sToto      

Music Producer & Artist

What’s up, everyone? I’m Stoto, a music producer based in Sofia, Bulgaria. I make melodies, beats and sounds and put them together. I’ve been doing so for the past 20 years and plan on continuing for as long as I can. Thanks for visiting my website and thanks for listening to my music!

spotify Playlists

A 5 hour Spotify playlist with my favorite relaxing & chill music

4 hour Spotify mix of melodic electronic dance music

A Spotify playlist consisted solely of my own music

A playlist on Spotify with various slow & sad music

youtube

A YouTube playlist with all my music arranged by popularity

A YouTube playlist with all my music arranged by release date

Soundcloud

Chill house & deep house playlist on SoundCloud

Melodic techno and break beats playlist on SoundCloud

About me

Early life

My name is Stoyan Stoyanov. I was born in 1989 in Haskovo, Bulgaria. I never learned music theory. I was, however, extremely fascinated with our family friends’ cheap old synthesizer, hence, always happy to visit them. When I was playing with it, time flew by, hours felt like minutes and it seemed like I could never get enough.


   Back in 8th grade when I was 14, I had an app on my Nokia 3310 which allowed you to arrange a huge variety of 64 monophonic loops into a blissful polyphonic cacophony. I was very deeply involved in that matter until a friend of mine said ‘Bro, if you like this, you are going to love Fruity Loops’. Say no more, fam! Sprinted back home having found a CD with a demo version of FL Studio 3 and my entire existence completely sank into it. I never had a synthesizer before and now I have a virtual one with limitless capabilities. It was amazing! You couldn’t save or export projects in that particular version, so in order to write down a melody without knowing the actual notes, I had to draw the entire piano roll on my school notebook with an NSYNC picture on the cover. Thanks, Justin! Later, I upgraded to a cracked version of FL 4 and ABSOLUTE BANGERS started dropping right away under my first alias - DJ MC STOTOYAN. Fortunately, we didn’t have internet back then, so all those are lost forever. I forced my family and friends to take a listen and they all instantly concluded without the slightest shred of doubt, that I absolutely suck and have no future in music whatsoever. I was, of course, convinced they were all wrong, and my stuff was top notch, on the brink of hitting the MTV charts. My sister was the only one who thought I was talented, and I remember her telling me ‘It sounds cool, but I feel like something is missing’. Something is missing!? She’s clueless too. About a year later, I discovered that it wouldn't hurt to have a bassline and maybe some drums in your music. I was very frustrated with this nuisance.

My childhood was full of happiness and joy. And even though my parents didn’t understand my passion for music they were always supportive and caring. Love you, mom and dad! At that time my biggest idols were Bomfunk MCs, Music Instructor, Flying Steps.



Jady Synthman

ATB, Tiesto, Deadmau5 and Above & Beyond were a huge influence later on. After years of experimentation I decided to completely switch to trance music under the name Jady Synthman. In 2010 a small Finnish label called Echelon Records signed my track called ‘Lost’ and this was my first real release. I simply could not believe it was happening. 'I finally made it', I thought while signing the contract with tears of joy running down my face. The track made around 4 sales on Beatport and Echelon Records completely ignored every single demo I further submitted to them. I initially thought having a record signed was the end of the struggle, but it turned out differently.


In 2012, by constantly bombarding countless labels with numerous demos, I found Digital Insomnia Records, ran by a cool guy from the UK called Darren Bayton aka. Pink Bomb. He was probably the first person ever to really like my stuff. He released every single track of mine, sought talented producers to remix it, even made me the label’s mastering engineer and A&R manager after a while. Overall, I have more than 40 original mixes and remixes as Jady Synthman and even though I occasionally had support from some big names in the trance scene, my dream of having a non-DJ music career seemed impossible as I never gained real traction or a fan base.

However, thanks to my work with Darren, I learned the ropes of running a record label and in 2014 decided to start my own - Save The Panda Recordings. At around the same time, in order to release slower, more cafe-friendly music, the idea of having a second, non-trance artist name started to intrude. One late night in 2014 Stoto was born.



Stoto

My first release as Stoto is from 2014. When I wrote “All Alone” I was at the lowest as a music producer. Even though I’ve spent countless hours making beats and writing melodies, there was no light in the tunnel. No hope of ever turning it into an actual profession. I constantly daydreamed about getting signed to Anjunadeep, without realizing how off my sound actually is from theirs. I can’t really fit my music in a single genre. Sometimes it’s deep house or indie dance, other times it’s progressive house, melodic techno or even trance. Idk, it’s mostly synths, guitars and way too much bass. Basically whatever sounds good to my ear.

I love to experiment and try out what sound would engage a bigger audience. One day while randomly scrolling YouTube I came upon a guy singing ‘Chandelier’ on Britain’s got talent. I never liked the original song by Sia, but this version made me think a beat on top would sound cool. I made a bootleg remix in less than an hour, uploaded it on YouTube and went to sleep. In the morning it had 1000 views. ‘Interesting’, I thought. The next day it had 10 000 views. Shock! That was my most listened to production EVER. In a week it made more than 100 000 views. I felt like I was onto something and should quickly make a similar project. I found an ongoing remix competition of Meiko ‘Leave the Lights On’. The vocal was beautiful. I finished my remix promptly and submitted it. Surely they would like it, right? Nope. I not only failed to win a top 3 spot and an official release, but I was out of the top 100 in the competition due to its format based around number of likes. I decided to upload it to YouTube anyway. And it completely blew up. As of today my remix has more listens than the original by Meiko. These two bootlegs alone led to an avalanche of views, reactions and messages the likes of which I’ve never seen before.

