2022 wrap-up: reaching 10,000+ people with the gig list

Rhythm Changes is done for December and for this year!

First of all, big thanks to all our subscribers and to Rory Hislop, Tim Reinert, Nou Dadoun, Francis Baptiste, Chris Fraser, Isabel Leong, Lavender Sutton, Jonny Tobin, and everyone who made what we do possible in 2022.

Some info about the end of the year: the gig list webpage won't refresh for January 2023 until Jan. 5th at the earliest. Thanks for your patience!

If you're looking for a year-end list or "best-of-2022", I'm not doing that here. However, I curated some non-jazz releases for the Pacific Sound Radio podcast episode that I co-hosted here:

Best of 2022 — Pacific Sound Radio

It’s that time of year again! Will Chernoff joins James for our annual Best Of special where we talk about our favorite releases from 2022. Will is a bassist and music journalist in Vancouver. In addition to now co-producing this podcast with James, Will also hosts two other music podcasts: Rh

Pacific Sound RadioPacific Sound Radio

Fun stats for you

As we wrap up 2022, I also want to share a couple of stats about Rhythm Changes:

You (engaging with the gig list)

The gig list webpage (just that, not all of Rhythm Changes) has been engaged-with, used, and viewed by you well over 10,000 times since launch on May 1, 2022.

Appropriately, almost all of these engagements came from people like you in our local region.

We're on track to see 25,000+ engagements in the coming year 2023.

The musicians (names on the list)

I don't have a way to count for sure, but the list has likely included 3,000+ musicians' names this year (including repeats, of course).

I would like to process that data in 2023 and see how many unique names appear in total next year.

The gigs

Not including jazzfest(!) 1,000+ separate jazz gigs appeared on the list from May to December 2022.

You can tell all your friends and folks with confidence that over 1,000 jazz & related creative music gigs will happen in the Vancouver scene in a year.

This suggests that with a full calendar year for the first time in 2023, the list might include 2,000+ jazz gigs including festivals.

Goals for the gig list

The gig list brought Rhythm Changes to most of you, from it being a micro-niche project for my friends to feeling like it makes a difference in our community.

Every time we send out a free weekly article with the week's upcoming gigs listed, we move tickets and bring people out. I know this for a fact.

You can probably notice that when someone's name is on the list whom I've covered already, in an article or podcast episode, I link out to that piece of coverage from their name.

Rather than analyze too hard, my editorial goal for the list is simply to link-out as many people's names as possible in 2023 -- indicating that I'm covering as many of you, and the rest of us who are playing these gigs, as possible.

The free weekly article

An interesting juxtaposition happened as we hit December 2022 regarding the free weekly article.

On December 6, 2022, we published this:

Review: the highly-anticipated Ostara Project album

10 months ago, we covered the supergroup at their launch

Rhythm ChangesIsabel Leong

And longtime readers may know that over nine months prior, in February 2022, we published this:

The Ostara Project launch: a supergroup is born

With new recordings to come, here’s the set that started it all.

Rhythm ChangesWill Chernoff

The free weekly article readers have literally quadrupled in that time.

When (not if!) we quadruple again, we will be just a force in this city, selling tickets and moving copies of albums like it's nobody's business.

We'll probably grow that much again within 2023. And we'll do it with the essential support of subscribers, who have brought us this far in 2022. Happy musicking!

-Will