ’s world wide.

The unfortunate reality was, as good as it was, at the current trend in exposure, it would take us 20 years to build the fan base we needed to be successful in marketing our product. We initially thought we needed to influence thousands of music listeners, and the fact is we need to reach 10’s of thousands at a minimum, and 100’s of thousands to achieve moderate success. We feel this new merchandising and promotional effort will better help us to achieve those numbers. One thing for sure was under the old business model we would have never achieved those numbers.

In todays ever changing landscape of the music industry the independent artist need to be constantly evaluating the trends, and new concepts that are constantly evolving. We need to be innovative in our approach, and open to change constantly.

One of the most innovative concepts of this new plan was the resellers or retailers license. We have put an offer out there to partner up with small retail outlets  to replicate the CD’s and offer them for sale, using a shared expense , and shared profit business model. We paid the expense of producing the music, and the art work for the CD’s, their expense would be the cost of reproducing the packaging. In turn we would place a minimum suggested retail of $10 on the CD, and split the retail 50/50, and they would only be required to pay for the product they actually sell. The retailer would be required to submit pertinent data for follow up and in return he would receive a written license to distribute agreement from Billy Darnell Music. A more detailed description is available on the albums page at the site.

One of the major stumbling blocks for all independent Artists is how to achieve world wide distribution of their CD’s. We realize this concept probably wont work for a Wal-Mart, or a Sam Goodie’s type of operation, but their are hundreds, if not thousands, of small retailers out there that might embrace this concept, in an attempt to increase their product line, have a unique offer, and increase their profits. It’s those people we hope to entice with this offer.  It will be totally based upon the  “Honor” system, and that could be a problem, however, we feel that most business people that struggle, as we do, to make an honest dollar will be just that, honest. Will this concept catch on? Who knows, but it’s a lot better option than the one we have had to deal with in the past.

We are currently in PR mode getting the word out about the new concept, and we expect it to take several weeks to get that done. After that we have plans to get into the studio and try to produce a new single every month for the next 3 or 4 months. New single releases will be posted on the albums page as we release them.

Some other things in the making are video presentations for the social media outlets, getting out to a few song writer nights now and then, and trying to make more live appearances in the future.

There is a comment section on this Blog and we would love to hear your thoughts, and comments.

Until next time I wish you all good health and happy spirits.

Billy Darnell

Hello Everyone,

I apoligize for my absense on this blog. It’s been a while that’s for sure.  I got a slight case of pneumonia ( my second bout in 3 years ) in the middle of December , which  reoccured in February, that stuff can really wear you out and zap your strength. Combine that with the fact that my mom passed on December 22, 2009, which really left me quite depressed, and between the two, I ended up in quita a funk. For several months I just lacked the strength, energy, and desire to do anything. I barely checked my main email accounts, and turned off the phone completely.

It was a very strange place to be for a while, but then a month or so ago, I was asked on one of the websites I have music on to help someone else out with their songs, and in doing so, I found a renewed vigor for working again, and it motivated me greatly. I even decided to take on another project helping other lyricists to complete their project, at an affordable price, and bring their songs to life. We started a website called, www.songwriterservices.biz, and so far it’s doing fairly well.

Anyways, lets talk about this site.  The new Cd is doing better than the last one, that’s good news. “They Don’t Make Country Like they Used To” made it to #12 on the ECMA top 100 charts, “My Memories Of You” received a lot of air play world wide, and ” Hello Heartache My Old Friend”, as of last weeks report was one of the top 25 most played songs in the European market, I can’t complain about that.

I also have a song hitting the airwaves, which was written by Paul Roberts, that I helped arrange, and produce, and did the vocals on, that I expect will do real well called “Brande’s Song “. It turned out to be a great tune, and if you get a chance, take a listen, it’s a really special song.

So what’s next? Where do we go from here?

I have to tell you this little journey I have been on has taught me many things, but most of all it has taught me “The more things change, the more they remain the same.”.

