Hello Family!
This week's blog is kind of a departure from the norm for me. Usually I talk about the brass tacks of the music business and the "so idiotic and Bizarro World crazy it must be true" shit that happens to me in regards to the music business on a regular basis. (Don't worry. If the current shit I'm dealing with resolves itself in the next week I'm gonna have TONS of Bizarro World shit to lay on you in the next blog.) But today's blog is gonna be a little different. I'm gonna take a minute to salute the musicians out there that have "day jobs".
*shudder*
Family, I have a day job. Sad, but true. As my CD continues to gain steam (thanks for all the positive comments, by the way! Tell everybody you know!!!) it's a situation I hope to one day soon rectify. But for now, my day job is a means to an end to pay for the night dreams I have. I get up every day, get dressed, fight rush hour traffic, get to work, go to my cubicle, put in a good day's work, leave work, fight rush hour traffic again, and then come home.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Die a little inside each day.
In that sense I'm no different than 99% of the other Joe Schmoes out there. I have it no better and no worse than 99% of the rest of the workforce out there. But at times as I'm looking at the drab soul crushing surroundings of my cubicle and office and the machinery that is Corporate America, I can't help but wonder "Is this all there is? I mean really, is this it? Is this all I have to look forward to for the rest of my miserable life?"
And as I cry silent tears into my morning cup of coffee I have to kick myself in the ass and remind myself that my day job is just a means to an end. I have dreams. I have plans. I have goals. There's a reason I get up every morning to make my paltry just this side of slave wages.
It's all about the music, baby.
See, when I get home I take a shower, grab a quick bite to eat and then sit at my computer. And I do the business of OYOS Records. I do the business of making sure as many people are reminded over and over again that "Introducing... ME" is now available EVERYWHERE online. I answer e-mails. I accept friend requests. I do friend requests. I go to dance class. I nurture just budding relationships in the music business. I research. I ask questions. I demand. I beg and plead. I do whatever is necessary to make this CD a success. (I'll have a REALLY specific example in the next blog if the shit storm I'm currently dealing with is resolved.) But regardless, I'm working on my passion. I work my ass off each and every night on this project. I try to get a good night's sleep for the drudgery of the next day, but more and more sleep is going by the wayside as I work to get this CD off the ground.
And family, it's a full time (part time) job.
But I love it. I truly do. It's the one thing that keeps me going when another "day in the cubicle" is staring me dead in the face. If it weren't for music and my passion for it, I truly don't know what I would do. I'm sure I would either find a hobby or jump off a bridge.
And in that sense I'm no different than any other musician out there with a day job. We do what we do because we have to. We've gotta pay the bills until we are successful enough at the music thing to go to work one blissful day, drop trau, bend over, grab a heaping helping of asscheeks and scream at the top of our lungs, "KISS MY ASS!!!"
So to all the musicians out there slaving away at a day job until that fateful day arrives, I'm in your corner baby. Keep doing what you're doing and one day it's gonna pay off in HUGE dividends for you.
Until then, take it for what it is and do your own thing.
Peace.
-Stephen
P.S. I would be remiss in this blog not to pimp myself so here goes: You can find me on i-tunes.com, napster.com, amazonmp3.com, and shockhound.com with rhapsody.com soon to follow. Find me by typing in my last name, "Dillard-Carroll" and there I will be in all my mud covered glory.
P.P.S. For those of you on facebook and myspace, I'm also there.
P.P.P.S. I however, will NEVER be on Twitter. Don't get me wrong. I'm all about being accessible to people, but Twitter takes accessibility it to a whole new level that quite frankly scares me just a little bit. I mean, do I really need to know you're taking a dump right now? Do you really need to know I'm masturbating like a fiend right now? Do ANY of us really need to know what the other person is doing every second of every day? To those of you on Twitter, God bless you. I however will pass.
Masturbating In The Corner Like A Fiend,
Stephen
2.14.2009
Albequerque, Clams & Pismol Beach
Hello Family!
Let me start this blog off by stating I got the strangest phone call last week. I was sitting at my desk at home, furiously working on CD stuff when my phone rings. I don't immediately know who it is, so I let it go to voicemail. (As an aside, I'm very big on screening calls when I don't know who the person on the other end is. It's probably a habit I should break since the phone that rang was my business line. But I digress...) It went to voicemail and someone left a message. Fantastic. I LOVE screening calls! (On a business phone? Not so smart, but anyway...)
