About that Substack "Here's $10" email
Because I am a subscriber to Jamie’s list — it’s smart to keep close tabs on how your work appears in the real world! — like you, I got this “Here’s $10” email this morning from Substack:
Substack had let me know as a publisher that they were going to be doing this, but you probably didn’t get that same behind-the-scenes explanation. So it made me want to send a little note of clarification!
As you know, a bedrock value of Jamie’s list is that it remain free. This is an accessibility issue for me — a lot of talented musicians begin their diy home recording journey from a position of financial hardship. I count Shannon and me in those numbers; there was a long stretch of time when we were getting started where we were so poor that we were housing- and food-insecure. We had our expenses pared down to the bone, and there was certainly no way that we could have afforded a $10/month newsletter subscription, no matter how valuable it felt to us. So I get it.
Subscriptions to Jamie’s list function differently than that. Everyone gets the same emails whether they are a paid subscriber or not. Which poses the question: what is even the point of having paid subscriptions at all, then?
The answer is simple: it’s to give people who believe in the value of this work an opportunity to support me in doing it.
“Support” has multiple meanings in this context. The first is the obvious one: financial. $10/month isn’t a large amount of money, but if enough people do it, it adds up, and it helps. Like many of you, Shannon and I operate on tight margins. The life of an artist in 2024 isn’t having one job that pays the bills — it’s more like 6 different constantly-shifting part-time jobs, all of which add up (hopefully) to enough to get by. Jamie’s list is the smallest of our 6 little income sources, but it’s part of the mix, and it helps.
The second meaning of “support” is probably the more important one, and it’s solidarity. It’s you demonstrating to me in an ongoing way that you believe in this project and you want it to continue. People opting into paid monthly subscriptions is not just a practical support, it’s also an emotional support. It’s a buoy.
What Substack is attempting to do with their “Here’s $10” initiative is to get you to be a paid subscriber by giving you the first month for free. And of course my “This should be a community resource” model completely undermines that. This is not the first time that my inclinations toward solidarity and mutual aid have screwed up a capitalist business model’s well-intentioned attempts to help me financially; it’s an ongoing tension in my life.
And, indeed, my various business models for my work are all explicitly anticapitalist in nature — because capitalism requires coercion based in artificial scarcity, both of which I refuse to participate in. In publishing, that coercion typically comes in the form of paywalled or freemium models, and I’m not willing to do that. I prefer a model based in abundance, in which people have the option to be supportive, and in which they do so because they genuinely believe in the quality of the thing on offer, and they want to help it succeed, and they believe that supporting it is the right thing for them to do.
I am clear-eyed about the idea that I’m swimming upstream with this! I know a bunch of people personally who have been long-term Jamie’s list subscribers who could perfectly well afford a $10/month subscription, but who just … don’t … do it. And why would they? They’re being good capitalists. In that worldview, if something is offered on a “pay what you want” model, it’s simply theirs for the taking.
And — that’s true! I have made the thing free. And you can simply take it.
What I am asking you to do with Jamie’s list is to contemplate a different mode of existing in the world. One in which you support something that brings you joy not because someone is making you, but because you are making a choice to. It’s a weirdly adult thing to be asked, isn’t it? To voluntarily move some of your own chips onto someone else’s square. It certainly goes against what we’ve been trained from birth to do as dutiful capitalist footsoldiers.
Substack’s “Here’s $10” emails are well-intentioned, but they have a hole in their thought process precisely the shape and size of Jamie’s list. Offering a free month of something that you are already getting for free is not a compelling sales pitch. So, instead, here’s my pitch:
Do you think Jamie’s list is valuable? Are you able to support it at $10/month without incurring any hardship? If you answered yes to these two questions: then please support it! It’s really that simple. The idea behind supporting my work here is not that you are being made to — it’s that you are being invited to, and that you do it because you believe in it.
I’m beyond excited to continue our journey of creative discovery together on this new season of Jamie’s list. Please help support that journey if you’re able!
Thank you 🖤 — jamie