It’s been almost two years now since I started out, and when I look at the songs that have charted world wide, the great Fans I have accumulated , and the number of Dj’s that now support my music, I have to say so far it’s been quite a successful journey. I don’t think in two years you can evaluate a lifetime effort, as in all business ventures, persistance really does pay.

However, in this age of the ever changing face of music, it is very difficult to turn it into dollars and cents.  Free music is now the rage of the internet, and until that changes it will be very difficult for all artists to find the income it takes to keep putting out music. The cost of making a good quality, radio friendly CD, depending on how much you can do yourself, ranges from $2000 to $25,000. No new artist can’t afford to keep pumping out CD’s if he doesn’t get some financial support from the people listening to it, and thats just the cost of producing it, let alone the cost of promotion and marketing. The lesson learned here is , it still takes some real working capitol to get the job done.

Eventually this fad of “free” music will pass as people begin to realize the artists they so loved listening to aren’t  around anymore. They will begin to see as in any other art form,  Recording artists, and songwriters need their support too. Until then I suspect we will see many artists and songwriters go by the way side. The lesson learned here is you either adjust, or you perish.

I plan to adjust. I am way too stubborn to just lay down and die. I have worked way too hard, and come too far to quit now. So how will I adjust?

Well first I have to get out and play, I intend to start looking into the house concert arena, which is becoming quite popular now a days.

Secondly, no more full length CD’s, I will continue to record singles, which will significantly cuts recording costs, and offer them for digital download only. Periodically I will release new songs through Triplestrand’s compilation Cd, as I have done all along, for those markets that require a hard copy on the premises.

Last, but not least, keep an eye on the Albums page of the website. After much reflection and months of deciding what’s best for the fans, and myself, there will be a drastic change in our marketing plan.  That’s as much as I am going to say about it at this point, but I think you will all agree when it’s launched, for now, it’s the most reasonable approach.

Once again I want to thank all of you for your continued support. Especially those DJ’s that continued to play my music in my most recent absense. It did not go unnoticed.

Not all that much has changed over the past two years, I still believe in my music, and I still believe in you all. With your continued support, together I think we can over come the obstacles of this new age of music.

Your Friend,

Billy Darnell

www.songwriterservices.biz

Hi Everybody,

Well I am right about on time, I manage to get into this blog about every other month or so, but I think this time took a little longer.

Let me tell ya if you ever decide to do a CD , and your going to do it using Nashville pickers in an online studio enviroment, don’t do it in the summer months. Plan it for the winter because in the summer most of the better ones are going on tour. Getting tracks done for the new CD has been a nightmare. Every song has taken forever to get completed. The good news is we have found a work around, and theirs just 2 more songs till completion so it looks like maybe we can still get it out the first or second week of August.

I will say this, it’s been a long time since I have been this excited about the music. I thought the first Cd I did had some pretty good music on it, I loved the last CD because even though it didnt have all the bells and whistles that traditional country music fan normally looked for, it was a great bunch of tunes, that came out sounding like I wanted the lsitening audience to hear them. The down side to it was that it was the first time I had ventured out into the world of producing and engineering a CD. I had no idea about the technical side of recording. Over the past year I spent countless hours reading everything I could get my hands on, and when possible, purchasing the new software and equipment we needed to do things properly to produce a great sounding CD. It’s a very time consuming, and expensive process. From learning the recording and mastering software, to redoing the studio for new hardware, testing out new programs as they come out, it’s a never ending process, but I believe when you all hear this new Cd you will agree it was worth the time and money.  The tunes are great, the production is excellent, the tracks are well mastered and I can’t wait for it to get done and released. This will be, by far, the best CD we have ever produced from every aspect. Anyone who purchases this CD should be pleased with it from A - Z.

The name of the album will be ‘Getting Back To Country”, and if your a country music fan, I guarantee that this will be one of the best, and most listened to CD’s you purchase all year. It’s a totally new sound package that the traditional music lovers are going to enjoy immensley.