I'm gonna paraphrase right now because I erased the message (more on why later) but it went a little something like this:
"Hi Stephen! This is Peter Wells, Senior Vice President of Tunecore. I happened across your blog and I wanted to tell you that I went through the back door at i-tunes to see if you are up and running there and sure enough you are! Oh, and I made a comment on your blog as well. So all is well and you're good to go on i-tunes. Thanks for using tunecore, and if you ever have any questions, we're here to help."
A couple things rang through my mind as I listened to the message:
1) "This has got to be one of my friends playing a practical joke on me. All the while, taking hits from the bong and giggling as they hang up the phone."
The reason that went through my head is because I had told a few of my "bong-friendly" friends about the Sentence Of Despair. Plus it was Sunday around noon-ish and nothing makes Looney Tunes on Boomerang funnier than a good practical joke.
2) "How many times has anyone in this Universe gotten a personal phone call from a Senior Vice-President of a company to let them know their CD is up and running?"
The answer to that question is : Unless you're raking in Madonna dough for LiveNation on the soon to be resurrected Sticky And Sweet Tour, no Senior Vice-President is gonna call you on a Sunday afternoon when they could be out golfing.
Then things went from strange to downright crazy. I decided to check the caller ID. For those of you outside of Oklahoma, we have three area codes: 405, 918 and 580. The area code that called me was not one of the above three. So now I'm going through my rolodex of friends to try and think of one that had the same area code as the one that popped up on my screen. Nobody came to mind. Then I went through my "Cheech and Chong with special guest Willie Nelson" rolodex and came up with the same answer. Nobody has that area code. So now I start to think:
3) "What if it isn't a practical joke? What if my friends are all passed out in front of the tv in a brown, purple, orange and bright yellow haze of Cheetos, Twinkies and dirty bong water?"
Even in the Bizarro Twilight Zone kind of world I sometimes find myself in, that seems unlikely if not downright impossible.
So what do I do? I decide to call the number back. All the while in the back of my head I'm thinking, "THAT old gag..." But I'm good for a laugh and in my head I've already forgiven my "wake and bake" friends for their tomfoolery. Still, it's not an area code I recognize...
"Hello," a man whose voice I don't recognize says as he answers the phone.
In that instant I knew it wasn't some silly gag my friends cooked up while puffing and passing.
"Hi, may I please speak with Peter Wells?" I ask.
"This is Peter." he replied.
"Hi. My name is Stephen Dillard-Carroll and you just left a message on my voicemail about my CD going live on i-tunes..."
The rest of the conversation was private and confidential - now you know why I won't even tell you what area code the phone call originated from - but it was one of those things that on paper sounds so crazy and out of the blue it can't be a work of fiction. Although I will tell you a few things I learned from the phone call.
1) Peter Wells is a real person. He actually works at tunecore and he's actually a SVP there. (And he gets obscure Bugs Bunny references.)
2) I found out that tunecore is not a giant conglomerate with nameless, faceless people running around and buzzing up and down a skyscraper building in some downtown metropolis somewhere. In fact, at its strongest it's probably 20 people deep.
3) I found out that should you sign up with tunecore.com and get your music out there online, you actually have to take the initiative to search the different websites on your own to see if you're "live" or not. I thought I would get an e-mail or a text message or a smoke signal to tell me I was live on i-tunes. Not so much. You actually have to take the initiative and search out these things for yourself. I have a feeling as tunecore grows and becomes an even greater success than it already is, that will change. But for now it is what it is.
4) Peter Wells has time on his hands. Time enough to search out obscure blogs in the far-flung reaches of the internet, comment on said blogs with answers to obscure Looney Tunes animation references and to actually call people back. It's the last part of that little jab (which I HOPE if he's reading this blog he found HYSTERICALLY funny) that I wanted to talk about a little more.
