The plan

Two Year Vision.

Two Year Vision

October 2026 - September 2028

From the Studio Master doc. Updated September 29, 2026.

Part 1: The first 90 days (October - December 2026)

The dream

The Studio becomes a public experiment in turning healing into art, with radical transparency as the medium. We reach kids and adults who have been through a lot, the ones carrying heavy things from childhood, and we give them songs, stories, and characters that say: you are not broken, and you are not alone.

The scoreboard that matters: one stranger sends a DM and says our music moved them. Then ten. Then a hundred true believers. We do not chase viral. We earn one person at a time.

Where we stand, honestly

🎵 Song production: 39 songs sketched in Suno, 11 to go to reach 50. The sketchpad is full; the gallery is still being curated.

🎬 Video: now quality-first. Seedance and higher-quality pieces before anything lower effort. Warm Music is on hold, off the schedule, until you say otherwise.

📚 Book writing: three books in motion, none published yet. A Few Thoughts (needs your review, cover, ISBN), Thoughts on Kindness (in live production with you), Short Bus Kids Book (latest build delivered, art queued).

🤝 Partnerships: engine just started. Songs of Love email sent, four more drafts waiting on your wording.

📧 Substack: "Dave Craige" is at 982 free subscribers (Aug 2026 stats). The first two emails go out this week and next, then monthly. Email subscribers are now a key dashboard metric.

🎨 Brand: identity built daily in ChatGPT, maxing the image allowance every day.

📊 Scoreboard: about 1,053 plays banked of the 5,000 goal. About 20,370 views banked of the 50,000 goal. Both now sit on the dashboard next to email subscribers.

We are further along creatively than operationally. These 90 days are about proof, not scale: a small number of undeniable proof points that the emotional thesis works.

Month 1: October. Proof of soul.

Theme: finish things. October is the month open loops close.

Month 2: November. Produce and open the doors.

Theme: make the thing, and let people in.

Month 3: December. Release and gather stories.

Theme: put it in front of humans and listen.

New on September 30: the Studio opens up

Two changes that reframe everything above:

The Studio is an open source, super helpful non-profit-style studio that helps musicians. That is the plain-English version of the dream: we help people make music, we do it in the open, and we are genuinely useful. And the site now says it out loud: the homepage hero is "100% of the royalties go to you, the artist," and the whole site runs on one design system, one nav, one footer, in English and Spanish.

Three projects live underneath it, with the door open for more. Dlaney (the flagship artist: 20,370 views, 1,053 plays and counting, learning in public), Sally (the songwriter character, posting twice a week, the bridge to the core audience), and Short Bus (the musical). The /dlaney/ page now carries a Books section with both books live (A Few Thoughts at /thoughts/, The 400 Hour Workweek at /400/) and a simplified email signup. And the open door is real: thestudio.io/join invites new artists in, with an "Add yourself here" card right on the /studio/ page next to Dlaney and Sally. We are open to more artists joining us. The label grows by invitation and by challenge, not by hunting.

The Dlaney Challenge: we pay people $20 to make music. We put up $100 for the first five people. Two tracks, either one earns the $20: learn an instrument for 60 days (one post per week showing your progress), or get your first song written, worked on, and up on the internet. Live at thestudio.io/challenge, with a promo section on the homepage. The loop is the strategy: every challenger posts weekly, every post is a doorway into the Studio, every finished song is more goodness in the world and more streams coming back our way. We put out more goodness, and the goodness markets itself.

Evening of September 30: the site becomes the institution

The site caught up with the vision in one day:

One site, one system. Unified nav and footer across all major pages, full Spanish version with a footer language switcher, one design system everywhere. The homepage hero now reads "100% of royalties go to you." The /dashboard/ is a real scoreboard: 1,053 plays of 5,000, 20,370 views of 50,000, and 982 email subscribers on Substack, all with progress bars, in public.

Sally is a real artist now. Her page has a "Songs I've written" section with seven songs (She is Strong!, I am Good!, I have a Voice, Just Dance! / Sola Baila!, Our Names, Finding My Voice, Dear Momma), six of them playable inline exactly like Dlaney's rows. Her journal is live, her Instagram posts are embedded, she posts twice a week through November. Three more songs moved to her writing credit tonight; "Take 5 Breaths" was corrected to Chadwick's song (his calm-everyone-down song).

