Year-end letter 2024 for subscribers

We've got a little bit of a different look than last time, all right! This is the year-end letter at Rhythm Changes, 2024. Thank you for being a subscriber. This is going to subscribers only, so if you're watching this right now, you're a subscriber...

Transcript of the video follows in case you prefer to read.

Now, I'm going to do this a little bit differently than last year, because I feel like being outside. It's one of the nicest outdoor days that we'll probably have left this year, here in my home city of beautiful Coquitlam, up in the mountains. I've got a coffee to keep my hands warm, because after I went on my run, which heated up my circulation, now I'm cold again. So I'm trying to do that.

So unless a dog or a bear who should be hibernating comes after me, I'll try and talk in one take this time, between sips, with you; as opposed to last year where I did it at my desk, and I overlaid graphics and stuff. I’m not gonna do that style this time. So you let me know what you think about that, but I'm just gonna do this off-the-cuff.

I'll run down what I want to talk about with you, which is similar to last year; and then we'll go through it, and we'll look briefly to a goal I have for 2025 and what might be in store based on all the great things that happened this year, for which I'm super thankful. Obviously, I couldn't do it without your direct support.

Rhythm Changes had a lot of growth this year. It was a good year, a lot of trade winds at its back, I felt good running it. It was one of the great joys of my year to go all the places that it took me. So first of all, just thank you for making that possible.

Churn

Now, to get the bad news out of the way, do you know what churn is? It's not the first syllable of my last name. Well, I guess it is. But what I'm talking about when I say churn is when you have a subscription product, or a subscription business, not only are you bringing in people all the time – like, if you remember when you joined and how long it might have been since then, you know, you're staying around, you're continuing to support the project each year – and that's a phenomenal way to do a business model.

But there's a dark side of subscription, which is churn, and that's that people are always leaving. And so even though we added subscribers this year, the total number of subscribers is close to flat, as opposed to where it was last year.

Last year we definitely grew, because from 2022 through to 2023, Rhythm Changes was very small. This isn't the place to give a history of Rhythm Changes. For those of you who are newer, you can scroll around for that, or there will be other times for that. But you know, subscriptions started from zero in the year 2022, and some of you are still there from that point, which is really cool, and I'm really grateful for that.

So of course in 2023, when we did this year-end thing for the first time we talked about, oh, the number of subscribers has grown so much because it's grown from zero, because there hasn't been much time for churn to occur. But now, it's occurring.

So we're still flat in this under-50-subscribers kind of area. We could break above 50 subscribers, you know, in this month of December and that wouldn't be captured in 2020. this data that I'm going to share with you [...] But we're still flat under 50 subscribers. Even though we added a lot of subscribers this year, we also lost a bunch to churn.

That's kind of the bad news. Even though we didn't lose subscribers – the total number of you didn't shrink – also we were fighting to tread water, basically. That's how I would describe the churn experience this year.

But that's getting the bad news out of the way. Everything else we're going to talk about here is good, and I'll run that down for you in just a sec.

So I want to talk about Chris Fraser, because he's the new Rhythm Changes podcast host. Of course there's something to talk about there. I want to talk about the gig list internship and Kayla Price, because that's a new thing that happened this year.

I want to talk about the venue guide, because that idea was dormant for most of the year, even though it was something I talked about in last year's year end letter as something I wanted to do, but now it's happening again. It's going to be an uncertain impact thing, but it's going to be a thing that comes out and is a part of the Rhythm Changes story in 2025.

I want to tell you about some of the growth milestones I've already alluded to, because it was such a great year. Then I want to talk a little bit about what's coming next for 2025.

Rhythm Changes Podcast with Chris Fraser

So, first for Chris. I mean, I always wanted Chris to host the show. I always wanted somebody other than me to host the Rhythm Changes Podcast, because that seemed to me like the best way to get another voice into Rhythm Changes.

It was something that I enjoyed doing, hosting the show, for sure. That's why I did 100 episodes. I loved all 100 of them. Whether you were a guest or you were a listener, what your connection is to the show, I appreciate all the kind words you've sent me about it. It means a lot. It was a role that I was just filling until I could hand off to somebody else, and that was always kind of baked into the cake of Rhythm Changes was, at the end of the day, I wasn't going to be hosting the podcast long-term [...]

So, especially for those of you who have said things like, oh, I appreciate your style, Will, and I miss it, and I miss your voice – when talking about the way the podcast is now that Chris is the host – I really appreciate that a lot. That means a lot to me. And at the same time, I'm behind Chris 100%, and he's going to be the host of the show.

