Archive for the 'WebOnlyPiano News & BLOG' Category

Christmas is coming . . .

Even though it’s early (by our standards, at least), we wanted to let you know about our great Christmas products that are not yet available on our website.

There are 3 that are ready to go . . . some of you might already have A Shiny New Christmas, Holiday Classics, and Joy To The World.

A Shiny New Christmas is a wonderful collection of pop holiday songs and traditional carols, performed by an 8-voice, Manhattan Transfer-type singing group and orchestra.  Songs include The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, Sleigh Ride, Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas and Caroling, Caroling.  Holiday Classics features Ed Vodicka at the piano, along with holiday bells, performing warm, cozy versions of pop holiday favorites such as The Christmas Song, Christmas Time Is Here, White Christmas, and The First Snowfall Of The Winter.  Ed is again spotlighted in Joy To The World –  a traditional, reverent treatment of tradition Christmas Carols such as Angels We Have Heard On High, Away In A Manger, O Come All Ye Faithful and  Silent Night, performed by solo piano and chimes.

New titles this season include A Jazzy Christmas, Christmas Organ and Chimes, and our exciting Christmas Caroling Songbook  in conjunction with our friends at Hal Leonard Publishing.  The latter includes 72 carols and songs complete with caroling book and sing-a-long accompaniment discs — four in all.  Just wait till you see and hear it!

We’ll get samples posted soon.  If you would like email notifications as soon as these products are available, email us at Customer.Service@webonlypiano.com and we’ll put you on the list!

We’re upgrading our home page

Please pardon our dust, but we are currently upgrading our home page to make room for some snazzy features.  Among them:

  • The WebOnlyPiano BLOG (which you are currently reading
  • A new sorting/searching system to allow you to search by music styles, instrumentation, artist, etc.
  • Help with selecting the correct format for your player piano
  • Album liner notes
  • Announcements and sneak-peeks at upcoming releases
  • Events and news

Webmaster Frank has been doing a great job on the structure that will seamlessly move users back-and-forth between our up-coming dynamic new, robust site and our store. 

The store inventory listing has been simplified.  Users may simply browse through the catalog, and drop selections in their cart.  But the search/sort interface will be there for users who wish to view only specific catagories of discs.

We’re busy preparing all our new titles for fall release, as well as spectacular Christmas and Holiday products.  They will be available as traditional audio CDs as well as Disklavier, PianoDisc, QRS Pianomation, PianoForce, Baldwin Concertmaster, Kohler Digital, Suzuki and Roland Player systems.  So when you have favorite discs that you play on your player piano, you will now be able to have standard audio CDs to play in your car, office, or to use as gifts.

We welcome your feedback, so let us know your thoughts anytime by dropping us a note at Customer.Service@webonlypiano.com.

“Elton John’s Greatest Hits” featured this week

Here’s quick special we have running for all the folks on our mailing list . . .

We’re offering free shipping on our Elton John’s Greatest Hits, Volume 1 through June 24, 2009.  If you’re on our mailing list, you should have received an email with the promotional code a few days ago.

If you’re not currently on our mailing list, join up by clicking here and filling in the “Join Email List” box at the bottom of the page.  We’ll send you the promotional code for free shipping, as well as other good stuff.

Of course, we offer it in all player-piano formats:  Yamaha Disklavier, PianoDisc, QRS Pianomation, PianoForce, Baldwin Concermaster, Kohler Digital, Suzuki Digital, and Roland moving key digitals.  And make sure you check out the product detail page for new on-line audio clips as well!  All the great tunes like Your Song, Daniel, Bennie and the Jets, Crocodile Rock, Rocket Man, Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Tiny Dancer, Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting, Philadelphia Freedom, Honky Cat and Candle In The Wind.

Welcome player piano owners!

Welcome to the WebOnlyPiano blog!  We have been going through a re-design of our website since September 2008, and finally are on the right path, and right platform for us.

We certainly appreciate the patience, input and loyalty of our many customers as we work through the various issues encountered, and welcome all of the new customers that we meet each week.  To all of you:  please continue to communicate your questions and comments to us (eventually) through this blog/comments and/or our Customer Service email:  Customer.Service@webonlypiano.com

We intend to use our blog to communicate our purpose and concepts to all of you, and to garner your input as well.

First, perhaps a little background on this rebuild of our website.

Since our inception, WebOnlyPiano’s main purpose was to offer a superlative product line of player piano recordings directly to player piano owners.  And, we developed the capability to offer our products in allthe player formats offered by the piano industry:  Yamaha Disklavier, QRS Pianomation, PianoDisc and PianoForce.  The reason for the name “WebOnly” is that we are a division of WebOnly Productions, LLC.  WebOnly Productions was originally formed as a parent company for a boutique jazz record label, WebOnlyJazz.comWebOnlyJazz is a regular audio-type record label with products only sold direct online to consumers. 

Because we had been offering a few of our titles as licensed products to key player piano manufacturers, we were aware to the player market.  But once we did a little market research and talked with some player piano owners, we realized immediately that this was an under-served market. 

In fact, so underserved that there was no other organization producing discs for player piano systems other than the manufacturer of the piano!  Hard to believe, but true.

So it didn’t take long for WebOnlyPiano to become a dominant provider of discs for player piano systems.

In addition, WebOnly always new that it was not practical to expect consistently strong representation from piano retailers throughout the country:  generally piano stores don’t carry a large amount of discs, and player owners seem to enjoy ordering products from the comfort of their home or office. 

Hence the name WebOnlyPiano.  It simply reinforces the concept of getting these exciting products directly on the web.

Of course, WebOnlyPiano is fortunate to have a great “brick-and-mortar” dealer network of piano retailers throughout the country as well.

Well — finaly back to the rebuild of the website.

Since our launch in January 2006, we had been so busy creating our recorded product line, and so busy responding to the tremendous interest of the piano retail trade, we simply launched our direct-to-consumer website with a “temporary” offering that was to be replaced with something substantial in 30 to 60 days. 

Two and one-half years later, we still had basically the same temporary website.  And in that time, we learned a lot more about the player piano disc industry, and about our customer’s needs.  We also kept searching for the right webmaster to lead the effort.

And as somtimes happens, we had been looking right past him all the time!

So we “re-discovered” our webmaster genius, Frank T.  And all-of-a-sudden it was clear:  put Frank in charge, and let him run with the ball.

His first move was a bit of a lateral one — and he dug in in September 2008 to do a “patch-up” of our site as it was, and try to make it a little more user-friendly.  Of course, in the 2.5 years we had added many products, and many formats as well.  But it was still confusing and totally inconsistent.  But Frank got us through the holiday rush of 2008, and then began searching for the right new platform to launch the new site from.

We found it in February, and launched it around the end of March.  And it still is a work in progress.  But we now have a foundation to build on.  We’re still experimenting with different ways to categorize products, based on how you, the customer, browse and shop.  We’re adding features, such as (ultimately) clips of every album and track offered by WebOnlyPiano; photo galleries of events and recording sessions, information and tips on using your player piano; this blog, and more! 

So, with this, our first blog entry, we thank you for your support and look forward to bringing you ever-more exciting discs, products and news that help you get the most out of your player piano system!