BUILD LOG
Everything happening at The Studio, one long running list. The two-year vision lives at the top, every win and milestone lands below. Big launches get a ★. Follow along.
Here is what we want to build with this company. Ambitious on purpose, and every bit of it in public.
Every song, lyric, stem, dashboard, and dollar, public. The playbook is the product.
Dave is learning 5 instruments in a year and writing 50 songs in public. Demos today, debut album tomorrow.
Six teenagers, one little yellow short bus, five days at Pine Lake Camp. The Original Cast Recording and Dlaney's debut, First Light.
Real listeners, real views, no shortcuts. Then we 2x it and go again.
One piano challenge, learned in public, one day at a time. Currently on day 67.
MusicBot, the Equalizer, the BPM Tapper. Small things, built well, free forever.
Vocalists, a producer, a social media partner. Real pay, fully remote, working in the open.
Canvas packs, consulting calls, and more ways to support the work directly. Artists keep 100% of royalties.
Newest first. This log grows every time we ship something.
Canonical URLs are now all lowercase: /studio, /dlaney, /sally, /sallyjournal. Capitalized versions redirect to the lowercase pages, so old links keep working.
The journal now lives on its own page at /sallyjournal, and /Sally is her full artist page, in sync with /Dlaney. Old /sally links redirect to the journal.
Total views and total plays now sit at the top of the dashboard in giant type, so the two metrics that matter most are impossible to miss. The project cards sit underneath, unchanged.
Clicking Listen Now on the five featured songs now opens a SoundCloud player under the song and starts playing, no new tab needed. Clicking the song title still opens SoundCloud.
Everything in the open on one page: the numbers at the top, the two-year vision, the live builds, and this full build log.
The Follow the music footer nav now links TikTok alongside Instagram, YouTube, and SoundCloud.
The little ↗ arrows across the site now force text presentation, so iPhones render them as clean text arrows instead of emoji.
The homepage open-source card is now a behind-the-scenes card ("Come take a look behind the scenes"), linking the full behind-the-scenes doc, moved down between Short Bus and the tools.
The "Send Dave a DM on Instagram to learn more about our recording studio" paragraph is gone from the homepage about section.
thestudio.io/es/ is the homepage in Spanish, translated automatically on load, with a flag toggle to switch back to English. Send it straight to Spanish-speaking friends.
The two album covers are wrapped in square frames that hold a perfect 1:1 box in every browser, no more stretched or cropped covers on phones.
"Read the full story" now pops the whole story open right under the button instead of jumping to another page.
The homepage footer is a clean three columns now: the "Good music" statement with the hiring pill under it, Explore, and Follow the music, with a copyright and Legal line along the bottom.
The vocalist and producer shortlist cards on the hiring page are now one minimal reference block at the bottom of the page.
The homepage "From Cattle Farm to Silicon Valley" section is now a tight strip: one short paragraph, four photo thumbnails, and a link to the full story on the behind-the-scenes page.
We opened /hire-vocalists: Millicent (gospel), Zamar, and Joel are available to sing on your songs. Send Dave a DM on Instagram to book them.
A 🇲🇽 button in the homepage footer now translates the whole page into Spanish. Gracias, Gloria.
Sally got her own page: her story, her songs, and her journal, at /sally.
Two products on day one: the Spotify Canvas Pack ($50, we turn your clips into looping Canvas animations) and a Marketing Call with Dave ($99, up to an hour). Browse the store.
Pick a song, play the easy notes. Real notation for beginners, transposed to C major with the letter name under every note. Try it.
A full-screen live mic visualizer: play music out loud and watch it dance, in four color schemes. Watch it move.
A Few Thoughts, Thoughts on Kindness, and the Short Bus kids book, all rebuilt for reMarkable e-readers.
Characters, story, songs, and the full kids book, all in one place at /shortbus.
Short Bus: 11 of 15 songs recorded. First Light: 5 of 10 songs recorded. Progress bars are live on the Albums page.
Lead Me Lord, Find Your Island, and Lift Me Higher are out on YouTube. Watch them.
Dave is learning piano in public, one day at a time. Two thirds of the way there.
The 11-page open source guide and the First Thousand Streams research guide, published free for any artist to learn from.
The two about-section photos now sit side by side instead of stacking. The mission panel and the closing quote merged into one section: "We are building the studio we wish existed," then the mission, the poster, and the manifesto link. Store moved out of the header nav (still in the footer), and the language flag now sits right next to Legal in the footer.