I am going to surface at some point in an audio or audiovisual form, for sure, as a voice more than I am right now, but there isn't a plan for that. I did have a plan for the Rhythm Changes Podcast, and very fortunately, it did end up coming through: to episode 100, to episode 101. I got to that number of episodes, I handed off the show. The person who I thought was the best person to do it was available. He was interested, and so he's there.

And now, I want to support him as much as possible. I want to help him do it as best he can, I want to enable him to book all the guests that he can, and we're going to aim for a biweekly frequency or a twice-a-month frequency through 2025 all year with Chris if he's interested, and if his schedule allows. Because he's right on the cusp of being able to do it in terms of playing a lot of gigs and doing a lot of lessons teaching for work. So he's fitting it in, but he's interested.

I'm really happy that he's having fun with it; I want to back him. So that's where the podcast is at.

Now, one more thing about that actually is, I do like to tell him – and I've told some other people too that – I mean, how many episodes has Chris done right now? Maybe six or seven by the time this comes out. You can go back and listen to my first six or seven. They were in 2021. They were the launch episodes, you know, I gathered them all, and then I posted them when the show launched. There were the first six episodes, I believe.

Chris's first six or seven are way better than my first six or seven, so I'm very excited to see what he ends up doing.

That's all I've got for Chris. I mean, you can hear where he's at, and that's where I'm at. I'm very happy that Chris is hosting the podcast.

Gig list internship with Kayla Price

Then there's the gig list internship. And that was an adventure too, because that was the first time that I ever had to hire for something, you know, like solicit applications, go through them, figure out among the people who applied who I was going to interview.

I don't think I have like a lot of stats to put up on the screen about this, but for the gig list internship, I ended up getting about a dozen applicants. Just as a quick refresher, at the start of the school year in September, I put out a call that I was looking for some help with the gig list. I posted that I would want to pay about 20 bucks an hour, 10 hours a month, so a really small little gig that a student could do as a freelancer person.

You know, I don't have a lot of direction about how to gather the gig list or when to do it, but I did a lot of thinking about that in advance, and so I felt kind of ready for when it ended up actually happening.

But there's still some time, because I specified it to be beginning in October. So we've done three months of it this year, and I've got two months committed into the coming year, and then there's an option to add another two months. So it could go as far as through April, but it's definitely going to be as far as through February.

And it's Kayla Price, who's from the Tri-Cities here, who has ended up being the successful applicant of those dozen. I interviewed five people and all of them were very good. It was a real blessing that all of them were good. And I would have loved to hire all of them. Blame that churn again for not having the budget to maybe hire more people [laughs] but no, it's, it's okay. Especially it came down to a couple of people where really, there was nothing to decide from really, they were all so good.

I got to speak with Kayla in person and it was our first meeting, but I trust her and she's doing really well helping out on the gig list. And I know that's going to continue through January and February when I'm going to need the help, because as part of my work at Cellar Music, I'm going to be getting into Jazz at the Bolt, the festival, the operations of that and the marketing of that. So this is when I need the help. I'm lucky to have it.

I'll tell you, the main reason why I wanted to run the gig list internship as an experiment is not necessarily because I purely needed the hours. It's because for the last two years, the gig list has been such an ad hoc project of mine, where I do it in a certain way that makes sense for me; but to explain to somebody else how to do it, it's very difficult. It is hard, and I wouldn't explain it in a way where I'd want that person to do it the same way that I did it.

You know what I mean? Like, I have a way that I do it, but it's not the optimal way to do it. And so in involving somebody else for the first time in gathering and editing the gig list, I want to get closer to a systematic way of building such a thing.

Because I think there are other gig lists that could be useful in this scene. I don't know if I'm going to ultimately end up editing those as well myself. I would love it if somebody else would. Like for the last year or two, I've been trying to put out the Batsignal that somebody should do a folk and country clone of the Rhythm Changes gig list for that genre in Vancouver, in BC. Because one, I would be the first and biggest user, I love that kind of music. But also I think the scene is similar enough that it would port over really well. That's a whole other conversation. But if I want to get closer to willing such a thing into existence, I need to learn more about how to run a gig list systematically.

And so the gig list internship is really a wonderful experiment that allows me to learn about that. Because in the back-and-forths I've had with Kayla about how we can do it and what she can do, and the things that she's asking me that come up along the way, I am learning about this. So in my mind, that has already made the gig list internship a really worthwhile experiment.

