📰 BUZZARD NEWS
BREAKING: THE BUZZARD DUST EXPERIMENT APPEARS TO BE WORKING
By: emmittowens.com Staff – August 17, 2026
There comes a point in every experiment where you stop, look at the equipment, and say: “Well hell… I think this thing is actually working.”
That’s where we’re at with Buzzard Dust.
When this started, there was no marketing department. No record label. No publicist. No six-figure ad campaign. Just a bunch of songs, some videos, a website, a handful of social posts, and one stubborn son of a bitch who kept putting music on the internet.
Now the numbers are starting to get interesting.
🎵 THE BUZZARD DUST 100 CLUB
“Alabama,” the first song ever uploaded, has climbed to roughly 190 plays. “Just Busted” has crossed the 100 mark too — both officially inducted into the new BUZZARD DUST: 100+ playlist.
One song’s still standing outside with its nose pressed against the glass: “Only Appalachia” — 97 plays.
Three more. That’s it.
Official policy at Buzzard Dust HQ: 97 ain’t 100. No participation trophies, no rounding up, no “close enough.” When it hits 100, it gets in.
📡 WHERE ARE THE LISTENERS COMING FROM?
Here’s the interesting part. Based on the traffic across everywhere Buzzard Dust gets shared, the rough breakdown looks something like:
- ~50% — WordPress embedded videos
- ~25% — SoundClick
- ~10% — social media and other external sharing
- The rest — YouTube itself and everywhere else
These are estimates, not numbers carved in stone, and they’ll shift as the audience grows. But the real discovery is this: Buzzard Dust doesn’t live in one place. The songs get posted on WordPress, embedded in articles, uploaded to music sites, shared across social media — and eventually some of those people wander over to YouTube. YouTube is where a lot of the videos live. It isn’t necessarily where people find them.
📱 THE SOCIAL MEDIA BUZZ
Buzzard Dust is also making its way around the social-media countryside — Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, Flickr, Twitter, Tumblr.
But the numbers don’t tell the whole story.
My beautiful wife shares these songs like they’re her daily soundtrack. My wonderful family reblogs them and shows up loud. My awesome friends share them like they’ve believed in this the whole time.
And then something happened I didn’t expect: strangers started reaching out. People I’ve never met taking a second to say something about a song, share one, or just let me know they listened. Every one of those messages feels like somebody reaching across the internet and saying “I heard you.” And every time, I shake their hand back and say thanks.
An analytics dashboard can’t measure that. The numbers tell me people are playing the music. The people themselves tell me why it matters.
🙌 SHOUTOUT TO THE WORDPRESS FAMILY
To everyone who’s clicked play, embedded a video, shared a post, reblogged something, or told somebody “hey, have you heard this” — you know who you are.
WordPress turned out to be a much bigger part of this experiment than expected. If the current numbers are anywhere close to accurate, a huge chunk of the traffic is coming through those embedded videos and the people finding them through the site. Buzzard Dust doesn’t have a label pushing it. It has people pushing play. That matters.
🏠 THE OWENS FAMILY RADIO NETWORK
Then there’s the most advanced distribution system of them all: family.
Mom’s listening. Brother’s listening. My father-in-law and mother-in-law are listening. My grandparents-in-law are listening. My son-in-law is listening. Three kids, three grandkids — all listening. And folks from our church have been clicking play too. Buzzard Dust may have accidentally built its first terrestrial broadcast network without owning a single terrestrial radio station.
Things got serious when it came out that Mom has Buzzard Dust videos set to autoplay on her computer. Every time she logs on, there’s a decent chance a song is playing. She probably didn’t sign up to be the promotional department. History picked her anyway. 😂
🤫 THERE MAY BE A FEW SECRETS
We’ve picked up a few things along the way about getting people to actually find and play independent music. Some of it’s obvious. Some of it isn’t. And some of it, we’re keeping to ourselves for now.
Every operation needs a few secrets. Besides — if we told everybody exactly what we’re doing, we’d have to go find something else to do.
🧪 THE EXPERIMENT CONTINUES
This is still a small operation. No illusions there. That’s part of what makes it interesting.
The songs are going out. People are actually listening. Some are sharing them, some are queuing them into playlists, some are finding them through the website or other platforms, and some are just getting hit with Buzzard Dust every time the computer turns on.
Nobody’s pretending Buzzard Dust is a musical empire. Not yet probably never will be, it’s all part of transparency. The goal is simple: keep making the music, keep putting it out, keep watching what happens, and see how far it goes.
🐦 THE BUZZARD HAS LEFT THE NEST
Maybe one day there’ll be thousands of listeners. Maybe there won’t. Maybe one of these songs catches fire. Maybe they all just keep creeping up one play at a time.
Right now there are songs sitting at 190, 100+, 97, and a handful more circling around the 70’s. That’s enough to tell us something: somebody’s listening. And as long as somebody keeps listening, Buzzard Dust keeps flying.
BUZZARD DUST
No record label. No marketing department. No giant budget. Just songs.
Still we have no marketing department. No record label. No publicist. No six-figure ad campaign. Still just me and a very small circle of insiders running the whole show.
And apparently… a mother with autoplay. 😂
The experiment continues.
TumbleDweeeb 
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