I’ve been working behind the scenes getting a new website ready to launch, and starting to dip my toes more into social media (I could only hold out for so long, as it turns out).

I’m starting a series of weekly update videos on YouTube, which will share a bit more about what we’re doing, in a friendly format with some music from recent gigs. They’ll be short and sweet and I’ll try not to waffle any more than absolutely necessary.

Don’t forget to like and subscribe, as the kids say!

TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome to the Mood Merchants YouTube Channel, and this is the first of what I hope is going to be a whole series of weekly updates that I’m going to start creating.

My name’s Dan, and I’m the person who runs this business. I wanted to use this channel a bit more of a social media feed, and a source of information and news and updates and so forth, about what’s happening with the band, but maybe a little bit about what’s happening with me as well.

In the past I’ve used this channel as basically a video host, for music videos, so I’d make music videos when we were on gigs and then I’d post them onto the website so that people can look and check out what we’re doing, and that’s all worked pretty well, but at this point, I’m getting ready to relaunch the website, and I’m trying to get the business going again after Covid, basically.

So as a part of that, I’m trying to get a bit more social media happening, and YouTube’s a medium that I feel reasonably comfortable with, so I’m starting with that, and I’m going to have to expand into some other socials later on. I’ve sort of resisted that up until now. I’ve relied on my website, which is ten years old, and it’s doing its job okay, but the online world, as you might be aware, has changed a bit since then, and I’m going to need to change with it.

So I’ll be using the YouTube channel a bit differently from this point forward. I’m going to be trying to post every week, just about what we’ve been doing, a bit about what I’ve been doing, both within Mood Merchants and within freelance stuff, which I’ll talk about a bit later on.

In this last week, we’ve had our first gig back again since lockdown’s lifted. That was a wedding for Natalie and Anthony, and that’s the music that you’re listening to now. It was in a venue Metropolis, which is at the top of Southbank looking out over the city. Nice venue, nice people, and Dave and Craig and myself setup there. We did just an hour of music this time, for pre-dinner drinks, and then the DJ took over, which is not unusual for us. We do quite often play, obviously, the whole wedding reception, but it’s pretty common also that we just come in and do an hour like we did last Friday night, and then they have other music organised for later on. So for us, this was a pretty relaxed way to get back into doing things again after a pretty long break this time around.

So we’re going to get more bookings, obviously, going forward, there are certainly some in the diary already and hopefully they’ll keep building up over time, and I’ll be sharing more footage from them, and keep you updated on what we’re doing.

I’m also working on a website redesign. That’s working pretty well, it’s a bit of a tedious job for me, I’ve got to admit, but it’s getting there and it’s looking pretty good and I’m happy with how it’s going. A few slightly different concepts from the way that I’ve used it in the past. So that’s going to take me maybe another month or so, I’m guessing, to get ready, and then I’ll be sharing that with everybody.

So that’s it for this update. Thanks if you’ve made it this far, and maybe I’ll see you again next time.