If this CD doesn’t do well sales wise, I think we will contemplate moving in a different direction. I dont believe we will ever produce a better CD than we have this time, and maybe the industry guru’s are right when they say” The days of people purchasing CD’s are over, theres just too much free stuff on the internet.”, if that’s the case we will still produce singles for sale on Itunes and other digital media, but the time and cost of producing a total CD has to be justified by the sales.

When I say in a new direction what I am looking at now is the publishing, and licensing, end of the business, along with taking all the equipment and knowledge we have gained over the past year and venturing into the business of helping other artists to produce quality demo’s and backing tracks for their music. I also plan to take the lessons I have learned in this venture and publish information that will be helpful to new artist aspiring to get their music out to the world wide listening audience.

Some of you might have noticed some changes on the website the past few months. We reformatted the mail order form by making it less confusing, and incorporating the cost of shipping and handling into the price of the product. We also added a Paypal section to the albums hoping to make purchasing more simplified for their users, so far that hasn’t made a difference in the number of sales we get, but maybe with the release of a new CD that will change.

Right now, along with working on the new CD, we are getting ready for one of our rare live personal performances. I will be performing on August 29th( A Friday night) at 7:30 Pm at The Jamboree By The Lake festival down in Wichester, TN.. I am looking forward to meeting some of our fans and all the dj’s that will be attending. If you can make it down there, we will have a small table set up, stop by and say hello.

Well thats about it for now, you all take care and we will catch ya on the flip side my friends.

 Billy Darnell

www.billydarnell.com

Hi Everyone,

 Hope this post finds you all doing well.  I am afraid I dont have a lot of news.  I have been spending a lot of time writing and  working on the next CD  ( and I might add discovering more everyday about this new recording program ) and should be releasing the next single within the next two weeks. The Cd should be released sometime in Late June or early July.

A lot of the Dj’s have been asking if I had any gospel or christian music and up to now I have had to reluctantly say no. This past week I woke up with a song in my head , that has a christian twist to it , even though we will release it as a country song much in the vein of Clint Blacks  “3 crosses”. Not because it relates to that song in any way but because it could be played in either venue, christian, or country. The song emulates the love that jesus had for all of us in life, and in death, and how that reflects in our lives in everyday circumstances.  It’s a song that has a great message, good beat, and an interesting twist to the lyrics. It is called  ” I Will Always love You”, I am quite anxious to get it out there and see how it fares.  The song pretty much wrote itself from every aspect. It was one of those songs that took probably less than a half hour to write completely, words and music, and most song writers will tell you that those kinds of songs are usually their best work.

I have yet to get the paypal thing up and running, but will continue to try and get something going there.

The Tv concept is also still in the can, but we are working on a few glitches. The biggest issue is we can’t do it from the studio as we planned because the cam mic messes up the drivers in the recording program, and thats a major issue. So it looks like we will need another computer and back drop for the tv show.

One interesting thing this week was an explsion in the nymber of plays of my music posted on www.indie-music.com.  Over the past few months the songs there had been getting about 50 plays or so a day, and all of a sudden 4 days ago, they began to get over a hundred plays a day! It has been that way all this week and I can’t figure out why, but it sure was a pleasant surprise. Everyone says that since the concept of internet music, songs come and go about every two months, and then people start looking for something new. I guess one mans old is another mans new depending upon the circumstances.

One other thing that might interest you all is I have made up my mind that just writing, and introducing my music, on the internet is not going to initially produce the amount of income it takes to keep this operation moving forward, so I am planning to start making personal appearances around the Nashville area initially, and then expanding by hundred mile radiuses over the next year. If you live within a hundred miles of Nashville, TN., and know of a place that a solo performer can play and would like us to look into booking it, just let us know in the comment section of this blog or drop me an email at billydarnellmusic@charter.net  and we will look into it. Also if your a musician, we are looking to put a back up group together, if you would like to get involved give me a shout. I have sent an application to the folks at ” Jamborie by the Lake” music festival, in Wichester, TN.,  that takes place labor day weekend, and that may be the first major festival we do, so if you live near by, or plan to be there, stop by and see me.