Venue guide idea

Okay, now I wanna talk about the venue guide. This was something that I talked about in last year's letter [...] You can hear my concept for it. Basically, it expands on the usefulness of the gig list, because if you're not a core member of the scene, if you're what I would refer to as a normie just for fun, you know, you look at the gig list, you see a bunch of people's names. You see a bunch of venues’ names. Maybe you don't know anything about those people or those venues. So the gig list is not going to help you, really. It's not going to serve it up for you. So what do you do? What can I offer to such a person? And that was the concept for the venue guide.

Now, I didn't get around to making it happen for most of the year after I said last December that I wanted to do that. And then one of you basically independently came up with the same idea because you, who suggested that, you subscribed between last year's year-end letter and now. You didn't watch it, and you independently came up with that idea. I saw that and I was like, hey, I already thought about doing this thing. Now I really should do it, hey? And then I realized, oh, it's still 2024. I could still make that happen.

So I actually really did need help, just to get through the hours that it took to put that together. So I called upon another new friend of mine, Amanda Mulder, who helped me draft the venue guide test version, which I already sent out. And it was very bare-bones. There's a lot more that could go into it.

Especially, I didn't even think about what would be useful for you as an artist if you're reading the venue guide. I thought about it exclusively from the purview of concert goers, but there's artist-centric information that I could put into it as well.

Like, roughly, you know, how much does the venue pay? I put a ‘four dollar signs out of four’ rating of how much it costs to go to the venue, but I could also do a similar rating for how much the venue pays.

I don't know if it's appropriate to really get into ‘here's how you book a gig there’ because one, I know that that's not appropriate for something that goes out to the free weekly email because one, like hundreds of those people, the majority of them wouldn't care because they're not musicians. And also I feel like that's not the right kind of legibility to bring to that information, it's hard to describe. But in terms of stuff in the venue guide that would directly point musicians somewhere of how to book a gig, I'm not super comfortable with that.

It's also hard to aggregate, but there are some other hard-to-aggregate things that could be useful to musicians that I might want to try. Like for example, attendance: uh, how many people go to such a gig or like, what's the capacity of a venue? Again, like I said, roughly how much does it pay? Things like that. What house equipment is at a venue? That's something I can just mention in the text blurbs that you can already see on the venue guide test version. I didn't even think about information that would be useful to musicians. It completely skipped my mind.

So, I want to release the first public version of the venue guide in January, probably mid-January, and I'll do my best to include some of those things as I work on, you know: how many venues can we get into this, have I been to as many of them as I can, so I'm not just talking off the top of my head about venues I don't know about. That kind of thing. It's something I'll consider. So I was happy that that was some of the feedback that came back. There was a lot of great feedback that came back from that venue guide test version from you, so thank you.

And then I want to update it quarterly. So if I'm dropping the first version in mid-January, you know, that's going to be kind of based on the venues that were on the gig list in the fourth quarter, which we're in right now: October, November, December. And then the next venue guide update, I would try and put out in maybe mid-April, and it would be based on which venues were around in the first three months of the year.

There can be a forward looking aspect of it as well if stuff has been announced. You know, I don't really want to scoop presenters’ plans that they might have for venues that they haven't started doing shows at yet, or scoop shows that haven't been announced yet, because it doesn't doesn't really help.

And you know, things can change. Because the venue guide is in a PDF format, you're basically printing it. You're locking that information in, and I already know that there's a lot of errors on the gig list week-to-week, so I wouldn't want to add in more opportunities to make errors or something like that.

So that's all my venue guide things. If you have more feedback about the venue guide, let's keep talking, because in about a month I'll want to have dropped a real version of it to the free weekly list. And maybe, depending on how that goes, maybe I drop a musicians-focused companion for subscribers only at that time. Or maybe I do manage to fit all that into the version that goes up to everybody. We'll see.

Growth

Okay, now I want to run down the good news [...] I talked about how Rhythm Changes has grown a lot this year, and yeah, wow. I mean, again, last year's letter, I said I wanted to double or even triple. That was kind of my audacious goal, and guess what? That's exactly what we did.

It's pretty amazing. I mean, the number that I care about the most is the size of the free weekly list, because that number kind of is the key to everything. Like, it's the key to how many subscribers there will end up being over the long term. It's the key to how many people view the website on a regular basis. It's the key to everything.

And last year, I reported that as a readership figure: okay, here's the total number of people on the list. Here's how many of them my software says have engaged with the free weekly email in the last 30 days. Then I got to readership.

It was about 500 at the end of last year, and now it's over 1200. So there we go. We more than doubled. We almost tripled. We did it! And how did we do it? Well, so much of it actually came from an experiment that I ran with advertising on the Meta ads platform, so Facebook and Instagram ads. I was running that hot through I guess September, October, November, especially October.

