3 Years and Growing-SocialStars World Wide 3rd Anniversary
Evolution of SocialStars World Wide
We are happy to be celebrating our 3rd year of SocialStars World Wide and Thank everyone that has made this possible! We are over 5k fans and still growing strong. To celebrate I want to give everyone the history behind how SocialStars began and take you on a journey through the last 3 years.
To get to know how SocialStars was formed you have to know who I am and my story. I got my start in radio nearly ten years ago, doing broadcasting on a Sports radio show that me and my best friend helped grow into a successful podcast. We had great success developing a daily sports broadcast that went on to be played on ESPN radio along with several large market affiliate radio stations. After leaving the radio show, I started practicing graphic design and wanted to use my skills that I learned with radio and graphic design to pursue new avenues. I always loved music and I was really into social media and making new friends.
The first few artists that I met were Caitlin and Sidney from Neoni(formerly Facing West), Karianne Jean and Sara Olsen. I became good friends with all of them and that was the beginning of the best friendships I had ever had. Each of them had dreams and aspirations to become world renowned musicians. They was and still are my greatest inspirations. I have so many great memories with each of these artists. They all stood behind me and encouraged me to do great things and to help others.
I began using what I was learning in graphic design to help do promotions for my friends. I began sharing music and creating ads and posters. This was something that I enjoyed doing and it allowed me to begin growing. I met more artists and was making a lot of new friends in the music industry. Through encouragement and determination I wanted to create a brand for what I loved doing and I wanted to get more involved and branch out to more artists. At the same time that I began promoting my health was taking a turn for the worse. I was a single father trying to raise two teenage boys on my own. I lost my job due to medical reasons and being unable to work. I had several surgeries and medical problems that I was fighting and music was the one thing that kept my spirits up and my mind occupied. Music's healing power is remarkable! My friends were so supportive of me and kept me in their prayers which helped me through recovery from all the surgeries.
So I began working on a brand for what I would call my new family of friends and artists. I knew I loved being on social media and all my friends were stars. So I came up with the name SocialStars and that would be the platform I would build off of. I created a logo for my brand and presented it to some of my closest friends and they all loved the idea of what I wanted to accomplish.
SocialStars is Born
I have always enjoyed writing and journalism, so I decided to start doing interviews with different artists. It was a great way to use my graphic design, writing and advertising skills all together. So I done my first interview with my best friends Caitlin and Sidney from Neoni(Facing West) and then went on to do interviews with Karianne Jean, Alayna Carroll, Chloe Caroline and many more. My interviews were beginning to get noticed by others and this created many new relationships. Kore PR and MTS Management both approached me to do interviews with artists they managed and it became a great new outlet for my brand.
I became friends with Michael Stover of MTS Records and Management. This was my first professional outlet into the music industry and I consider him to be a mentor in my career.
Not only was I doing interviews and promoting for many artists, but I began writing also, even though I am no musician or artist, my love of writing lyrics became something I have wanted to do and still dream of having my lyrics produced someday. Not knowing if my writing was good I submitted a few to Rachel Cristaldi of Nashville Song Service and she gave them really good reviews.
The emotion has been captured and expressed well which is important because emotion is how people connect with music.... "Stronger" is a lyric we'd be interested in working on with you.__Rachel Cristaldi Nashville Song Service
This was a great review that really gave me a confidence that I could someday have a song produced that I had wrote or been a part of writing. I have written maybe ten or so lyrics to date and still aspire to achieve my dream. But promoting Indie Artists has always been my main focus and it has been the basis of my entire platform. Helping spread the love of music will always be the focus of what I do.
SocialStars Through the Years
Since our start in May of 2016 our family of SocialStars has really grown larger than I ever expected. As seen in the picture above is a list of a handful of artists that have been members since we first began and I have had the pleasure of seeing many of them grow as artists into truly world class performers and entertainers. I call this photo above my wall of fame! Artists like Gabby Barrett who went on to charm us all on American Idol, Ali Brustofski who has had a long successful career, Maggie Baugh, Chloe Caroline, Dallas Remington, Wild Fire, Diamond Dixie, Alyssa Baker, Andie Case and so many more have been Featured Artists throughout the years.
In 2017 we set out on a new journey to host our first annual online awards show! It was a fun and learning experience and a new adventure that is going into it's 4th year and still getting larger. The first year had very few categories and looking back it was very disorganized but at the same time we had fun and the artists involved were excited to be recognized for their achievements over the year. See the video below to see the highlights of the awards!
In June of 2017 we officially launched our website which was a big achievement also. This allowed another outlet to share the music of our family of artists, it allowed us to grow larger and become known as a promoter of Indie Artists from all over the world. Along with this change came logo design changes, new promotions and a step into the future of the music industry. The hours of building a brand was beginning to show it's growth and with that came more responsibility and work to keep the growth going.
