Jamie's list is one month old!
Happy anniversary to us! It’s been one month today since the beginning of Jamie’s list. It feels like so much longer! I already feel so close to all of you. 🖤
Some quick stats:
Readership has more than doubled from the initial subscriber list!
Total post views are close to 4,000! This is about 50% more than can be accounted for by subscribers reading daily emails … which means that clearly some of you are forwarding posts to friends! Thank you. Please keep doing that. You forwarding these posts to peers who you think would like them is how this list grows.
The open rate is 63%! When you factor in the fact that opens can’t be tracked on any iOS device running iOS 15 or later (i.e., presumably just about all of them), this is super encouraging.
My personal thoughts so far:
I thought this would be fun; it’s proved to be even more fun than that. I’m really enjoying this practice. Not only do I love sharing ideas, but writing them down helps to clarify my own thinking. Win/win.
I’m having some wonderful conversations with you all apropos of these ideas, and I’m loving that. Please don’t ever be shy about hitting reply, hitting me up on Mastodon, etc! I’m always interested to hear your thoughts and I love talking about this stuff.
You may have noticed that this list is a free resource — as in, freely available to anyone and everyone. That’s on purpose, and I’d like to talk about that for a minute.
My general observation about people with whom I work in my production and mixing practice is that everyone’s needs and resources are different. Some people I work with are super serious about music, while some are more on the hobbyist side of things; some people are more comfortable money-wise, while some people I work with are straight-up poor.
I’ve always felt uneasy about the connection between art and commerce. And, relatedly, I’ve never felt like access to my practice should be predicated solely on funds. That would set up a situation in which only people with some means would be able to work with me, and frankly I would find that not only morally wrong but also a bit boring. It’s super important to me to work with people from a variety of backgrounds and situations.
Because of this, I’ve been doing all of my work on a sliding scale for years now. “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.” I let everyone I work with know what my full rate is, and I ask them that if they can pay my full rate, please do — because some people paying my full rate is what enables me to cut my rate for others, which I do constantly. Easily 75% of the work I do is at a discounted rate.
Which brings me back to this little newsletter! I’m getting the impression that this is a resource that people value and enjoy. And so I want to ask you, if you have the means, to become a supporting subscriber.
Supporting subscriptions are $10/mo. I do want to be very clear about something: if that’s an amount of extra money that you don’t have, then I want you to stay on the free plan. A foundational premise of this list is that it should be a freely-available public resource. This entire project was conceived with under-resourced people in mind, and I’m so glad you’re here.
And, in keeping with how I run things in every other area of my work life, I would ask that if $10/mo is in fact an amount that you can easily afford, then please do become a supporting subscriber here.
As with everything else I do, the people who can afford to pay cover the cost for the people who can’t. It’s a nice way to do things, and it’s a morally right way to do things — and also I think it’s inspiring to be a part of! Together, we can do our little piece to change the paradigm away from haves and have-nots. We can flatten the hierarchy a tiny bit, and we can contribute each as we are able to a communal resource from which we all benefit. It’s a beautiful thing.
Mostly, I’m just glad you’re here. Thanks for being in on the ground floor of my new project! It’s exciting, and it’s rewarding, and I’m having a good time. And I hope you are too.
Gratefully — jamie