Everything we know right here in this document!

🎯 The Studio is an open creative company.

The Studio is Dave Dlaney's creative company. Its record-label project is an experiment in building the world's first fully open source label, where songs, lyrics, stems, data, dashboards, money, processes, and lessons become public. Dlaney is the flagship artist, learning five instruments in a year and writing 50 songs in public. Other projects include the Short Bus musical, Strive Capital, and Craige Consulting.

📖 The short story

Dave Dlaney grew up on a cattle farm in the middle of nowhere. At 15, before he could drive, he started a web design agency. After his teenage years he moved to New York and spent time in New York City. In college he started a book-reselling business, then an entrepreneurship community that became Honest Forum, which evolved into Denim Blog, the largest jeans website on the internet, reaching 25 million people. He worked six months in India and six months at an orphanage in Bolivia, then sold the company and did consulting. Now: The Studio.

📊 All the numbers, even the small ones.

Campaign goals are 5,000 streams across streaming platforms and 50,000 views across YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. These are dated snapshots, not live counters. “Total streams” combines listening platforms, while catalog plays below refer only to the 39-track AI song tools catalog.

The Sep 27 baseline was 1,045 streams and 21,000 views. Instagram views use a rolling 30-day window, so the view dip reflects the window shifting, not views being removed. At the Sep 27 baseline, YouTube had 11,707 lifetime views across 17 videos, TikTok had 12 followers, 108 likes, and 15 videos, and Instagram reported about 74% non-follower views.

🎵 Thirty-nine released experiments.

This is the public working catalog: released sketches with the artist voice and observed play count kept visible. This snapshot records 958 plays across the 39-track AI song tools catalog. “Warm Music” led with 93. Dave's top five on September 29 were Lead Me Lord!, Find Your Island, She Is Strong!, Warm Music, and Just Be Cool!.

📝 Lyrics, drafts, and rough edges.

This songbook opens each title into a readable lyric sheet. The released versions sit next to works in progress. Stage directions and production notes are kept because they show how the songs were made. Search by title, character, or style.

Released set

New originals in progress

The Short Bus musical

Origin-song rough draft

🎤 Our characters are our team.

The Studio has twelve characters. Each one is a musical act with a distinct voice, sound, and point of view. Together, they are the cast and the team behind the music. Five of them also do the real work of running the creative company: Dlaney, Chadwick Blaze, Marty, Dinesh, and Mira.

🛠️ The tools, and what each one is for.

The stack follows the work from an early song idea through production, visuals, release, measurement, and documentation.

⚙️ How the work moves.

This is the current operating loop, from fast experimentation to a focused campaign around one song.

What we will not do

• Fake streams or botted playlists. Platforms can strip them retroactively, charge fraud fees, or close accounts.
• Pay-for-playlist scams. A guaranteed placement is the warning sign.
• Buy-real-plays vendors, vanity-metric packages, or pay-to-enter contests.
• Claim that music is therapy, or promote inside survivor support spaces.

Give-first partnerships

The partnership lane is benefit songs, free music for events, and support for organizations already serving children and young adults. Outreach is drafted carefully and reviewed word for word before sending. The long-term relationship should never feel transactional.

💡 The catalog is telling us what it wants to become.

These are working conclusions from the songs, response patterns, and weekly practice, not fixed rules.

The themes that keep showing up

1. Faith and surrender. Lead Me Lord!, Eyes Up!, Oh My Lord!, and Lift Me Higher form the strongest lane and Dave's favorite.
2. Island escape. Sunshine becomes a philosophy: leave the noise and find your place.
3. Kindness as strength. The “strong” songs feel the most authentic and offer the best Spotify material.
4. The creative life. Songs about making songs.
5. Comedy and play. Marty keeps the catalog from taking itself too seriously.
6. Love. The thinnest theme and the largest writing opportunity.

What is working

An unmistakably positive voice. Simple, singable hooks. Specific lines people remember, such as “If you're 5'10, then be 5'10” and “1+1 is 3.” Spanish, French, and Swahili create a real edge. The songs about strength feel the most deeply meant.

What needs work

Repeated choruses need to develop. Generic filler lines dilute specific ones. Dynamics need to build instead of sitting at one energy level. Several songs cover the same “believe in yourself” territory, so remakes should favor the most distinct ideas.

The missing songs

There is no truly sad or bittersweet track, almost no narrative song, very little love material, nothing rooted clearly in Denver or the piano challenge, and no minor-key, late-night 2:00 AM track.

Sustainability beats intensity. Finished beats perfect. Music first, content second. Stay curious, kind, optimistic, and encouraging. Never build attention through sarcasm or rage.

🔜 The honest gaps.

This is the public queue for source material or verification still needed. This document grows only when the underlying work exists. Nothing below is being invented to make the archive look complete.

📖 Why The Studio exists.

The Studio brings more than 30 years of Dave Dlaney's work under one creative company and one standard: world-class people, world-class work, and execution at the highest level. Its record label is the music project inside that larger company, built around a simple open-source promise. Songs, lyrics, stems, tools, numbers, dashboards, money, experiments, mistakes, and lessons should be available for other people to learn from.

From the cattle farm to the studio

Dave grew up on a cattle farm in the middle of nowhere. At 15, before he could drive, he started his first startup, a web design agency. He later moved to New York City, spent six months working in India, and spent six months at an orphanage in Bolivia. Those chapters shaped a recurring belief behind the work: ambitious ideas matter most when they stay connected to real people.

The public music experiment

Dlaney is the flagship artist. The one-year mission is to learn five instruments, write 50 songs in public, and share what happens along the way. The aim is not to pretend every experiment is finished work. It is to make, listen, learn, improve, and leave a useful trail for the next artist.

🤝 Want in? Come build with us.

We are a small team and we stay busy, but the door is open. If you want to get involved, make music with us, or just learn how the work happens, you are welcome to send Dave a DM on Instagram for more information about how to get involved.