Oh, one other issue. We have been looking into a way to distribute the CD’s through a major distributor, and found the hoops one has to jump through to obtain it a bit cumbersome. So I have decided to try and build our own distribution network through small privately owned shops through out the world, by offering a limited number of CD’s on consignment. If you know of a small privately owned music store in your area we can contact please help us out and let us know. If you could email me (or leave it in a comment on this blog ) the contact information such as the name of the music store, the owners name, address, and a telephone number, it sure would help us to better distribute our CD’s.

Well guys and girls , thats about it.  You all take care and we will catch you on the flip side.

 Your Friend,

Billy Darnell

Hello Everyone,

Well it’s been too long since I did this blog again. I apoligize for not keeping you all better informed, but up to this point, to be very honest with you, given the complications of a new recording program, new hardware, the addition of a new mixer in the studio, and recruiting studio musicians, there were times I wondered if it all was worth the time or trouble, and if we would ever get back on track. The good news is we have managed to survive and conquer the learning curve, and we are back on track.

The improvements we made in the studio have enabled us to record in a more efficient and speedy way, and I think has improved the quality of what we are now bringing to market. The addition of studio musicians will most certainly improve the overall production  of our product.

On the 13 th of March we released a new single to the public called ” They Dont Make Country Like They Use To “. It’s an upbeat tune about the current state of country music, and how us traditonal music lovers feel about it. Not only do I believe this may be one of the best productions we have ever released, but I also feel it is the right song at the right time. Every once in a while a song comes along that musically or lyrically isnt all that much, but it makes a statement that listeners can embrace and get behind and I believe this is one of those songs. We are expecting great things for this single release.

The DJ’s, who had the song almost a week before it’s release, have all raved about the song, and their listeners reaction to it. Dj’s who never before have shown any interest in my music are jumping on the bandwagon and playing this tune, and we sure do appreciate their support. More DJ’s will add this song to their playlists than any other song we have ever released.

We are also changing the promotional aspect a little for this next CD. Instead of releasing a full CD, we will be releasing 2 or 3 singles prior to the finished product. Part of  the merchandising plan will be to allow everyone to get a Free download of the new single. If you haven’t got yours yet , you can get one at  this website by going to www.billydarnell.com/announcements.html , scroll down to the announcement box, find the small gray box that says “Click here for your free download” and click on the text in the box. The reason we are litterally giving away this song is that we want people to see the improved quality, and to be able to really listen and hear this production, along with the fact we wanted to give something back to the fans. I would be remiss not to include the fact that it is a loss leader of sorts. We are hoping that country music lovers will start to look forward to the next CD with an anticipation of the best is yet to come, and believe me when I tell you , it is.

One other thing you might be wandering about is the paypal issue. For sometime we have talked about improving CD sales by adding a paypal option for payment at the site. After spending several hundred dollars on programs that would not load on our website, I believe we now have an option that is viable. Hopefully we will get the back end preperation work done this month to finally get it on the albums page as an option.

 Another thing we talked bout at the beggining of the year was a one hour weekly live show either on paltalk or some other venue. So far we have the camera and sound set up, but we are still working through what format or platform to use in the presentation. I love the paltalk community like they were my family, but as someone pointed out it does limit the access to the show, so we are looking at .Tv formats that should open us up to a whole world wide community. Hopefully we can find the right answer shortly.