Family, it's no secret I've been around the block. (Some might even say my ass paved the block, but that would be oh so catty and wrong...) I've seen a lot of things and experienced a lot of stuff. There aren't a helluva lot of "first times" out there for me anymore. But I can honestly say without hesitation this is the first time a SVP has EVER called me first. Usually I've had to call and leave 30 messages before an assistant to the assistant to the SVP decides to call me back. This is the first time I've been called without having made the first move. Which is why this whole experience was so Bizarro World for me. And why I had such a hard time believing it as it was happening.
For the record, and I really MUST stress this, Peter told me he was taking a chance in calling me personally. It's not something they generally do for everyone. Which means, I don't want tunecore to get a BILLION e-mails that start out with, "Stephen got a phone call! Why didn't I get a friggin phone call?" Nor do I want to get a billion e-mails requesting Peter's private cell phone number. He asked me to delete it from my phone and I did. I don't have it. And even if I did, I wouldn't give it away. It's not mine to give and I respect his privacy. (Plus, I wanna continue to trade obscure Looney Tunes references with him. And if I gave his phone number away, I'm positive I would get an e-mail from him with only one sentence in the body: "Of course you know, this means war.")
I have already thanked him privately for calling me and letting me know, but I thought I should say something publicly about the customer service that tunecore provides. Should February 25th have come and gone and I didn't know for sure what was happening with my CD, I would have eventually clicked the "Contact Us" button and inquired. And after last week's experience I am positive someone would have e-mailed me back asap. To say I am thoroughly impressed with tunecore.com is the understatement of the year. As always, I would certainly advise you to read as much as you could about the company and make a smart decision based on your business needs as to whether or not you will use them. But as for me, I'm sold on them.
Since last week, I've also found out I am live on www.amazonmp3.com. YAY!!!
I'm also live on www.shockhound.com. YAY!!!!
As of Friday, February 13th, 2009, stephendc.com is live. YAY!!! PLEASE check me out there. Zach Burch did the website design for me and I couldn't be more pleased. He's loathe to put his own personal stamp on websites, instead directing people to his online portfolio. So since I'm in a "shamless plugging of everyone I know and love" kind of mood right now, you can find him here:
http://www.coroflot.com/zachdburch
I cannot even begin to tell you how impressed I am with his professionalism, hard work and excitement for my project. If you are looking for a website designer and graphic designer for any artwork you may have (he designed the artwork for the CD which I'm hoping will be available in physical form at your local mom & pop CD store very shortly) then look no further than Zach Burch. I had my choice of designers and I'm glad I chose the right one for my needs. Check him out for yourself and see if he won't fit your needs as well.
I got my business cards! YAY!!! As I told you in my FedEx Kinkos blog, I decided to go with Office Depot. Family, they did a bang up job on the business cards. It was exactly what I wanted, how I wanted it and everywhere I needed it. So even though Office Depot IS a giant conglomerate, I'm gonna plug them too. As always, check them out and make a smart decision before sending me an e-mail that says, "YOU TOLD ME TO GO TO OFFICE DEPOT AND NOW MY LIFE IS RUINED...." They were fantastic to me and were exactly what my business needed. So check them out.
This week, I sent out a mass mailing to everyone I've ever sent an e-mail to in the last 10 years to tell them about my CD. I've gotten nothing but positive feedback and for that I am eternally grateful. If you are not on my mailing list and would like to be, by all means send me an e-mail to hello@stephendc.com. Or you can always comment with your e-mail addy to this blog and you're automatically part of the family.
So now that I am live on i-tunes, shockhound and amazonmp3.com all that's left is rhapsody and napster.com. In the meantime, I have to promote the hell outta this CD. You can help me out by telling all your friends, neighbors, relatives, people you love and three people you hate about this CD. I absolutely cannot do this without you. You all are my eyes and ears. My street team. My cheerleaders. The people that love my music and support it with all they've got. Without you I'm nothing, baby!!! And I will do my part in getting the word out to as many people as one person possibly can. Together, we'll make "Introducing... ME" a success. Thank you for all your positivity. I'll talk to you soon.
Peace.
-Stephen
P.S. You bring the drinks, I'll bring the clams and I'll meet you on Pismol Beach, Peter!
