Hi, I’m Jared Falk the President of Railroad Media Inc. I’d like to tell you a little bit about who we are and what we do as a company.
It all started five years ago when I just came off of a 4 month long tour around Canada and the United States. I was so sick of the tour lifestyle, traveling around in a small van for days straight, sleeping on the floor every night, and never staying anywhere for longer then 24 hours.
I quit the band and made the choice to settle down at home and get a job. I ended up getting a sales job selling ducks and geese for my Dad’s company. I worked in Chinatown in Vancouver dealing with all the different BBQ shops and very interesting people. This opened me up to a whole new culture and was a lot of fun.
Even though I “got a real job” didn’t mean I was done playing the drums though. I still regularly played local gigs and had a small number of students that I taught every week.
One day I got a call from my past drum teacher Lionel Duperron. Lionel was getting out of teaching to spend more time with his family. He was wondering if I’d like to take on his students. I was super excited and decided to go for it.
Now I was working a full time job selling ducks and geese, as well as teaching 40 + students a week. It got a little busy at times but I was having fun.
I then got a phone call from Rick Kettner, who was looking for some drum lessons. Rick is also extremely web savvy and is considered somewhat of a wordsmith when it comes to writing sales copy.
For fun, Rick had put a simple tutorial video online for people to download. The video was a lesson on how to play the heel toe technique. These were the days before Youtube, so online video had a high perceived value. Rick said over 12,000 people downloaded the video and he eventually had to take it down as it was costing too much to host. So me and Rick decided to partner up and start filming and selling downloadable instructional videos.
We released a few different downloadable packages and then decided to take it a step further and release a DVD. This was a big step for us, as none of us had filmed or edited a DVD. We decided to film a DVD that taught a simple one handed roll technique. The DVD was massively successful for a couple guys who just did this on the side to make a little pocket money.
The catalog of instructional videos has now grown. We now have 12 complete training systems (the One Handed Roll DVD was recently retired):
- The Drumming System
- The Piano System
- Beginner Guitar System
- Rock Drumming System
- Drum Rudiment System
- Drum Play Along System
- Jazz Drumming System
- Latin Drumming System
- Bass Drum Secrets
- Moeller Method Secrets
- Drum Gear Buyers Guide
- Drum Tuning System
Railroad Media has continued to evolved and now is more of a online service based music instruction company. We found that selling DVDs and books is great. But we’d like to provide more service and support for the students after their purchase. We know the content of our products is great and something people can learn a lot from. However, if they are not applied correctly, or not at all, people won’t see results. I believe the more results people see from our products, the more success Railroad Media will have as a company.
This is why we created FreeDrumLesson.com, which is what I am most proud about. This massive website has been the heartbeat of our company over the last few years. The best part about the site is the community that it’s brought. Our drum forum has over 7500 registered members, and the Secret Drum Lessons community has over 100,000 subscribers and counting.
To continue the service in the drum lessons market we have now started a live drum lessons show that broadcasts once per week. This allows us to take questions from our students live and answer them right aways. In this show we have a lot of fun just hanging out and talking with drummers.
The next big project for Railroad Media is GuitarLessons.com. We recently enlisted the help of pro guitarist Nate Savage from Texas to help us create the website, as well as the Beginner Guitar System. Nate works crazy hard to give the best guitar lessons on the web. He is available by email or live chat every week.
We are also the owners of PianoLessons.com, a resource for people wanting to learn to play the piano by ear, or by reading sheet music. This site is hosted by Nate Bosch, who is also the creator of the Piano System.
In the future, Railroad Media will be launching a massive drummer support site on DrumLessons.com. On this site, there will be live drum lessons, custom drum lesson videos by request, and a massive drum forum.
We are also continuing our expansion into the guitar market and filming the Blues Guitar Blueprint which should be released in May or June of 2010.
With the continuing shifts in the way internet browsers are consuming information who knows where our company will be even one year from now. I just enjoy the challenge of constantly having to evolve our marketing and our instruction. No matter what, I strive to give the highest level of service and support in our industry.
Thanks for listening, check back as I am sure this “Who We Are” post will be evolving as Railroad Media evolves.
thanks,
Jared Falk
President of Railroad Media Inc.