The props page exists. thestudio.io/props is live with an honest empty state ("No props yet. Be the first."). The first real quotes, from challengers and listeners, go there. This is the north star made visible.

Onboarding more artists and people is now a pipeline, not a wish. The challenge is the front of the funnel: challengers post weekly, finishers become artist candidates. /join/ is the door. The record-contract program (flat fees, artist keeps 100% of royalties) is the offer. The fellowship (a small cohort each quarter, full open-source releases, vinyl, the Studio's marketing engine) is the two-year shape of it. We also keep hiring the people who make it real: vocalists, players, producers, all in the open on /hiring/.

The engine that runs all 90 days

The scoreboard on December 28

The CMO: campaigns are how the Studio grows (added Sep 30, 2026)

The Studio runs on campaigns, not vibes. Each campaign is a clear offer, a timeframe, a hashtag, and a number we can check. The CMO owns the campaign calendar: what is running, what is next, what each one needs (landing page, posts, emails), and the retro when it ends.

Running now:

Queued up:

The CMO question (answered Sep 30): we have one. The "Studio CMO" side chat is staffed and Dave's call is to keep working with him. The CMO runs the campaign machine; Dave approves every public word before it goes out. The campaigns above are the job description.

The chairman's calls

The big ones that only you can make:

  1. EP: leaning 8 songs, Dave's call Sep 30: "it doesn't really matter... we'll just keep working on it." Not a decision to agonize over. Note: the Short Bus musical has ~10 songs, and the First Light album will have ~10 songs.
  2. The audience ritual: "Letters to Sally," "The One Person Project," "The Bus Stop," or "Why I Needed This Song."
  3. The front door: where does a stranger start.
  4. The public phrase for the core audience ("cancer kids" stays the loving insider term).
  5. The workshop: a date and a room.
  6. A Few Thoughts: pick the final cover, then we start the ISBN and Amazon path.

Smaller things waiting on you:

  1. Launch the $20 challenge: one Instagram post from you announcing it (draft on request).
  2. Sally posts 3 and 4: approve the exact captions (produced, in ~/workspace/sally/).
  3. The props page: you said you'd work on it, say the word if you want me to draft the first quotes.
  4. Dear Momma: it is not on SoundCloud, so Sally's row can't play yet. Say the word and we upload it.

(Supabase dropped Sep 30: Dave's call, no Supabase, the Vercel dashboard already works.)

That is the 90 days. Proof of soul, then production, then release. One person moved at a time, all of it in public.

Part 2: The two-year vision (October 2026 - September 2028)

The 90 days prove the thesis. The two years build the institution. Everything ladders up to three things: touch lives, make world-class music, and make enough money that the mission funds itself.

The three pillars

1. Touch lives. The north star never changes: one stranger sends a DM and says our music moved them. Then ten. Then a hundred true believers. Then thousands. Every project gets measured in goodness first: stories collected, messages saved, people who found a song that said "you are not broken, and you are not alone." By September 2028: hundreds of "your music moved me" messages on record, a living Letters to Sally community with thousands of stories, Short Bus performed for real audiences of kids and families, and partnerships with the organizations that serve them running on trust.

2. World-class music. The sketchpad becomes the studio. Real instruments, real vocalists, real mixes. Dlaney goes from prompting songs to playing them. The catalog gets flagship singles with full open-source transparency. The Short Bus EP becomes a stage production. Outside artists release on the label. By September 2028: a catalog we are genuinely proud of, vinyl on shelves, and a production operation (vocalists, players, mixing) that runs like a real label.

3. Make a little money. Not empire money. Mission money. The $5 VIP funds the work directly. The record-contract program runs on simple flat fees where the artist keeps 100% of royalties. Books sell. The toolbox earns goodwill that converts to supporters. By September 2028: the projects pay for themselves, the mission has a bank account that grows, and nobody wonders how the lights stay on.

Year one: October 2026 - September 2027. Prove it.

Dream big. The 90 days prove the thesis; the year builds the institution.