-Stephen
Let me start this blog off by stating I got the strangest phone call last week. I was sitting at my desk at home, furiously working on CD stuff when my phone rings. I don't immediately know who it is, so I let it go to voicemail. (As an aside, I'm very big on screening calls when I don't know who the person on the other end is. It's probably a habit I should break since the phone that rang was my business line. But I digress...) It went to voicemail and someone left a message. Fantastic. I LOVE screening calls! (On a business phone? Not so smart, but anyway...)
I'm gonna paraphrase right now because I erased the message (more on why later) but it went a little something like this:
"Hi Stephen! This is Peter Wells, Senior Vice President of Tunecore. I happened across your blog and I wanted to tell you that I went through the back door at i-tunes to see if you are up and running there and sure enough you are! Oh, and I made a comment on your blog as well. So all is well and you're good to go on i-tunes. Thanks for using tunecore, and if you ever have any questions, we're here to help."
A couple things rang through my mind as I listened to the message:
1) "This has got to be one of my friends playing a practical joke on me. All the while, taking hits from the bong and giggling as they hang up the phone."
The reason that went through my head is because I had told a few of my "bong-friendly" friends about the Sentence Of Despair. Plus it was Sunday around noon-ish and nothing makes Looney Tunes on Boomerang funnier than a good practical joke.
2) "How many times has anyone in this Universe gotten a personal phone call from a Senior Vice-President of a company to let them know their CD is up and running?"
The answer to that question is : Unless you're raking in Madonna dough for LiveNation on the soon to be resurrected Sticky And Sweet Tour, no Senior Vice-President is gonna call you on a Sunday afternoon when they could be out golfing.
Then things went from strange to downright crazy. I decided to check the caller ID. For those of you outside of Oklahoma, we have three area codes: 405, 918 and 580. The area code that called me was not one of the above three. So now I'm going through my rolodex of friends to try and think of one that had the same area code as the one that popped up on my screen. Nobody came to mind. Then I went through my "Cheech and Chong with special guest Willie Nelson" rolodex and came up with the same answer. Nobody has that area code. So now I start to think:
3) "What if it isn't a practical joke? What if my friends are all passed out in front of the tv in a brown, purple, orange and bright yellow haze of Cheetos, Twinkies and dirty bong water?"
Even in the Bizarro Twilight Zone kind of world I sometimes find myself in, that seems unlikely if not downright impossible.
So what do I do? I decide to call the number back. All the while in the back of my head I'm thinking, "THAT old gag..." But I'm good for a laugh and in my head I've already forgiven my "wake and bake" friends for their tomfoolery. Still, it's not an area code I recognize...
"Hello," a man whose voice I don't recognize says as he answers the phone.
In that instant I knew it wasn't some silly gag my friends cooked up while puffing and passing.
"Hi, may I please speak with Peter Wells?" I ask.
"This is Peter." he replied.
"Hi. My name is Stephen Dillard-Carroll and you just left a message on my voicemail about my CD going live on i-tunes..."
The rest of the conversation was private and confidential - now you know why I won't even tell you what area code the phone call originated from - but it was one of those things that on paper sounds so crazy and out of the blue it can't be a work of fiction. Although I will tell you a few things I learned from the phone call.
1) Peter Wells is a real person. He actually works at tunecore and he's actually a SVP there. (And he gets obscure Bugs Bunny references.)
2) I found out that tunecore is not a giant conglomerate with nameless, faceless people running around and buzzing up and down a skyscraper building in some downtown metropolis somewhere. In fact, at its strongest it's probably 20 people deep.
3) I found out that should you sign up with tunecore.com and get your music out there online, you actually have to take the initiative to search the different websites on your own to see if you're "live" or not. I thought I would get an e-mail or a text message or a smoke signal to tell me I was live on i-tunes. Not so much. You actually have to take the initiative and search out these things for yourself. I have a feeling as tunecore grows and becomes an even greater success than it already is, that will change. But for now it is what it is.
4) Peter Wells has time on his hands. Time enough to search out obscure blogs in the far-flung reaches of the internet, comment on said blogs with answers to obscure Looney Tunes animation references and to actually call people back. It's the last part of that little jab (which I HOPE if he's reading this blog he found HYSTERICALLY funny) that I wanted to talk about a little more.