In August of 2017 we began our Featured Artist of the Month contest and crowned Dallas Remington as the very first artist. Since then we have crowned many other artist in our monthly contests including Amanda Cooksey, Liddy Clark, Diamond Dixie and Jennifer Mlott. At the end of 2017 we had our Featured Artist of the Year contest in which Liddy Clark won through a fan voted contest!
I also went on to work with Dallas Remington on her single "Found Her Freedom" in which I had the opportunity to create a lyric video for her debut release. This was a great honor to be able to help with her release and do promotions for the single. Dallas Remington is one of my long time friends so to get to work with her was an experience that I will never forget. Check out the video for "Found Her Freedom" written by Dallas Remington and Amanda Cooksey.
In 2017 I also took a trip down to Nashville on a whim to see the debut release of "Catch Me" EP by Maggie Baugh at the famous 3rd and Lindsley and met her and her family who graciously treated me like a good friend that I was to Maggie. I also met Megan Golden another member and artist that I was familiar with and had talked to prior to meeting her. I was excited to run into an artist that I knew. After the concert with Maggie I went to another well known location called Belcourt Taps and listened to several sets of writers rounds in which my best friend Karianne Jean was playing. So an overnight trip to Nashville turned into a mini dream vacation. I got to meet several of my friends and made a few new friends along the way. I explored a city that I had never really got to see and the experiences were memories that I will cherish for a lifetime.
2018 was a year filled with new featured artists, new promotions, new milestones and achievements. SocialStars was nominated in both the Nashville Universe Awards and in the Josie Music Awards for Promoter of the Year. Being recognized in both was an honor and it was an unforgettable experience.
We was also honored by World of Women dot com for our work in promoting female musicians, many of the artists are also featured on their website. Having our twitter feed shared on their site was a huge honor to be among all the fantastic artists.
In January we was all geared up for our 2nd Annual Best of 2017 Awards! This was a huge undertaking to make it bigger and better then the previous year. We rolled out with a good voting platform and added many new categories. This was also the year that we came up with the SocialStars Global Award a symbol of excellence and recognition. Many new artists were included in the 2017 Awards along with returning artists from 2016. See the list of artists in the picture below.
101 Different artists in 15 categories! It was an amazing event filled with fun and music as we played a song/video by each artist in our day long presentation and awards ceremony! Fans got to enjoy in the fun and rang in on our social media pages to congratulate all the nominees and winners. It was a long event that took months to culminate into one large event online. I could not have been more happy with the way the awards turned out, it brought artists and fans together for a memorable event. See the gallery below for all the winners in each category and our special awards recipients.
2018 brought a whole new class of monthly featured artists renamed to our "Just Push Play" Artist of the month. "Just Push Play" was a new concept that we rolled out on our website! Each of our monthly winners has a "Just Push Play" badge on their profile on our website that when clicked on will take you to the artist's playlist on YouTube!
The star studded lineup of monthly winners included Wild Fire, Celeste Kellogg, Jimena Arroyo, Madison Mueller, Chloe Caroline, Jessie Lynn, Abbi Scott, Heather Whitney, Forever Still, Dakota Rhodes and Franki Love and our Featured Artist of the Year was fan voted winner Jimena Arroyo.
All in all 2018 was an exceptional year for great new music, growth in our number of members and new horizons that were met. I became a member of the ISSA(International Singer Songwriters Association) in 2018 and have met some really great new artists.
To end the year out we began accepting nominations for the 3rd Annual Best of 2018 Awards all through the months of November and December through a whole new platform. This years categories were expanded once again with many new categories added and the number of artists in our awards was increased by almost double of that which we had in 2017. We continued to give out the SocialStars Global Award but redesigned it for the the year with minor changes. 2 rounds of voting was also incorporated. The top five from each category moved on to the finals round and fan voting decided the winners in each category!
The 2018 Online Awards Ceremony was the largest event turnout to date in SocialStars history and we managed to top the previous year with fan and artist interaction. SocialStars was trending on Twitter during the day long event! This was such a memorable event in my career. I could not have done it without all the fans and artists that participated. Below you can see the winners in each of the categories including our special award winners.
In 2019 we changed our monthly featured artist platform to Social Super Star of the Month! Currently we have had 3 Social Super Stars this year! Mikalyn, Jayna Jennings and Rylie Lynn are the first 3 winners of the year. We currently have a fan vote Social Super Star contest going on with 8 new nominees.
Throughout the years I have held several promotions, contests, artist interviews and let's not forget all the holiday cards that we have sent out to our artists. It has been challenging at times to keep up with all the new artists and music that has came out, but I hope that you all enjoy the content we provide and want to Thank each and everyone who is a subscriber to any of our social media. You are all SocialStars and our doors are always open to everyone.
Moving into the future we look to expand even further. SocialStars World Wide Radio is coming soon which will bring us another great way to share music, news and upcoming promotions to a wider range of fans from around the world.
Thank you so much to everyone who has made the last 3 years a success! I am truly grateful and hope to create so many more great memories in the future! Please share with your friends and leave a comment to let us know you was here!
