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2005-02-07 - Los Angeles, CA, USA: If you've sent the flowers, bought the chocolates, mailed the card, and used all the other 'conventional' ideas for Valentine's Day, maybe it's time to think outside the box a little bit. This Valentine's Day season there's a new way to lovingly mock the ones you love, according to Mark Baker, founder and President of InstaSong.com (http://instasong.com/servlets/InstaSong). "Amazingly," says Baker, "About half the people who use InstaSong.com create 'prank' songs making fun of a friend or loved one!"
The process works like this: Visitors to InstaSong.com choose the song type they want; (romantic or funny Valentine's Day songs, Mother's Day songs, birthday songs, etc.,) and they then personalize the songs with names, dates, physical attributes and individual habits until the song is completely personalized. They can then preview their creation for free, and if satisfied with the results, they pay $4.95 to email the song to their chosen recipient.
Instasong.com is an online division of the popular GiftSongs.com. InstaSong.com uses the patented eClips TrueVoice(TM) Technology to deliver professionally produced, personalized songs via email to users worldwide. Incorporating a database of hundreds of thousands of high-quality audio samples, users are able to personalize their songs in real-time using pre-recorded audio samples recorded by some of the top professional vocalists in the Los Angeles area.
This past Christmas, about 500,000 people created and sent instant personalized Christmas songs-but not the 'sweet' ones you'd expect:
- About 250,000 people chose to make 'insulting' Christmas songs, making fun of their friends' personal habits, dress styles, and other foibles.
- About 100,000 people sent romantic personalized Christmas songs.
- About 150,000 people sent songs of friendship and support.
The trend looks like it's going to continue this Valentine's Day season.
At first, InstaSong.com offered only romantic and uplifting material, but now that they've gone to the 'dark side,' usership numbers have soared.
While each song is generated instantly using the unique attributes selected by the user, each song is professionally produced, featuring full musical accompaniment and background singers. Featured singers include professional vocalists heard on the radio: the male vocalist had a massive hit singing the Sergio Mendes song, "I'm Never Gonna Let You Go."
Baker says that he is constantly amazed by the feedback they get from customers: "People generally send us positive feedback, but occasionally they're not so nice. For example, one gentleman created a romantic song dedicated to Judy and sent it to his wife. This caused a problem, since his wife's name was Sarah...we received a very nasty email about that one! The moral of the story is, if you send an InstaSong, please be sure and double-check the email address!"
So, if you're sure you know where to send the song, and you're feeling a little mischievous this Valentine's Day (or a little romantic), you can try creating your own instantly personalized masterpiece at www.InstaSong.com.