Family, it's no secret I've been around the block. (Some might even say my ass paved the block, but that would be oh so catty and wrong...) I've seen a lot of things and experienced a lot of stuff. There aren't a helluva lot of "first times" out there for me anymore. But I can honestly say without hesitation this is the first time a SVP has EVER called me first. Usually I've had to call and leave 30 messages before an assistant to the assistant to the SVP decides to call me back. This is the first time I've been called without having made the first move. Which is why this whole experience was so Bizarro World for me. And why I had such a hard time believing it as it was happening.
For the record, and I really MUST stress this, Peter told me he was taking a chance in calling me personally. It's not something they generally do for everyone. Which means, I don't want tunecore to get a BILLION e-mails that start out with, "Stephen got a phone call! Why didn't I get a friggin phone call?" Nor do I want to get a billion e-mails requesting Peter's private cell phone number. He asked me to delete it from my phone and I did. I don't have it. And even if I did, I wouldn't give it away. It's not mine to give and I respect his privacy. (Plus, I wanna continue to trade obscure Looney Tunes references with him. And if I gave his phone number away, I'm positive I would get an e-mail from him with only one sentence in the body: "Of course you know, this means war.")
I have already thanked him privately for calling me and letting me know, but I thought I should say something publicly about the customer service that tunecore provides. Should February 25th have come and gone and I didn't know for sure what was happening with my CD, I would have eventually clicked the "Contact Us" button and inquired. And after last week's experience I am positive someone would have e-mailed me back asap. To say I am thoroughly impressed with tunecore.com is the understatement of the year. As always, I would certainly advise you to read as much as you could about the company and make a smart decision based on your business needs as to whether or not you will use them. But as for me, I'm sold on them.
Since last week, I've also found out I am live on www.amazonmp3.com. YAY!!!
I'm also live on www.shockhound.com. YAY!!!!
As of Friday, February 13th, 2009, stephendc.com is live. YAY!!! PLEASE check me out there. Zach Burch did the website design for me and I couldn't be more pleased. He's loathe to put his own personal stamp on websites, instead directing people to his online portfolio. So since I'm in a "shamless plugging of everyone I know and love" kind of mood right now, you can find him here:
http://www.coroflot.com/zachdburch
I cannot even begin to tell you how impressed I am with his professionalism, hard work and excitement for my project. If you are looking for a website designer and graphic designer for any artwork you may have (he designed the artwork for the CD which I'm hoping will be available in physical form at your local mom & pop CD store very shortly) then look no further than Zach Burch. I had my choice of designers and I'm glad I chose the right one for my needs. Check him out for yourself and see if he won't fit your needs as well.
I got my business cards! YAY!!! As I told you in my FedEx Kinkos blog, I decided to go with Office Depot. Family, they did a bang up job on the business cards. It was exactly what I wanted, how I wanted it and everywhere I needed it. So even though Office Depot IS a giant conglomerate, I'm gonna plug them too. As always, check them out and make a smart decision before sending me an e-mail that says, "YOU TOLD ME TO GO TO OFFICE DEPOT AND NOW MY LIFE IS RUINED...." They were fantastic to me and were exactly what my business needed. So check them out.
This week, I sent out a mass mailing to everyone I've ever sent an e-mail to in the last 10 years to tell them about my CD. I've gotten nothing but positive feedback and for that I am eternally grateful. If you are not on my mailing list and would like to be, by all means send me an e-mail to hello@stephendc.com. Or you can always comment with your e-mail addy to this blog and you're automatically part of the family.
So now that I am live on i-tunes, shockhound and amazonmp3.com all that's left is rhapsody and napster.com. In the meantime, I have to promote the hell outta this CD. You can help me out by telling all your friends, neighbors, relatives, people you love and three people you hate about this CD. I absolutely cannot do this without you. You all are my eyes and ears. My street team. My cheerleaders. The people that love my music and support it with all they've got. Without you I'm nothing, baby!!! And I will do my part in getting the word out to as many people as one person possibly can. Together, we'll make "Introducing... ME" a success. Thank you for all your positivity. I'll talk to you soon.
Peace.
-Stephen
P.S. You bring the drinks, I'll bring the clams and I'll meet you on Pismol Beach, Peter!
-Stephen
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