I will leave you with a promise that the next CD will be the very best CD we have released to date from every aspect. Hopefully the changes in the merchandising platform will result in a much improved performance sales wise. Folks the best way to support an artist is to purchase his music, thats the only way you can insure that you will get to enjoy it in the future. In my mind their are great fans, they talk about how good the music is but never purchase any of it, and their are great supporters, they not only tell everyone about your music, but they go out of their way to purchase a single, a CD, or T-shirt anytime its available. I appreciate all my fans but the supporters I have a special affection for, they make it possible for me, and all artists, to keep making the music. Even when your an indie artist, and you do all your own recording and production to cut costs, you still have expenses. The equipment that has to be purchased and maintained to produce a quality product ( The recording software we just purchased cost us $699 ). The cost of the musicians  ( average $75 a track per musician ) , and the cost in distributing that product can run into thousands of dollars. So if you really like listening to an artist, be a great supporter, as well as a great fan. It’s the only way to say thank you in a manner that means something, and that something, is that you and others will continue to hear the artists that bring you hours of listening enjoyment for quite sometime.

 Thank you all for your continuing support.

Billy Darnell

Hello Everyone!

To all my supporters, I hope the holidays treated you well, and left you healthy and happy.

We ended the year on a great note as songvault.fm sent us an email advising us that my song ” I’m Gonna Love You Till Forever “, had made it through their 4 tiers of competition, and had been placed in their songvault and added for regular rotation on their playlist! I will attach a copy of the email at the end of this article. This is great news because songvault will now classify this song as “Most suited for radio play” and promote it, and myself, heavily in 2008.

Thanks to all my fans and supporters for all that you did in 2007, and hopefully that support will continue in the New Year. I certainly appreciated it.

Now whats next for 2008? Well, for starters I had talked about adding the option of using paypal for purchases at the website, and we will continue to work on that. It should be available shortly.  

In the next week or so, we will begin work on several new singles, and as soon as they are finished I will be sure to get them out to all our dj friends. You will all see quite a difference in the quality of production on these new songs as we intend to go full blown, fiddles, steel guitars, harmonicas, the whole 9 yards. We will also change how we release these new songs. We are going back to the old way , the way the major labels used to release material. By that I mean we will be releasing 2 or 3 singles before we release the album or complete CD. This will not only build interest in the new CD, but it will prevent file sharing of the entire CD also.

I would also like to see the addition of Artist memorabilia also on our sales sites and we are currently researching the best way to offer that at the most resonable cost to our fans.

We are also currently looking into doing a live 1 hour show on pal talk or some other web conferencing software once a week. The complications and arrangements are pretty extensive so that might take a while, but it is definitely in the plans for the future. The basic Idea is to present the show just as if you were in Nashville at one of the local venues, listening to a singer, sitting on stage, in one of the clubs. Giving the viewer a glimpse of reality as if they were right there in Nashville. I think a lot of people who will never get to Nashville might enjoy the aspect of participating in this type of venue, and it will open up the oppurtunity for the fans to sit with me and communicate on a very personal level. We will also tape the shows and offer them to viewers at my website, myspace page, and youtube.

If you are someone who might have a product and would be interested in sponsoring this project, please email me at: billydarnellmusic@charter.net, and we can discuss the details.

Some other things we will be doing from a promotional stand point is we will be adding our music to many more online stores and venues in the next few months. We are currently on about 50 sites and I would like to see that number double in 2008.

We are going to add a section to our supporters page listing every site that our music is featured at. Thus allowing the fans to visit and support these sites and myself at them.

Last but not least we will start doing live performances at several local venues in the very near future. These performances will be a mix of solo, and with a band, and we will list them on our website and all other venues as we set them. If your a musician in the greater Nashille area, and your tired of doing the same old covers everynight, and want to get involved with an original artist, have the freedom to play locally, be creative, and tour a little, contact me.

Well thats about it for now. The New Year is here and with it comes a renewed commitment and energy to excell and further expand our fan base in 2008. I hope you will all join me for the journey.

Oh and feel free to leave a comment on this blog or anything else for that matter. Let me know your listening. 

 Your friend,

Billy Darnell

Below is the email we received from Songvault:

                —– Original Message —– From: SongVault To: Billy Darnell Sent: Tuesday, December 25, 2007 2:15 AMSubject: Your track has been promoted! 

