Happy New Year (2025 edition)!

It’s crazy to think that it was less than a year ago when I was kicking around the idea of starting a YouTube channel to talk about Christmas music. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was making, only that I love Christmas music and I find it deeply interesting the emotional response, the nostalgia it evokes. And then how ad wizards and marketing sages attempt to capitalize on it to sell you things like cars, jewelry and soup during the holidays.

I released my first video on March 1st 2024, a look at the first Christmas album that I remember from my childhood - Disney’s Christmas Favorites. That same day, I received a message from Gerry D, host of the Totally Rad Christmas Podcast asking if this was a new Christmas podcast. And before I even had time to decide if this could be a podcast, he had invited me into the Christmas Podcast community with wide open arms.

So my first thank-you goes out to Gerry. Totally Rad Christmas was inspiration for me to cut my first video and you were the catalyst that pushed me to turn it into a full-fledged podcast. Thanks buddy.

Over the following 10 months, I released 14 episodes. Most of which were just me prattling on about something Christmas and either Disneyland or advertising-related, while trying to figure out how to properly use a microphone. But, I did get to launch the Merry Mixtapes series where guests created their own mixtapes of holiday tunes and them came on to discuss them.

I want to thank everyone who has participated so far. This includes Gerry again, Ken Kessler of The Sounds of Christmas, Jeff Loftin of The Lost Christmas Podcast and a soon to be released episode with Can’t Wait For Christmas’s own Tim Babb!

I had a great time recording these episode and truly appreciate everyone taking the time to come on and share their Christmas music picks with me. Each guest turned me on to some new-to-me tracks that have quickly become favorites.

This includes:

• George Bailey by Carolyn Sills, shared by Ken
• Jack Frost and the Hooded Crow by Jethro Tull, shared by Gerry D
• O Come, O Come Emmanuel by for King & Country with NEEDTOBREATHE, shared by Jeff

And well…I can’t say that I really picked up any new songs talking to Tim since his mixtape was all about one of our shared, favorite topics. That’s right, we discussed the music of Charlemagne’s Christmas-day coronation as, “emperor of the Romans” by Pope Leo III.

Just kidding, we talked about the holiday music of Disneyland of course.

And though I didn’t come away with any new songs, our conversation did remind me how much I love the holiday music of Frontierland, much of which comes from the 1990 album, “Christmas Remembered” by Banjomania. By the way Tim, I was able to track down a copy of the album on CD and it will be headed your way shorted. Happy late Christmas!

There were several other podcast hosts who offered to participate in Merry Mixtapes, but unfortunately the holidays got away from me and I wasn’t able to carve out time to record before the end of the year. But the response to the episodes that were released has been so overwhelmingly positive that I will be turning the series into a year-round fixture for 2025 (and reaching back out to folks to schedule recording time if they’re still interested).

If you want to listen to the Merry Mixtapes episodes that have already been released, you can find them here:

• Merry Mixtapes: Ken Kessler - The Sounds of Christmas
• Merry Mixtapes: Gerry D - Totall Rad Christmas
• Merry Mixtapes: Jeff - Lost Christmas

And speaking of things getting away from me, something I didn’t realize about podcast is how important it is to have a schedule…and to stick to it.

I didn’t have one, which contributed to me not releasing a single episode in December. You know, December…the month where a Christmas-focused podcast sees its highest amount of traffic for the year. Smart, Kevin. Really smart…

That is definitely on the top of my list of things to do better this year. It could have been to eat healthier, or to exercise more, or even to get more sleep. But no, my top resolution for 2025 is to create a production calendar for the year.

Which segues nicely to my next thank you. Thank you to my always loving, always understand partner who has supported me in this hobby despite not being a fan of Christmas music…or podcasts.

And a final thank you to the lovely folks at Hafod Hardware in Rhayader, Wales. Our sixth episode back in June covered the series of holiday adverts Hafod put out between 2017 and 2020, all of which featured music by the incredibly talented Andrea von Kampen and all of which melted hearts the world over.

Around the beginning of November, Hafod Hardware posted a link on their Facebook page to the Youtube video of the episode. How they found my podcast I have no idea, but that episode when from 40-ish views over the first five months on Youtube to over 800 in the last few weeks.

Those might seem like small numbers in the grander scheme of things, but it was huge for this little podcast which was getting a handful of views on Youtube each week (if we were lucky) and got us in front of hundreds of new listeners.

Speaking of YouTube…this is one I’m still trying to figure out. Like I mentioned, I had originally intended ‘Tis the Soundtrack to be a YouTube channel and for the first few episodes I published both an audio-only podcast version and a video version specifically for YouTube. But midway through last year, Google shut down their podcast service and moved it all to YouTube. This meant that the audio-only episodes started showing up on YouTube along with the video versions.

I stopped creating video episodes shortly after that to see if I could come up with a better plan…or more realistically to wait until someone else came up with a better plan that I could copy.

I think I have a solution now, which you’ll see on the upcoming Merry Mixtapes episode with Tim Babb. After recording the episode Tim and I both had the same realization that a lot of our discussion makes complete sense to someone who treats Disneyland like their second livingroom, but could be a little hard to follow for someone who has never been to the parks, or never visited at Christmas time.

So, that episode will have a dedicated video version to provide visual aids for the conversation. And both the audio-only and video versions will mention each other at the top so folks can experience it in their preferred way. If future Kevin is more ontop of his editing that present Kevin is and past Kevin has been, then my conversation with Tim should be the very next episode dropping after this on.

On the heels of that, I have Disney holiday loop episodes for Frontierland and the Disney Springs shopping district at Walt Disney World locked and loaded, as well as my own “Wrapped episode for 2024.

In the spirit of Spotify and Tidal, I’ve put together my own Merry Mixtape of Christmas and Christmas-adjacent songs that I’ve enjoyed in 2024. It features the three tracks I mentioned that were shared by Ken, Jeff and Gerry, along with many other songs covered in the previous episodes or on heavy rotation in the Williams’ household this last year.

After that, it all depends on how successful future Kevin was at putting together his schedule.

Cheers and Happy New Year!