2016 will pretty widely be regarded as one of the worst years ever. Beloved celebrities dropped off at a rate that seemed like almost one a day, the election turned us all against each other, murder and death and sadness were in the news more than ever… But hey, over-all it was a pretty good year for me haha. Not the best by a long-shot, but there was plenty of good stuff that happened… So lets stop being so negative and take a look back at the good stuff.

  • 2016 began with VR Fest. My collaboration with Elemental Spark, “An Unseen Sky: The VR Experience,” which was the world’s first VR Music Video (something that everyone seems to have now) won Best Animated VR Music Video at VR Fest and that kicked the year off with a bang! I’m excited for VR Fest this year, where Elemental Spark has another music video in the running (not my music, but still a really cool video), and I may or may not be able to demo something new that I’ll be announcing really soon. Fingers crossed it’s ready in time.
  • From there I began working on a ton of This Thing Rules blogs which you can read and listen to the demos in my blog archives. I have a lot more of them to do too, so I gotta get back to work on that soon! But definitely 2016 has been the biggest year for that blog series so far.
  • I also put out music videos for “Forgotten” and “Butterfly.” Both of them were incredible, and “Butterfly” (which came much later in the year) has gone on to be my most viewed music video so far.

  • Towards the middle of the year I worked on two 48 Hour Film Projects. One of them got me a nomination for Best Score which was really cool! They’re always so much fun to work on. Hopefully I’ll be able to share them with you guys soon.
  • I also got to see two of my favorite artists, Ryan Adams and The Cure (which I documented in this blog post). I actually have tickets for 3 concerts in 2017, which considering that lately I don’t go to a lot of shows, is a pretty big surprise for me haha. Getting out of the house is a good thing though.
  • Of course the biggest thing that happened in 2016 was I released my 3rd album Head Like Fire. Trust me when I say, when 2016 began, I did not expect to be releasing a new album! But things all lined up and the album came out perfect. I’m looking forward to promoting it all throughout 2017. If you haven’t already checked it out, it’s available on all major digital music stores, so please, check it out, and leave a review!

  • Another awesome achievement in 2016 was receiving my first ever BMI royalty check for music that was used in TV show. It was a great accomplishment and I hope to continue building that part of my career in the future.
  • Of course I also worked on some films this year! I scored a really cool monster short called “Croak” that should hopefully be out soon. I also did the theme music for the feature film “Last Day Of School” which is supposed to hit VOD and DVD any day now. Another feature film, “Better Criminal” will hit VOD on December 20th and features a lot of music from my album An Unseen Sky. I even went to Hollywood for the premiere of the film at the famous Chinese Theater. It was a great time. I also scored 2 short films for director Christopher Johnson, “Daisy” and “The Service Of Others.” I love working with Chris, and he’ll be working on a new music video for me in 2017. There were a few other films I worked on that are escaping me right now, but overall it was a productive film scoring year.

And I BELIEVE that’s it. Like I said, not the best year… But hey, lots of really cool stuff! I’ll be posting a blog really soon about what’s coming up next for me, so think of that like a Part 2 to this post. 2016, thanks for everything. Lets hope for an awesome 2017. Happy Holidays.

– David

David Rosen is an award-winning music composer. He composes original music for films, commercials, jingles, video-games and all other kinds of media projects. He has a vast music library of original tracks available for licensing and is also available for custom compositions. Contact him on the ABOUT page for pricing and availability for your next project.