This is quite an accomplishment and something you should be proud of, considering that your song has been up against hundreds of other songs and has taken several months in order to pass through all the tiered stations.This is not the end of the journey but just the beginning!

Hi everyone,

I hope this finds you all well and happy.

Well the good news is we moved up to #24 on Joyce Ramgaties Top 200 world wide playlist for country music artists. Kind of funny when you look down the list and see George Strait right behind you at #25..lol. Sort of puts that list into perspective I do believe. Still, I think it says that the efforts that have been made to get my name out there on the internet were certainly not wasted. When you consider this is all country artists played on the internet #24 is pretty darn good. I’d like to thank all of you that requested my music and have helped spread the word at sites, and all the great Dj’s out there for the support they have given my music. It has been truly amazing that a CD recorded with just a bare 4 piece, and given little money for advertising, has managed to get as much play as this one has.

I also received an inquirey from a small Nashville Label last week. They asked me to send my CD to their A & R department so I did. I haven’t heard anything back from them yet and its been a week, but at any label, the wheels of progress grind kind of slow sometimes. If anything comes of it I will be sure to let you know.

I managed to hook up with several sites this week that should allow me to really enhance the next generation of my music. Thay have fiddle , steel , and harmonica players which I intend to include on my next project. I am commited to doing one more CD just to see if the production were more full blown, how the response would improve.

The bad news, well, sales did not improve this month, even with all the great numbers we are seeing. Infact they went down, which is pretty hard to believe when they have been almost non existent to begin with. I was a little surprised because of how many people told me they would be purchasing the CD this month. Of course that happens on a daily basis. At least twice a day someone tells me they ordered it , and at least 28 out of 30 days this month nobody has. I have been forced to look at all that kind of stuff with a ” I will believe it when I see it.” kind of attitude. Seems on the internet, you can not only be whatever you want to be, but you can say whatever you think anyone wants to hear. I guess they  may not realize that when anyone buys a CD, I know exactly who they are, when they purchased it, and which one they purchased immediately. Oh well thats the internet it seems.

If misery truly loves company, the good news is, I am not alone. I have talked to several other artists who are producing quality music on the internet, have been for a lot longer than I have, and the general consensus is too many people are giving their music away, and that users on the internet are just looking for something for nothing. They tell me there is no such thing on the internet as fan loyalty, and that my best bet is to get out to the real world and start doing gigs on a consistant basis. I will not only build a bigger fan base , but that I will sell a lot more CDs. Hard to believe I haven’t really sold  many CDs at all, and yet I have out sold all of them put together the last few months. They probably are right.

I have read every piece of literature available as to how to market successfully on the internet, have applied all those theorys to my website, along with a few of my own, and still sales are negligible.

I keep telling myself it’s only been 3 months, with the numbers we are seeing things will eventually get better, but some how I can’t help feeling at times, that I am only fooling myself. So, at this point I am going to try one or two more things on the website to  try and enhance sales, and start getting back into the studio to work on new material. I am commited to doing one more CD at the very least, though this time the release of material will be a little different. I will release two or three singles over the next several months, and then complete the CD.

I am also going to put the band together and start doing shows locally to drive the CD sales. That unfortunately means I can spend less time focusing on the internet, but as in any business, one has to market to the people that are willing to support them and purchase their product. I have become aquainted with a lot of good people on here, so I wont abandon it completely, but I think it may be many years down the road before an artist can market their product successfully on this medium. Though there are millions of people on the internet, there is still a stigma about trust, and many other issues, that are just too great to overcome at this point I guess.

Anyways, the new singles should start within the next month or so, and we will see how that goes.

One improvement I think we are going to make at the website is a paypal customer page. It is an option not given at Cdfreedom, and I am hoping it will make purchases easier for those who have paypal accounts, and generate another medium of payment. At this point it can’t hurt, and its worth a shot.

