Happy Un-Holidays! Santa Doesn't Like You 2019

Happy Un-Holidays from your friends at Beatnik Turtle -- even though Santa doesn't like you.

Yep, just in time for the holidays, we've put together a new extended version of one of our live show favorites, Santa Doesn't Like You. Hear it now -- available on Spotify, Apple Music, Google, YouTube, and more.

Beatnik Turtle Turns 20! TheSongOfTheDay.com Turns 10!

Happy 2017!

The band is celebrating 2 things this January 1, 2017. First, Beatnik Turtle turns 20 years old January 1st. Second, the band is celebrating the 10th anniversary of TheSongOfTheDay.com.

That's right -- 10 years ago tonight at midnight Beatnik Turtle launched its boldest project to date: releasing 365 songs, one song for each day of 2007.

The site is still alive and well. It's been kickin' tunes weekly since January 1, 2008. And, we're leaving the site "as is" so it's an artifact to the world wide web circa the mid-2000s. So, if you visit it, prepare to step back in time. Before iPhones, VR, AI assistants, self-driving cars, and Uber.

Happy New Year! Here's to a music-filled 2017!

The Best of The Song of the Day -- Completed!

Over 7 years in the making, The Best Of The Song Of The Day is completed and on it's way to digital stores and streaming services everywhere.

With the band back in the US (a couple of them went to Ireland, remember?), they regrouped to revisit, remix, and remaster 44 of the most popular and best geek-rock songs from the band's TheSongOfTheDay.com project. That's 12%of a year’s worth of music, man. 

Here's the official story behind the double album:


Beatnik Turtle, dubbed “remarkably prolific and fiercely independent rock group” by NPR, has created 19 albums and produced countless compositions for TV, commercials, films, podcasts, and theater productions (including Disney, Viacom, and Chicago’s world-famous Second City). But in 2007, they decided to take on a major creative challenge: release one original song for every day of the year. They succeeded, and the result was 365 songs totaling 14 hours 57 minutes and 22 seconds of music that crossed genres, topics, and styles, all based on their horn-powered geek rock sound. 

Beyond the hundreds of thousands of song plays the project generated from it’s TheSongOfTheDay.com site, many of their songs found lives of their own outside of the project. For example, their song and video for “Star Wars (A Film Like No Other)” got played in heavy rotation at StarWars.com and AtomFilms, culminating in SpikeTV highlighting and broadcasting the music video in 2008. Other songs were licensed to documentaries and other creative works, featured on radio stations, videos, and played on podcasts all over the world.

After their massive project finished on December 31st of 2007, ending nearly two years of constant in-studio work and songwriting sessions, Beatnik Turtle decided to take some time off -- a month. Once February of 2008 hit, they were right back at it in the studio recording what was to become their award-winning celtic rock album of Irish pub songs, Sham Rock. 

Since 2008, the band continued to produce. Beyond writing, recording, and releasing new, original music via the Web, Beatnik Turtle took on many other projects, including releasing three music business books with major publishers (Macmillan, Random House) -- including the second edition of The Indie Band Survival Guide (Remixed and Remastered) -- traveling to Europe to perform, composing commissioned theme songs for TV shows, and, of course, writing even more music.

With The Best Of The Song Of The Day, the band wanted to take the time to revisit fan favorites from the project and give the music the studio time and mastering the very best songs deserved. In this album, you’ll find 44 fan and band favorites. But it’s not just a remastered album -- Beatnik Turtle went back to the studio to revisit the songs, energize them with new vocals, additional instrumentation, and other parts that they always wanted to include but didn’t have time to during the brutal schedule the project demanded. This album allowed them the freedom to go back to the masters and “put on the polish” that some of top and most popular songs deserved.

The result is The Best Of The Song Of The Day, containing songs about machines trying to take over the world, odes to coffee and going commando, a nine part rock opera about ordering a pizza, and much, much more.

Buy the best of a year's worth of music, all in one double album: “One band. One year. 365 songs. 44 of the best. 12% of a year’s worth of music.”

A New Project

A funny thing happened on the way to releasing all the backlog of material and upcoming albums we've been working on and preparing to release...

- When I Was Your Age (recorded 2009)

- The Best Of TheSongOfTheDay.com (Double-Album!) 

- So Much To Rock About (recorded 2010) 

- Remixes (In A Heavy Syrup) (recorded this year)

A completely new music-related writing project just knocked two of us in the band upside the head (Randy and me, Jason). So, he and I are focusing all our energies that way so we can “give it our all” like we did with our IndieGuide.com site and our books, The Indie Band Survival Guide and The DIY Music Manual.

If you're a musician who follows us, you may have noticed that we’ve put the IndieGuide.com blog, some of our social media (Twitter, Facebook, Google +, etc.), and the free How-To’s on “pause” for the time being. That’s because we’re changing things up going-forward as we share our research from this project. Of course, we’d like to hear your feedback as well as we work to elicit ideas, get your success stories, thoughts, and ideas.

A big thank you to all those who have written to us with their comments, suggestions, and compliments regarding the book. We definitely appreciate it -- it keeps us motivated and it’s the very reason why we’re rolling up our sleeves now and diving into research and writing.

Oh, and in between writing, we'll continue to master and prepare the above albums. There's a lot of us in this band, you know.

More Radio Plays!

Our album Sham Rock has been picked up by two more radio stations! The radio station at Whitman College (KWCW) in Washington state has songs from the album playing regularly on its Global Gumbo show. The show is a multi-genre collection of world music from all corners of the globe. Also, Sham Rock is on medium rotation at the University of Pittsburgh (WPTS) for the next eight weeks! A big thanks to the music directors at these stations for their dedication to playing independent music! 

Redesigned the Site!

We've been silent for awhile, but that's because we've been working hard behind the scenes re-designing our site here and also working on our forthcoming albums (When I Was Your Age and The Best Of TheSongOfTheDay.com). It also didn't help that two of us moved to Ireland in the meantime!

We still have a bit to go on the website (we're currently fixing the plumbing of beatnikturtle.com so it points here), but until that time, please enjoy our Beatnik Turtle Radio. Since we've got hundreds of songs, we designed it so each hour the playlist changes. It's been updated with even more songs. And, like a real radio station, the DJ is powerless and the computer figures out what to play!

Launch BT radio now.