Actually, I think I have a very decent story to tell.
Sometime in September 2006, I had finished recording my music CD and was shopping for a replication service. My father, who is a successful jazz musician and saxophonist (in "the day", played with Elvis, The Doors and has been on 2 world tours), told me about his very positive experience using Disc Makers. As a result I gave Disc Makers' service a try. Previous to that decision; however, I had shopped for other disc manufacturing services. Ultimately I was most impressed with the production quality from Disc Makers. (I had the advantage of having my father's CD in hand and could see the quality.) I wanted to do it first class and decided not to "skimp." I went for a full-color brochure with photos and lyrics.
My initial advisor with Disc Makers was extremely patient and friendly…seriously…not just saying that. Within no time, I had all of my materials ready for replication, thanks to his clear explanation of what I needed to get going. My project manager was just as efficient. Then, I was honestly blown away with the professionalism and attention to detail received by the Design Studio. I'm a really picky guy, so I know the Design Studio must be excellent because we were done with the design in no time! I was ready to start my project.
As a brief explanation of my background in music, I had some experience writing music for a few television shows (music cues for NBC and MTV) but had never released my own CD with vocals.
I first tackled college radio and by the end of an 8 week campaign, was added to approximately 100 college radio stations across the country. In college, they don't use radio singles, but actually take the entire CD and play the tracks they wish to play. So from my initial run of CDs, a bunch were used to send out to colleges. I was happy with those results, since the college crowd is very selective.
I never intended on quitting after the college promotion. I sort of used that as a litmus test to see how my music would be accepted. I figured college would get me some good feedback. Since I planned on going to commercial radio after college, I felt that the college radio experience would help me select a single. Commercial radio is the opposite of college. You have to promote one single, and the CD sent to those stations MUST be replicated, not duplicated, and contain no other songs on the disc. I knew in advance that would be an additional manufacturing process so I wanted to carefully select the single off of the CD. The singles were a breeze and were completed and delivered by Disc Makers in about one week.
I chose a song called "Firefly" and soon after college promotion, I used a service to promote it to 1,300 movie theatres across the U.S. It was played before and after the feature in the theatres and also in the lobbies. I knew right away that I had made the right choice on the single when I started receiving positive emails from people who had heard it in the theatre. They knew where to write me because the track contained a voice-over announcement before and after the song played. it contained my website in the announcement and thus I was receiving complimentary emails on the site. This lasted four weeks.
I immediately then hired a commercial radio promoter (took me a while to choose one…this was a tricky step). Long story short, my song "Firefly" went to #8 on FMQB's Top 40 / Adult Contemporary! That's based on a 200+ commercial radio station market. It stayed on that chart for 18 weeks! I never expected that. Needless to say, the hits on my website grew substantially.
I then filmed a music video for the song, which was just recently finished. Within one day of posting "Firefly" on YouTube, it was ranked with the honor of being the #17 Most Linked music video. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwXimV10n-s) Then, on July 12 YouTube ranked "Firefly" as one of the Top 100 "Most Viewed" music videos on YouTube that day! The following week, I received a notice that it was in the Top 100 Most Linked music videos for the WHOLE WEEK! I was amazed. (Still am.)
Most recently, based on that success on YouTube, I was contacted to sign a licensing agreement to have the entire CD licensed to networks MTV, VH1, CMT, MTV2, MTV Jams, URGE, MTV Latin America, VH1 Classic, VH1 Soul, VH1 County, VH1 Megahits, Nickelodeon, Nick At Nite, TV Land, Noggin, mtvU, MTV Russia, Comedy Central, Spike TV, LOGO and others!
Bottom line is, to this day, when I sell CDs, I'm always proud of the quality. It looks great. Of course, I didn't know what would come of the CD, but in retrospect, I'm glad I didn't "skimp.” It just gave my whole project a polished finish and I have no regrets!
