Billy Darnells Blog

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

Hey evrybody,

I hope this post finds you all healthy, wealthy, and wise. If it does your 3 steps ahead of me!  : )

Do you all have any idea how many internet radios station there are out there, or how many music sites there are, how many podcasts are available, how many forums on country music?? I do, because I’ve been researching them for the past 3 weeks. The number is unbelievable. I spent the last 4 or 5 days contacting about 50 of them, to only end up with about 15 that were worth their weight in salt. It strikes me as not too good a ratio. The bad news is you spend a lot of wasted time signing up, filling in all the information they require, Just to find out that, when you get in, all that good stuff they bragged about on their home page is available only when you pay an extra cost for them. The good news is there are probably over a million more of them available to apply too.

However the website or the albums are now posted on about 20 other locations, like myspace, isound, soundclick, songramp, artistopia, and a whole lot more. We picked up another Radio supporter today, and that’s a real good thing, well two actually. One is a show in Australia, and the other if your a big country music fan you might know, It’s the Jerry Mac and friends show over at www.countrymusicplanet.com, they broadcast from 4PM est to about 8pm est, and he took 4 songs which he started playing today , and he requested hard copies of the 2 cd’s which are already in the mail to him, so apparantly he liked the songs and I got a feeling he is going to be a real big supporter, and do a lot of good for us by getting the music out there for the world to hear. We have cd’s on the way to 2 other dj’s, and several podcast dj’s we are sending music to tommorow.

The group thing isn’t going as well I thought it would, and I doubt I will pursue any more of those. Most have very little posting activity, or so much your post gets lost in the pile, they don’t seem to realize that the quality of the information is more important than the quanity. If your going to use groups, the MSN groups in my opinion are the most useful. They are usually pretty active and they do a good job of maintaining the post boards. They aren’t filled with advertisements and porn like the yahoo groups tend to be.

I can’t update you with how “Don’t Hold On To A Memory” did this week, because Ram Radio hasn’t posted their top 30 yet. They had to bring in a new broadcaster just recently, and it’s gonna take a little while for them to catch up.

All in all things are going good and more than meeting my expectations at this point. We had some sales this week and thats a real good thing! By the way, have you gotten your copies of the cd’s yet, or purchased that favorite single?  ; )  Thats how every performer in the business evaluates his fans, and his worth, by the sales. It’s the only way to measure the  popularity of the music he offers. Combine that with the fact that, that’s how the bigger radio stations, and other distributors decide if your worth adding to their lists, and it’s even more important.  So if you haven’t gotten around to it yet, there’s no time like the present. : )

 One last item then I got to get back to the grind. This blog is meant to be , not just a journal for me, and to let our fans know what’s going on, but it’s also done to allow you all to participate and have some input to me. If you all have a suggestion, or a comment that might help us do things better or more efficiently, or you have some promotional knowledge and would like to share it, theres a comment button at the bottom of this page, click on it and share your views. Any insight or help you might be able to give as far as how to better promote this site and the albums would be deeply , deeply appreciated. If nothing else it lets me know I ain’t typing to myself or the wall.

Thank you all for your support

 Your friend,

Billy Darnell

Well I have spent most of labor day, laboring, trying to find a blog program I could get installed properly, and learn how to use. I hope this is it , finally. I am not going to say too much here because I don’t know yet if it’s even going to post properly. This is sort of a test run of the blog. God I hope it works.

For a quick capsule type thing I want to say how Happy I am that ” Don’t Hold On To A Memory ” has maintained it’s #1 position on Ram Radios chart for the second straight week!! Unbelievable.

We are currently in promotion mode at Billy Darnell Music, and starting the process of getting the news out about the new website, and the Release of our second album “15 Yeras Later”. I thought getting this far was a lot of work, but it now appears the real work has just begun! I would like to say ” Thank you “  to those of you that have been watching the progress and have been talking up myself, my music, and this website, at different forums and groups. I really appreciate it and it makes the job of promotion so much easier when you guys do that so , “Thank you” for your help and support. It is very much appreciated, believe me.  

 Ok lets see if we can get this darn thing attached to the website some how.

Talk at you very soon in the future if we can.

Billy