Jody Whitesides

Author: Jody Whitesides

Digital Empire Music Release and a Year of New Music

Looking into 2026 it’s already a year with wild amount of opportunities sprouting up. Waiting to hear final word on a commercial looking to use some music. New music every week this year! Creating more cool items for my store. Another new song release called Digital Empire, And Improved communication from me.

Spent yesterday getting a few new items up and running on the store. Including wall posters, and more transcriptions of songs. More items coming soon.

The bigger switch is I’ve opted to offer up free shipping on all items, worldwide! I want all purchases to be as easy as possible. Don’t worry about the shipping, it’s on me.

Sadly as much as I wanted Publicity and Digital Empire’s releases to have their animated art on release day, there’s been some difficulties beyond my control and I’m waiting on external forces to correct the delay. They were in on time and you can see them here on my website, until they’re on Apple Music.

BTS I’m getting another batch of animated covers ready for releases several months from now. As I progress, I’m getting bolder on the cover art ideas and I’m hoping I can pull them off. Time will tell if the vision is too bold to make happen.

This week’s song is Digital Empire. It’s quite apropos for what I’ve been building and all the fan oriented updates I’ve been adding to the website, store and email system. Building a Digital Empire bit by bit.

Are you part of the Jody Army, on the email list? There’s new stuff happening there too. I’ll make it worth your while to join.

In the mean time I’m about to hit New Orleans with a Jazz band. More amazing things coming next week.

2026-01-06
Why 2025 Changed Everything: Music Tech, Direct Fan Connection, and What’s Coming in 2026

Goodbye 2025, it’s been nice knowing ya. But I’m damn glad to give you a swift kick out the door. There’s been some awesome highs and a few horrid lows. Here’s looking at 2026 with delusions of grandeur while giving a 2025 review.

Starting with the road of improvements. This year brought a massive redesign of my website. Part of it is thanks to building a new backend and more advanced server. The tech part has been more blessing than curse, and I happy about that.

Along with the redesign came the added feature of bringing the email list under personal control, where there isn’t a 3rd party with prying eyes. Plus I’ve added features of fan levels. A lot of work but worth every painful minute of frustration that now works as intended.

Another massive feat was releasing music every week. Talk about a massive undertaking, and I’m finally getting into the swing of it. 2026 will see more of the same, new releases every week. What’s more awesome is how my website can integrate each new release with the fan list.

The music releases are also building to Atmos versions. Which is exciting and fun. They bring back the giddiness of what made music feel special when I was growing up. Which is exciting.

Along with the music releases are the new animated covers. Sadly it’s only Apple Music that currently does animated covers. Though non Apple Music users can still see the animations right here on jodywhitesides.com.

Getting used to the new tech of it wasn’t all smooth sailing. There were some tragic setbacks. For every step back it’s been three steps forward. And with just a puzzle piece or two left to complete the entire picture, I’m stoked with what I’ll be able to announce in 2026.

It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of the clown show in the White House. That has been a tremendous bummer. What makes it worse is having to inadvertently see it and hear about it every day. I like it better when politicians are not a constant never-ending news cycle.

Which leads to the ironic lead off single for 2026: Publicity. A song all about what it takes for fame. Good news, bad news, it’s all fake news. Oh what a prophetic lyric that became. That now comes with the updated mix and master you can now get right here in full studio quality. Not that watered down streaming.

So yes, I want to engage you more on a personal level. Not via social media, but between you and I. Which is what all the work in 2025 was for, to make 2026 a year to really shine for the music and the direct connection between you and I.

I’m telling ya, 2026 is gonna be bright.

2025-12-30
Christmas Brought Me You: Memories, Music, and Creative Growth

Getting around to the Christmas spirit of 2025. What a wild and crazy year it’s been. Lots of changes here in JodyLand and at my web domain. Of course in the spirit of the holidays it’s been four weeks of holiday oriented music.

It was an undertaking years ago to think thru a Christmas Past, Present and Future concept musically speaking. I had this notion that I had to be the one to do it, since no-one had musically done it before. Recording one album in a year is an undertaking, at least it was prior to AI.

Add two more albums on top of that and it became a mad dash to get it done under the wire. In fact it released right before Christmas in 2006. In hindsight it would have been better hold off the release and done a bit more work on it for 2007.

Fast forward to 2021 for a Pickleball themed Christmas party. I was on a court with friends and one friend in particular put Christmas Future on. As I was dinking around in the game, I said to myself: Self! It’s time to do it again.

I put on the engineer’s baseball cap, dug out the files, and jumped into revamping the mix, added some extra holiday percussion, and dropped it again in 2022. It didn’t stop with Christmas Brought Me You, it continued with the entire 3 album release.

The crafty artistic side of me delved into a way to make each album stand slightly apart from the 2 others in the trilogy. Not just via the songs chosen, but by how they got remixed. Which meant using different recording consoles based on the era the music represented.

This particular song has been the theme to the longest running Advent Calendar Vlog, Grant’s Advent Calendar. It’s created a special crowd thanks to Grant! Always look forward to his original takes on opening his Advent Calendar. Which has spawned copy-cats.

Stay tuned for next week’s recap of 2025, until then enjoy your Christmas, you holiday, your whatever-you-do time to be with loved ones.

2025-12-23

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