#### Months 4-6: January - March 2027. Make it real.

🎵 Song production: the top 3 Dlaney songs by play data get remade with real instruments in Ableton on the studio Mac. You playing, not just prompting. "Lead Me Lord!" gets its flagship single campaign in February with full open-source transparency: costs, process, numbers, all public.

🎭 Short Bus: the December workshop feedback folds into script v2. The EP gets a themed follow-up collection.

💿 Two albums, finished and on vinyl: Short Bus (the original cast recording) and First Light (Dlaney's debut) are both done by end of March. Real mixes, real masters, and physical vinyl pressings ordered. The albums page on the site becomes the label's front window: stream it, see exactly how it was made, buy the record.

📊 Proof: in March we publish the six-month story: what we made, what it cost, what we learned, who it moved. First 1,000 streams on the remade releases. Then we decide what Season 2 looks like, on the record.

💰 Money: the $5 VIP launches alongside the six-month story. First paying supporters. The question we answer: will strangers fund this? Even 100 supporters at $5 is $500 of proof.

#### Months 7-9: April - June 2027. Open the label.

🏷️ The world's first fully open source record label goes live. Every song, lyric, stem, dashboard, and dollar public. Five-dollar VIP access to everything. The 15-year vision starts charging.

🎤 Dlaney Season 2: new songs, real instruments from the first sketch, the learning-in-public story now starring a musician, not a beginner.

💌 The audience ritual compounds: "Letters to Sally" (or whichever ritual you pick) becomes a living community with hundreds of stories. The One Person Project runs monthly, one listener's story at a time.

📚 Books: all three published and selling. A Few Thoughts and Thoughts on Kindness in print, the kids book in homes and maybe schools and waiting rooms.

💰 Money: the record-contract program opens: flat-fee releases where the artist keeps 100% of royalties. First outside artist signed. Label services become a real (small) revenue line.

#### Months 10-12: July - September 2027. Scale the proof.

🎪 Short Bus on a real stage: the workshop becomes a full production, or the definitive staged reading, filmed and released to the world.

🌍 The audience crosses borders: the music finds the people it was made for at scale. Collaborations, translations, covers by other artists. The open-source label invites its first outside artist to release with us.

💰 Money: year-one books close in public. VIP supporters in the hundreds. The toolbox has thousands of monthly users. We publish exactly what the mission cost and what it earned, and the gap is shrinking.

Year two: October 2027 - September 2028. Compound it.

Year one proved the thesis. Year two compounds it: more lives, better music, real money.

#### Months 13-15: October - December 2027. The label grows up.

🏷️ Label: three to five outside artists have released with us. The flat-fee model is refined in public. The catalog passes 100 released songs.

🎵 Dlaney Season 3: you are a musician now. Real band recordings, live shows, the piano arc a distant memory. A second flagship single campaign.

💌 Touch lives: Letters to Sally crosses 1,000 published stories. The first "your music moved me" messages arrive from strangers in other countries.

🎹 Toolbox: 25,000+ monthly musicians using the tools. The toolbox is now the biggest front door to the Studio.

💰 Money: VIP crosses 500 supporters. The label's flat fees cover the cost of running the label. The mission stops being a money pit and starts being a money engine, a small one.

#### Months 16-18: January - March 2028. The stage gets bigger.

🎪 Short Bus: licensed to schools and community theaters. The first productions mounted without us in the room. That is when you know it is real.

🤝 Partnerships: formal relationships with a dozen youth-serving organizations. Not sponsorships. Trust, built over a year of showing up.

💰 Money: the label's releases earn their first meaningful royalties (all to the artists, as promised). VIP crosses 1,000 supporters. The mission's bank account grows three quarters in a row.

#### Months 19-21: April - June 2028. World-class, on purpose.

🎵 The craft peaks: the best-sounding record we have ever made. Real studio, real players, mixed and mastered at a level that stands next to anything. This is the "world-class" receipt.

🏷️ The fellowship: the record-contract program becomes a proper artist fellowship: a small cohort each quarter, full open-source releases, vinyl pressings, the Studio's marketing engine behind them.

