Ok 2020, you can go get F√ç∆∂! now.

Happy New Year! I've been extremely fortunate to have kept quite busy in an otherwise miserable year.

Here are just a few highlights.

STATS! STATS! STATS!

According to Podtrac - which measures this kind of thing - six series I created sound for in 2020 were among the Top 25 most downloaded new shows of the year. They were:

#6 - Dr. Death Season 2 - Dr. Fata
Dr. Death S1 was the most downloaded new show of 2018

#7 - GURU - The Dark Side of Enlightenment

#11 - Blood Ties - Audio Fiction Drama

#13 - Joe Exotic - The Tiger King

(technically, we made and published "Joe Exotic" in the summer of 2019 - but it was republished in 2020 to take advantage of the buzz that would be kicked up by the Netlflix Doc. Looks like it worked! )

#16 - Do No Harm - w/NBC News

#18 - Bunga Bunga - The Rise and Fall of Silvio Berlusconi

You may notice all of these series were produced by Wondery which had 11 total new shows in the Top 25 of 2020. They are a hit machine and it's great to get to work with such talented people on these series. If you're interested in how the sausage gets made I plan on creating a few "Favorite Scene" posts featuring scenes from these series - so be on the lookout for those.

Surprising to me (in a good way) is the high performance of Blood Ties which is an original Fiction Audio Drama.

Historically speaking “Audio Drama” has not been as popular for listeners as Documentary / News & Information type series. The performance of Blood Ties is a great sign that the Audio audience is maturing and increasingly willing to turn to Audio content for the same kinds of storytelling they get from TV & Film. Oh and btw - season 2 of Blood Ties was made remotely during the early months of the Covid-19 lockdown.

AFTERSHOCK!

While I'm talking about Fictional Audio Drama - this year I completed work on AFTERSHOCK - a 10 episode original Audio Drama starring Sarah Wayne Callies (The Walking Dead, Colony,) David Harbour (Stranger Things, Hellboy, Black Widow) Jeffrey Dean Morgan (The Walking Dead, The Good Wife, Watchmen Film) and several other amazing performers from TV & Film. Aside from a few remaining minor details, I have 10 episodes of exciting, well-acted, highly produced Audio Drama ready for your earholes! Coming to your favorite podcast App on July 14th!

We created the pilot in early 2019 - got financing for the full series a few months later, got voice actor recording started in late 2019/ early 2020, and then -COVID!! So the production had to move remote like everything else. I finished post-production for all ten episodes in Sept 2020. It didn't take every minute of that time to make the series - there were long periods of inactivity due to scheduling conflicts, Covid etc... BUT this series finally sees the light of day on July 14th, 2021. So be on the lookout for that. I will definitely post about it.

PODCAST MOVEMENT 2020

The annual huge podcast conference was originally slated to meet in Dallas in Oct but had to move virtual this year. I was fortunate to get to do a short session on Scoring & Music Supervision for Podcasts. I shared the virutal stage with Music Supervisor Scott Velasquez. We talked about our work on Bunga Bunga and took questions from attendees. If you have a pass to the conference, the session was recorded and you can watch it in the PM library.

BRANDED

I worked on a few branded audio projects in 2020 - including a few new ones. The thing with "Branded" content is that it's very easy for it to play out like a long-form commercial for the brand paying the freight.

One very note-able exception for me this year is BEING SEEN

On the surface BEING SEEN is an 11 episode interview series focused on the gay and queer Black male experience. It's hosted by author and activist Darnell Moore. Moore is a Director of Inclusion for Content and Marketing at Netflix. So where is the "brand"? The series is supported by ViiV Healthcare whose primary focus is on HIV care and treatment. They smartly host these conversations which benefit the community rather than making the series about themselves. What's special about the series is the voices and stories told - and each episode is as thoroughly designed and produced as any of the big event mini-series for which I create sound.

My favorite episodes are Episode 4 and 11 but the entire series is ear, eye, and mind-opening.

2021

A lot of things going on already for 2021: more event mini-series with Wondery, AFTERSHOCK will get published a few branded things continue some new ones will launch.

I'm also working on building and leading teams to launch a few new series that are just now starting to take shape. International in scope, these could be very exciting and I can’t wait to get them up and running.

Maybe you and I can collaborate on something?

Let me know - I look forward to hearing from you!