History
When my first son, Damian, was born in 1991, somebody gave him a personalized cassette tape with his name sung in three songs. The production quality was bad and the songs were not catchy. I thought I could do better, so I went to work in my studio and wrote 5 songs with Damian’s name sung 63 times. He was about 8 months old when I finished it. I put the cassette in the tape player and pressed play. When Damian heard his name in the first song, he crawled over to the speaker and listened. Every time he heard his name he started giggling. I was amazed that he seemed to recognize his name in the music at such an early age.
I called the album, My Personal Music, and geared up to sell personalized copies. My first customers were friends. My customer base increased as they shared it with their friends. Soon, I was recording new names in the morning and filling orders in the afternoon. The mail carrier that delivered mail to my office was a lady named, Linda. She asked what all the equipment was for and I told her about My Personal Music. She said it was a great idea and ordered two tapes for her grandkids. The next day she brought in orders and checks for some people on her mail route. The next day, she picked them up and delivered them for free. For nearly a year she brought orders and delivered them nearly every day.
There was a personalized children’s bookstore in Pier 39 in San Francisco that started selling them. The owner of the store would call everyday and place orders to be drop shipped to his customers. I soon had My Personal Music in 26 specialty stores.
In 1996 I stopped using cassette tapes and began releasing the music on CD. I changed the cover art. I came out with a second personalized CD called, Sounds of the Night, which was designed as a bedtime personalized CD. My daughter, Cheyenne, listened to it as she went to sleep for more than a year.
In the early 2000s, the Internet began to reshape how people do things. The music industry floundered for a while as digital downloads (including illegal downloads) began to replace records and CDs. Ultimately, streaming became the preferred way to consume music. But personalized music doesn’t work in the streaming environment. I struggled to find a viable solution for my personalized children’s music. I looked into creating a special app for it (which I may still do), until I found a music player that would do what I wanted it to do. The only thing I don’t like about it is the name – VLC Media Player. Or the icon:
I don’t know what a traffic cone has to do with a media player but that’s what they chose. I chose it because, because unlike other media player apps, it doesn’t bombard you with marketing stuff and it’s free. It simplifies the process of downloading music and playing it on any mobile device. It’s available for iOS, Android and Kindle.
I have reworked my personalized music collections and combined the two albums into one with nine songs. The child’s name is sung 113 times throughout the nine songs.
About Me
I’m Dan Curtis and I wrote and produce My Personal Music. In addition to creating personalized music for children, I have released 4 music albums, which you can find at my other website, DanCurtisMusic.com.