When I planted this newsletter, I forced myself to turn on the spigot for paying subscribers to water and nurture me and my writing. And I followed several suggestions provided by Substack for building a (paying) following. “Include a paywall” and “give the audience a reason to pay to see what’s behind the paywall.”
To be honest, that’s not me.
You may or may not have noticed that I’ve been experimenting with where the paywall goes, what I put before it (the “tease”), and what I put after (the “payoff”) - and the whole time I’ve been doing this experimentation, one song keeps haunting me:
I am haunted by the sense that I am overreaching by asking people to pay for my work.
This feeling is exacerbated by the number of extremely good and interesting music writers already on Substack - people writing stuff that I only have time to skim each week as I assemble my own contributions.
I will leave the spigot on for you fine readers who decide to put some cheese into my shredder, but for now, I’m going to remove the paywalls and let everyone see everything. I’m not doing this because I don’t think I’m worth it - and some days, I don’t - but because I’m going to ask for something else from you all.
Please help me find my value
I think for this first year of All Kinds Musick, I need to focus on two things: giving you something interesting and thoughtful to read twice a week, and Building A Following. If I can’t do those two things, I don’t deserve financial support. (At least, that’s what my protestant work ethic taught me.)
But if I do start building a following, I want to give the people supporting my work the chance to tell me what they value most. For example, if you want to tell me to write about a specific topic, or if you want to run some kind of contest behind the paywall that only members can see - I’ll do that. But I want you to feel like you’re getting some value out of supporting me, so I will let you tell me what that value is.
Meanwhile, I have some experience with listener-supported platforms, and I know that established organizations like NPR and the podcast company I work for, Escape Artist, Inc., report that about 1% of their audience voluntarily donate to keep them running. I think I could live with that model if I can build up enough readership to make “1%” a financially meaningful number.
Meanwhile…
I’m going to be on the road for a couple of weeks; hopefully, you won’t notice any interruption in my schedule. But you should notice that everyone can see everything from now on.
If what you see is interesting, and you want in on whatever we build together, you will always have a subscription button ready to show your support:
However you decide to support me - whether by reading and sharing, or dropping a coin in the hat - I appreciate you for being here.
And if you keep reading, you’ll have a better idea what I mean when I say “appreciate”!
Happy Musicking!