Until next isssue I hope you all stay healthy and good things come to you and yours.

Your friend ,

Billy Darnell

P.S.

By the way, CDs make great inexpensive christmas gifts, and give hours of enjoyment to those who receive them.

Hello everyone!

Well let me start out by saying CD sales have improved and thats a mighty good thing!

We are already ahead of the goal we set for this month and with a few days left things might get even better. I can’t speak strongly enough on the importance of sales. Not only are they a measuring tool as to how well the music is accepted, but more importantly they allow me to keep getting CDs out there to dj’s around the world that help us to introduce the product into more markets. Keep in mind current sales are under $100.00, then consider, to send out a package of the 2 cds to radio stations and dj’s outside of the continental USA cost about $16 to $18 dollars a package! I have mailed out at least 20 packages so far and that is a far cry from the several thousand copies we need to get out there. To ship 2 cd’s to just 1,000 dj’s world wide would cost over $16,000.oo! Now you might be thinking,  wow,  you got to sell a lot of CDs just to break even, and you would be right. It has caused me to re-evaluate the approach for exposure and marketing. One answer is compilation CDs that are put together by promoters where they put 10 or 15 artists on a CD and send them out to a thousand or so radio stations and dj’s around the world. It is much more cost efficient, and effective in saturating a market. So I just contracted with a promoter to put 2 songs from my CDs on a compilation CD that is going out to 1400 dj’s in october, and I will be looking for more promotions of this type. However there are still certain dj’s and markets we will be concentrating on getting out those two CD packages to. Right now we are working on the Australian market. When we finish that we will be working on some of the other small countries that have large country music popularity. You can talk about being a fan all you want, but if you don’t buy an artists CDs, and you dont help support his music, he wont be there very long for you to be a fan of. If you really enjoy the songs and the music we do, please , purchase some of it. We need your help to keep going.          

Ok, enough on the importance of sales. If you have looked around the web site lately you probably have noticed a few changes. For one there is now a photo section. These photos are from a shoot we did a couple of weeks ago, and we plan to use them to let fans pick a picture they would like to have persoanlly autographed if they choose to do so. We are currently evaluating the cost involved in this process, and we should have them available within the next two or three weeks.

We have also added a Supporters page where you can find information on radio stations and other venues that have agreed to play or promote, my music. We thought this would be a good thing from several standpoints. First it lets you the fan know where they can hear my music, and secondly, it helps push traffic to those sites that support it. It also allows us to communicate with the fans the various ways we have made to allow them to show their support.

 We also moved the blog link, and the printable order form link, up to the main menu in the hopes it would be easier for people to locate.

This coming week we will start to look into press releases and using ezines to drive traffic to the website. There is alot to be done yet to help keep the momentum rolling our way.

Last week I did a live radio interview, that went out to the web, with Radio Dj Bobby Lynn. It went really well, was a lot of fun, and more importantly it created several new fans.

This Saturday at 6PM est time I will be opening a room at paltak for a meet and greet with what I hope will be many of my fans on there. The purpose will also to be to organize a street team for the web for the fans to get involved and help with promotion, and that will be a very big help if we can pull it off.

All in all things are still progressing very well. The sales are starting to come around, the fan base is growing in leaps and bounds, radio dj’s are willing and even motivated to play the CDs, and promoters are asking for me to get involved in their projects. If this was a wall street report The market would up 200 points!!! lol, but it isnt so I have to get back to work.

Thanks to everyone that has supported me this far, the fans, the Dj’s, the internet radio people, all of you are what keeps me going. I still believe the new CD release, “15 Years Later” is  gonna be a hit, and will help catapult us into the next CD, which is in the planning stage, and I guarantee you it will be even better than “15 Years Later”.

Until next time may the good lord bless you, and dont forget to get your copy of the cd’s…lol ( www.cdfreedom.com/billydarnell )

Your Friend,

Billy Darnell