💌 Touch lives: the community starts running itself. Survivor stories become songs. Songs become someone else's survival story. The flywheel spins without us pushing.

💰 Money: books, VIP, flat fees, and the fellowship all contribute. No single line makes us rich; together they make the mission self-sustaining.

#### Months 22-24: July - September 2028. The two-year reckoning.

📊 We publish the two-year story: every song, every dollar, every lesson, every life touched. The most transparent retrospective in music.

🎯 The scoreboard: hundreds of "you moved me" messages. A catalog of 150+ songs. Thousands of VIP supporters. Tens of thousands of monthly tool users. A stage musical with a life of its own. And a small, real, growing bank account that says the mission can continue.

🔭 What comes next gets decided with two years of evidence instead of hope.

The bigger bets of the two years

The incredible studio. The Studio stops being just a label and becomes a real recording studio, physical and digital. Real vocalists (we are already hiring them), real instruments, real mixing and mastering. And the record-contract program goes live: any independent musician with their first 1,000 streams can sign with us, release fully open-source, and press real vinyl. The Studio becomes the place small artists go to become real artists, and every signing markets the Studio to a new audience.

The Dlaney Challenge. What starts as $100 for five people becomes the Studio's goodness engine. Every year, hundreds of people get paid a small amount to do a big thing: learn an instrument in public for 60 days, or get their first song written and onto the internet. Each challenger posts weekly, and every post is a doorway: their friends and family discover the Studio, some of them take the challenge next, a few become artists. It is the cheapest marketing ever invented, because it is not marketing, it is generosity. The two-year sketch: 500 challenge completions, 500 new musicians, thousands of posts pointing at the Studio, and a reputation as the place that pays you to start.

The musician toolbox. We are already building tech tools in the open: MusicBot, the BPM tapper, the equalizer visualizer. That becomes a real suite living on thestudio.io: chord explorers, practice tools, songwriting helpers, the tools we wish we had on day one of learning music. All free to use, all open source, all built in public and improved by the musicians who actually use them. Every tool is a front door to the Studio.

The $5 VIP. One payment, five dollars, full access forever. For the people who use the tools constantly and want everything behind the curtain: the complete data, the full process, every number, every lesson, the entire open-source package plus VIP-only depth. No ads, no sponsors, no gatekeeping. The supporters fund the mission directly. (The grand vision says this eventually becomes $25; we start at $5 and earn the raise.)

Short Bus, the musical. From workshop to stage to schools. The story of the kids on the bus becomes the Studio's flagship work of art and its most powerful goodness engine: performed for real audiences, licensed to communities, living beyond us.

Two albums on vinyl. Short Bus and First Light, finished in the first six months and pressed as physical records. A label that ships vinyl is a real label. The open-source package covers the pressing too: what it cost, how it sounds, where to get your own made.

What we want to achieve in two years

Touch lives:

World-class music:

Make a little money:

Two years from a sketchpad to an institution that touches lives, makes world-class music, and pays for its own mission. That is the dream, and every 90-day block is a down payment on it.

Appendix: What ChatGPT suggested we consider

From our conversation with ChatGPT (Sep 30, 2026) in the "World-Class Studio: One-Year Plan Deep Dive" chat. We attached this doc and asked it to forget caution and give us the most ambitious two-year ideas it could, organized under our three pillars. These are its ideas, not our decisions. They are here so we can consider the most ambitious version of the vision.

ChatGPT's framing of the ambitious version: "The Studio becomes the first global, open-source music institution where anyone can transform their story into art, where artists keep ownership, where fans become participants, and where every dollar directly funds more creation. That is a category that does not really exist."

Touch lives: ChatGPT's ideas to consider

1. The world's largest "Story to Song" project. Real people submit a memory, a struggle, a hope, someone they miss, something they survived. The Studio helps transform selected stories into songs, poems, illustrations, short films. The person becomes part of the art. ChatGPT's pitch: "the emotional equivalent of Wikipedia," a permanent archive of human experience. Year 2 sketch: 10,000 submitted stories, 100 turned into finished works, 12 "Story Albums" released (e.g. The Things We Carry: Vol. 1, songs from people who survived childhood trauma).