I used to constantly send out uncalled-for promos to various well established DJs and one day by sheer luck, a very cool guy called Ahmet Kilic responded to one of my emails. He said 'This sounds very good. Want to do a song together?’. I was star struck. The dude had around 200k followers on Soundcloud at the time. We did several projects together and pretty much all of them were instant hits within a niche fanbase. He completely catapulted my music career.


Still Can’t Sleep

I never wanted to be a DJ. Nightlife is extremely depressing to me. I can’t imagine a life without a good night sleep. A life with constant traveling and loud music. That’s just not me. But how do you make money in the music industry as an independent artist without live performances? Streams. Thank God for Spotify. I needed more streams. In order to have more streams I ought to make more music, but ideas don’t come easy. I rarely come up with original ideas and mostly go back to either that Justin Timberlake covered notebook or that horrific, overly-produced and overly-compressed Jady Synthman tracks, only to steal ideas from myself. ‘Still Can’t Sleep’ for example is just a better produced version of ‘Jady Synthman - Runaway’. I generally believe everything in life is a remix. Every living thing is a remix of their parents’ DNA. Every piece of music or art is inspired by something and nothing is created in vacuum.


Back in 2017 I was working on my first artist album called ‘Lost’ scheduled for 2018. Unfortunately, one day mid session my laptop simply turned off. Tried starting it up with no success. The hard drive had died and my entire album was gone just like that. All of the finished tracks, all of the project files gone. Not only that - all my saves, sounds, presets, samples, library, everything… all wiped out without a backup. I was devastated. It took a lot of time to get back to making music. I re-created the album and it was ultimately out in 2020, but having lost momentum and mental energy, I decided to stop pursuing a musical career and stop focusing my entire existence around it. Working different kinds of 9 to 5 jobs for most of my adulthood, I was not dependent on music anyway. And it was then and only then when I got the chance to open up to life. I met my beautiful wife and started a family of my own. I achieved the happiness and inner peace, that music alone have always failed to give me.

Something unexpected happened. I’m not sure if it was the YouTube algorithm picking it up or the TikTok kids dancing to it, but ‘Still Can’t Sleep’ absolutely blew up. In less than a year it made more than 200 million views. Other tracks followed suite. Suddenly, I can live off of music. Right when I decided I never really cared about it… Fate has such a weird sense of humor. Soon after I quit my everyday office job, bought my dream home, and ever since 2020 I’m a full-time musician thanks to all of you guys listening to my music.    

Words cannot explain how GRATEFUL I TRULY AM, to the universe, and to ALL OF YOU, my listeners! THANK YOU!

As Stoto I have more than 120 finished projects. In 2024 I plan on being the most active I’ve ever been as a musical artist. I’ll be releasing at least 30 new projects this year and I hope to make even more next year. But what I really, really hope is that I deserve everything that life has given me!

New Releases

Stoto - Better Off Alone (Original Mix) OUT NOW

Stoto - You’re Not There (Orignal Mix) out NOW

Stoto - If I could turn back time (2nd edit) out NOW

Stoto - TIME (original mix) out NOW

Stoto - AFTERLIFE (2nd Edit) out NOW

Stoto - LATE NIGHT (2nd Edit) out NOW

JadY Synthman - it’s not over yet (original Mix) out NOW

Stoto - LET’s SWIM (original Mix) out NOW

Stoto - Hold You Down (Na na na na )(original Mix) out NOW

Stoto - NEED IT (Original Mix) out NOW

Stoto - IF YOU SHOULD CALL (2nd Edit) out NOW

Stoto - Someone Special (Original Mix) out NOW

Stoto - Better off alone (creative ades reMix) out NOW

7ky - Raindrop (stoto reMix) out NOW

Stoto - Dance with me (Original mix) out NOW

Stoto, Creative Ades - love the way you get (Original Mix) out NOW

Stoto - You Can't Save Me & 299792458 (Mashup) out NOW

Stoto - I Sleep Better (Original mix) out NOW

Stoto - Ad astra (Original mix) out NOW

Stoto - Dance with me (2nd edit) out NOW

stoto - Better Off Alone & Lights On (Mashup) out NOv 22

All my releases in 2024 are going to be under the Creative Commons license. If you run a YouTube channel you can use it without getting a monetization claim. If you are any sort of content creator on any social platform feel free to use my new music without the need of licensing or additional approval. I benefit from this as it is a promotional tool.
As for my older releases (prior to 2024)if you would like to use any of them in your channel, please reach out to my email linked down below.

FREE DOWNLOADS

99% of my income is from streams and I‘m not really making money from sales. Even when you buy my music online the stores such as iTunes and Beatport get a big cut of that money, you also get taxed on that purchase, other third parties get their cut as well. Ultimately very little of your money goes to me. That is why I’m giving away my music for free. Plus this way I get additional exposure.

So instead of buying my music online you can use the button below or click
here to download it for free.

Only if you feel like leaving a tip you can do it
here, if you have PayPal.

However instead of that I much rather prefer that you share my music on your social media or add a song of mine to your personal playlist.