Jody Whitesides

  • From Zero to Website Store: The Exciting Roadmap of My Digital Music Empire

    From Zero to Website Store: The Exciting Roadmap of My Digital Music Empire

    It’s weird getting ramped back up. I don’t feel like I ever left, however that isn’t reality. With doing so much to get so much content together it’s been a super long road (a couple of years).

    A vast majority of that is all about getting an insane amount of music done and dressed up. Then all the little things that go with the music. Which right now is the cover art. I’m knee deep in that now.

    When I got into this business I never had a moment’s thought to using spreadsheets for anything music related. Such is no longer the case. I’ve got multiple spreadsheets covering a variety of music related stuff now.

    My biggest spreadsheet is one that covers all my artist released songs with all the relevant data that goes with them. A good portion of that is now visible on this website. Codes that travel behind the scenes with each song in the digital world. Those codes help artists like myself.

    Those codes also help services keep track of things as well. Which in turn helps artists like myself. They help us get paid whenever a song is performed or used. Which is a huge aspect to the modern music world. And it’s a major part of the nerd in me to turn around and let you in on this little weird part of the world.

    This week has a few more website tweaks that are bringing it into the final stretch of a full redesign. Plus it’s the launch of yet another single. This week it’s the Brooklyn Nets, and NBA team with a relatively recent city and name move, along with a new look. Which is also part of the ‘music’ page, a new background video. There is one more tweak to the music page to make it better for you – however, I need to finish something else first.

    My website store is back up and fully running. I’m still working on adding some additional goodies for you. It’s exciting to see it finally coming to full fruition. There is one more aspect to the website store that I’m hoping to tweak, maybe next week it will be considered completed.

    Until then, enjoy the music and be prepared as there is whole lot more coming for a long time to come.

  • Fresh Animated Cover Art Drop! ‘Do You Want to Play Dallas Wings’ is Here!

    Fresh Animated Cover Art Drop! ‘Do You Want to Play Dallas Wings’ is Here!

    The updates are still continuing. Another song released: Do You Want to Play Dallas Wings. The WNBA is taking flight with yet another team.

    If you’re coming to my site for the first time, at the point of this post – then you wouldn’t know that my site was getting stale. And that even though last week I had mentioned that my site was essentially 99% done with the update I launched a few weeks back.

    This one is fun. I have been doing animated covers for Apple Music. As more and more of the releases come out, there will be more of them coming. As you may have noticed on the front page, the cover is animated. Several others of recent release that have the animated covers have now been updated as well.

    Doing the animated covers is a nice subtle way to make something interesting. Having started it, my determination is that my background video for music pages is horrendously way too busy looking. Which means, by the next posted update (in a week) there will be yet another change. This one will be getting planned out and executed this weekend. It will be less busy, but interesting to watch.

    I’m doing the animated covers because it’s fun to make little tweaks that keep me thinking – what is coming next?

    Sadly, I’ve been learning that some android phones can’t see the animated covers. Then if I put the type of video that google is pushing, it causes Safari for iOS to crash. We’re in 2025 and these stupid device platforms still can’t come together for a 20 second video?!? Enough to make one scream. I have heard that some androids can see it, so all is not lost.

    Here’s the thing: I like tweaking things. Woodshedding them. Getting bit refined. Working better and looking better. As a creatively driven human – that is my jam.

    Stay tuned for more refinements, most of which you may never notice.

  • Next Steps

    Next Steps

    What a wild rush. I’ve been working on so many things in the past month that it’s a literal whirlwind of musical mess.

    My weekly releases are well underway. So far they’re scheduled all the way out into June at this point. Hard to imagine based on the number of years I’ve been in this journey. Once upon a time you spent time creating a full album. Spent even more time working on the marketing, the release, a tour, etc. Now it’s more like constant creation. Which is fuckin hard.

    The largest recent change has been the website. I had roughly 95% of it done when I wrote the last update. As of Monday night 2025/03/10, I got another major bit solved. That bit… being able to load lyrics and song information with a click on the title on any music page.

    Places like Genius, MusixMatch or Lyricfind are awesome resources and I do attempt to keep my lyrics passed along to them. However, what better place to get the actual words I sang on something than right here on my website.

    Beyond the lyrics, for those nerds like myself, there is a plethora of additional information for my songs (not necessarily for any covers I may have released). You can find running time, copyright information, ISRCs, ISWCs, registration codes, etc. It’s the super geeky shit.

    On the underside of the music pages there’s going to be a rotating video background. It’s harder to see on a phone which is fine because it’s probably a bit more distracting than it should be. However, on a desktop or possibly an iPad you get the fuller experience. I will be changing them fairly regularly going forward.

    Still working on the storefront / shop area, but it is in working order.

    Musically speaking, I’m about to be getting full on into 360RA mixes. Those along with all the Dolby mixes I’ve finished will be releasing in the future. Likely towards the end of the year. Immersive music is really damn cool and starting to get really good even for headphones.

    More good things coming…

© 1997-2025 ON RECORDS