When we started Whillo back in June of this year, we launched with a small collection of audiobooks (mainly for young families). We’ve since been producing new books every month and it has been encouraging to see the growth in listeners.
These audiobooks were just a small beginning however…
We really wanted to build up a collection of audio for both children as well as adults. Although we are working towards adding more adult audiobooks to Whillo, one of the ways we want to provide great audio for our adult listeners is through music.
The problem was, we don’t know the first thing about music (other than the fact that we enjoy it).
So when musician Daniel Kim approached us several months ago to head up Whillo’s “music division”, we said “yes!”.
Daniel is a classically trained pianist with a rich experience in performance and orchestration. He has a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance from University of Lethbridge and his achievements include:
-Piano Concerto Gold Certificate from Calgary Kiwanis Music Festival
-Young Artist Competition Finalist with Lethbridge Symphony Orchestra
-Being a guest conductor at Lethbridge Symphony Orchestra.
Daniel has proven to be an incredible asset to the Whillo team. He has been working tirelessly these past few months to bring us not only original orchestral music of Psalters and Hymns, but he’s also been working with various singers and artists to produce some truly beautiful music. If you happen to see him around be sure to thank him for his hard work (or send him a quick note at music@whillo.com).
We’d also like to thank a number of other folks:
Brian Park who is working alongside Daniel to mix and master many of our tracks. Brian is a talented audio engineer who has the uncanny ability to take music recordings from “neat!” to “WOW!!!!”. Brian also takes care of carefully mastering our music so that tracks sound great on anything from headphones to vehicle sound systems and everything in between.
Keith Spencer: Daniel has been working with world-renowned vocalist Keith Spencer to produce a custom rendition of Amazing Grace. Keith has been blessed with a tremendous voice and together with Daniel they’ve made some incredible music for Whillo.
Emily de Visser, who has been working with the Whillo team to record a collection of classic Christmas songs at the University of Lethbridge recording studio. No small feat for an 11 year old singer! She has a clear, beautiful voice that we’re confident our listeners will enjoy (Emily’s complete album will be released December 2).
Helen Verhoef who has been recording a large number of Psalters on the organ (around 40 so far!). Helen is a very talented musician and music instructor and her organ music has been much requested by our listeners. We plan to complete the entire Psalter over the coming months.
Wynston Lyles who has been working on our Psalter singalong collection. We’d like to build up a collection of Psalters and Hymns that are clear and easy to sing along with. Let us know which songs you’d like Wynston to sing next!
The Albuquerque Mennonite choir has been very gracious in allowing us to use their collection of a capella hymns and Christmas songs. A special thank you to Brent and Gail Schmidt for their cooperation; it is much appreciated!
We’d also like to thank our app development team who has been working very hard behind the scenes to bring music to Whillo. Building a subscription/streaming app has been a surprisingly “tough nut to crack”, and although there are still a few kinks to work out it has been working for most of the subscribers that have already upgraded their plans.
We’ll be pushing out some app updates over the coming days/weeks to sort out the last few remaining issues. If you run into any problems when upgrading please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at support@whillo.com so that we can get you sorted.
➡️ To see our different audio plans, please visit our home page at Whillo.com
➡️ If you’d like to upgrade to a Whillo plan that includes music, please visit https://whillo.com/manage-your-subscription/ for details on how to upgrade/manage your subscription.
➡️ Also, if you already have the Whillo app on your smartphone or tablet, you’ll need to update to the latest version to see the music option. For details on how to update to the latest version please see https://whillo.com/updating-the-whillo-app
➡️ To listen to samples of the music available on Whillo visit https://whillo.com/music-catalog/ (we’ll be uploading additional tracks to some of the albums in the next few days and will update the catalog page accordingly).
Finally, a most appreciative thank you goes to YOU, our listeners. Thank you all very much for your support so far, and please reach out to us with any feedback and requests! We don’t always have a chance to reply to requests immediately but do know that we go through them periodically and base our production and licensing decisions off of these requests.
Also, if any of you have ideas for great singers or musicians that we should be working with please let us know. Whillo pays for music production/recording time with the artist as well as royalties on music that is streamed on Whillo. We are working towards building a very diverse collection of music and would love to hear your suggestions!
Happy listening!