2. Give away 1,000 songs a year. A program called Your First Song: each year the Studio helps 1,000 people create their first song, with a songwriting guide, free tools, community feedback, optional AI assistance, and publishing help. Not hit songs. Proof that creativity belongs to everyone.

3. The Studio Fellowship for young creators. A year-long program for kids and young adults who have been through difficult things: music, storytelling, instruments, recording, mentorship. Ends with an annual album (The Next Generation). The radical part: the kids are not beneficiaries, they are artists, with ownership, credit, and royalties.

4. The Studio traveling bus. A literal bus, a mobile recording studio, visiting hospitals, schools, communities, and youth organizations. People record songs, stories, memories. "The physical embodiment of Short Bus." The documentary writes itself: "Over two years, one bus traveled across America helping people tell their stories."

5. A global Day of Making Music. The Studio Day, one day a year, a global creation event, not a concert. "Make something. Share something. Encourage someone." Year 2 sketch: 100,000 participants, songs uploaded, stories shared, local meetups. The Studio becomes associated with creativity itself.

World-class music: ChatGPT's ideas to consider

1. Build "The Studio Sound." Every great music institution has a recognizable sound. Define a sonic philosophy (emotionally honest lyrics, cinematic storytelling, human imperfections preserved, hopeful endings, real instruments, beautiful simplicity) so every release feels connected.

2. The Open Source Orchestra. A global network where anyone can contribute piano, guitar, strings, vocals, percussion. A song starts at the Studio, musicians around the world add parts, the final song credits everyone and everyone owns their part. Piano from Denver, violin from Tokyo, vocals from Nashville, drums from Brazil. A truly global record.

3. The Studio Sessions. A legendary performance series with Tiny Desk energy and Unplugged intimacy: one artist, one song, one story, recorded beautifully. The difference: the story comes first, the song second.

4. The 100-Year Catalog. Institutions think in archives, not albums. Push the open-source promise all the way: every song preserved forever with stems, lyrics, production notes, artwork, story, and financial data. A museum of modern creation.

5. The Studio Artist Incubator. Not "sign artists," build them. A six-month program (songwriting, recording, performance, storytelling, community building, transparency). Artists leave with an album, a documentary, an audience, and ownership. The Studio becomes the place where unknown artists become great.

Make a little money: ChatGPT's ideas to consider

1. The $5 VIP becomes a membership movement. Reframe from "premium access" to Studio Founding Members: "For $5/month, you keep the doors open." Monthly transparency report, early music, live sessions, community gatherings, voting on projects. The pitch: "You are not buying content. You are helping create it." Ambitious sketch: 10,000 members is $50,000/month, enough to fund meaningful work.

2. The Open Book financial model. Publish every dollar: revenue (VIP, books, services, licensing, donations), expenses (equipment, musicians, production, operations), and impact (songs created, people reached). Nobody else in music does this. It becomes trust infrastructure.

3. The Studio Marketplace. Musicians offer mixing, mastering, lessons, songwriting help. The Studio takes a tiny transparent fee. Artists keep ownership. The goal is not transaction volume, it is a healthy creative economy.

4. The Studio Certification. Long-term: Studio Certified Artist, a creator who commits to transparent credits, fair treatment, open process, and ownership. Not a genre, a philosophy. A creative fair-trade certification.

5. Mission-aligned partnerships. Not ads, not sponsors. Partners who believe creativity helps people heal, funding fellowships, the traveling studio, and community programs. The rule: they support the mission, they do not control it.

ChatGPT's one wild idea above all others

The Library of Human Songs. A permanent open-source archive where every song has a human story attached, every story can inspire another song, every creator owns their work, and every person can participate. Over decades: millions of stories, millions of songs. "The Studio becomes not a company. A cultural memory project."

ChatGPT's suggested addition to the doc

It suggested adding a fourth sentence under the three pillars: "The Studio is building the world's largest open-source archive of human stories turned into music." Then every decision gets tested against three questions: does this touch lives, does this create great art, does this help the archive grow sustainably?

Its closing line: "The ambitious move is not adding more projects. It is realizing the projects are all pieces of one giant idea: The Studio is not making songs. The Studio is proving that every human story can become art."

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