I started to get amazing results from that. It was very fortunate for the amount that I spent, and that brought hundreds of new people in to the free weekly this fall, and that got us over the doubling mark. It got us over the 1000 mark: the moment when that happened is documented on Chris's episode of the podcast where I'm on there as a guest. It had just happened kind of before we recorded that.

I kept it going through into November, and then I turned it off to see what would happen. I mean, I knew what would happen. It flatlined again to a normal, very slow level of growth that Rhythm Changes had enjoyed all through its previous history. So if you look at a chart of all the free weekly growth, it would be very flat and just a slow, slow incline for years. Then there'd be two months where it spurts up. And now it's going to be flat again, except in the new year, I am looking forward to continuing some ad spend.

Over the course of the whole year, I'm sure I'll have spent a lot more on advertising to grow the free weekly list than I did in these past two months, because it'll just be spread out over the course of a year. But I learned that I can get some pretty serious results spending the amount that I spent on a monthly basis here. I only did it for two months, but what if I do it for 12? And this is kind of my focus for 2025: I think I can do it again. I think I could double or triple again. I think I know what it takes. Like, I'm not going to luck my way into it, I know that I have to spend. I know kind of tactically what I have to do on those ads to get there.

So, I think we can take it to, 2,500 or even 3,000. If I say the size of the free weekly by this time, you know, year end letter 2025, you know, I'd aim for 3,000. That's a similar amount of growth spread out over an entire year. That would change Rhythm Changes so much for the better. It would really open up sponsorships and other things like that. because [...]

Money

I basically didn't do any sponsors. I didn't sell any sponsorships at Rhythm Changes this year. I made about the same amount of subscriber revenue that I did last year, I guess, because of the churn, because the total subscriber base stayed flat.

And I spent maybe about a thousand bucks more on Rhythm Changes than it made directly. So of course, I'm bringing in other revenue from my work for Cellar and Infidels and selling albums and playing gigs and doing that kind of thing. So I'm happy to do that.

But the loss of Rhythm Changes, the amount that I spent on it more than it made, is actually smaller than even just my ads experiment. I'm really stoked about that, because it means that Rhythm Changes basically just was profitable. I just ran this ads experiment and then things like the gig list internship. I added it on because I had this confidence: I knew it was going somewhere, I felt that it was growing, I felt that it was making an impact.

You know, I would be out at gigs. I'd be talking to people. I'd be hearing from them whether they're musicians or whether they're fans about how it's been useful to them in some way, and and that's been so wonderful.

I've had the confidence to invest in it just a little bit, just these little kinds of experiments. And now when I'm looking ahead to next year, I have a lot of confidence to continue investing in it and to continue this pace of where it's going.

That same amount of growth, you know, to get to 3,000 free weekly, I want to also point towards 100 subscribers. The hundred paid subscriber mark will be so huge; that that will be a big milestone for Rhythm Changes. It'll probably be the hardest thing that I've ever set out to do in my career, to grow Rhythm Changes to 100 subscribers.

My goal for 2025

So I guess that's really my true goal for 2025. That's the thing that I'm longing for the most, is to get to that 100 paid subscriber mark. And the 3000 free weekly members, I have a feeling that that – to grow to there – is the pace that will be required to get to 100 subscribers. There's a lot of other tactics that I have to spend, honestly, this holiday break thinking about what I'm going to do to get it there.

But that's the big goal for 2025 that I'm going to leave you with ultimately, is that I want to have brought us through churn still, because churn is still going to happen; I want to have brought us to the 100-plus of you mark by the end of 2025.

All the pieces of the puzzle are kind of just rolling along to get us there. You know, I've learned more about advertising to grow the free list like I was just talking about. Chris is doing the podcast, he's going to continue getting better and it's going to be running continuously through the next year. The gig list, I have the internship on it right now. I've learned a lot about how to do it systematically. It's still continuing along at a high quality, and a lot of people are still using it.

Wrapping up

I'm writing about albums. I'm deciding editorially what I'm going to cover. There's so much to cover right now, and I know there's going to be even more in the coming years, so I can't wait for it.

There's lots else that we could talk about, but I'm gonna leave it there for this year-end letter and have it continue to be a conversation between me and you at any time. You know where to find me. You know that one of my favourite things of everything I do is to talk with you about this sort of thing, and it's been a tremendous pleasure.

So I want to wish you a merry Christmas. I want to wish you a warm, healthy, happy winter holiday break season here. And I look forward to the next time that I see you around the city, that I talk to you, that I hear from you. It's all great, so thanks once again.