Year-end letter 2025 for subscribers

The following is a transcript of what I say in the video linked below.

Hello and welcome to the 2025 year-end letter at Rhythm Changes. This is the third year-end letter video we've done [2024, 2023]. There are some of you who would have seen all of them, but I want to thank you, no matter when you subscribed, for supporting Rhythm Changes and making it possible. Because truly, your support does make it possible every day. It is something I think about all the time and I'm grateful for with every step I make in Rhythm Changes world. That's been the case for several years, and it's been an absolute blessing. So I'm so grateful to have you here, and I want to tell you a little bit about how it's been going...

Now, I've already been doing that at a couple of checkpoints along the way here as we got towards the end of 2025. And what I mean by that is, in case you missed it, I applied for a grant this year that I didn't get. But really, this grant application was about a year-long plan that I had been trying to execute at Rhythm Changes. I'd been trying to establish it as something specific and grow it on a certain trajectory.

Because around this time last year, or even last summer, I started thinking about adding a couple other people into the project, and ways that I can make Rhythm Changes bigger and stronger. And one thing that I decided to do was to hire Chris Fraser to host the Rhythm Changes Podcast from episode 101 onwards, which we did and we're still doing. We'll talk a little bit about the Rhythm Changes Podcast later. But then we also did the gig list internship, and we brought in Kayla Price to work with me for seven months on assembling the gig list. And that was a lot of fun.

And then I decided, well, okay, I've increased the expenses here, we've got Chris and we've got Kayla. Let's try and write a grant to cover some or all of that. Now, Chris and the podcast didn't end up making it into the grant. It was all about Kayla and that gig list editor position that we tried to get funding for, based on the successful experiment.

Now, we didn't get it, and the story that I was telling for that grant involved me growing the size of the free weekly here at Rhythm Changes. Now, this is where we can talk about some numbers. I'll quickly just show you on the screen right now, basically the same numbers that I had been showing you the last two year-end letters if you'd seen them, which is the total number of free weekly signups, the total number of paying subscribers like yourself, and the percentage that that is – the percentage of all signups who are paying subscribers – and how that's changed over the years. That's what I'm going to cut on screen for you right now so you can look at it and in particular see where we're at with 2025.

Now, if you watched the 2024 year-end letter, you know that my goal this year was to get to 100 subscribers, and we did not even come close to doing that. And that's despite growing the free weekly pretty well. We were on track – if I kept spending money on Meta ads to try and find new signups by advertising the gig list and getting them interested in Rhythm Changes – we were on track for two or three thousand free signups by this point.

But I let it go flat, because I realized that this wasn't working. None of the people that I found from late 2024 through to now by advertising the gig list and getting them to sign up for the free weekly, none of them stuck around to the extent that they became paid subscribers. They stuck around, like we still have close to 2,000, now, free signups. But absolutely zero of them converted in any meaningful way. We lost some subscribers as we always do, and we picked up some to cover that. But the people who subscribed new this year, you did not come from me advertising the gig list on Facebook and Instagram and trying to get you to sign up to the free weekly for that reason. Basically none of you did, effectively.

So I built this bridge to nowhere, basically, and was trying to sell it in this grant, and I knew it wasn't working. So I know that things have to change, and so that's definitely one of the things that I wanted to talk about for a minute here in the year-end letter, because it's a good excuse for it. We didn't come anywhere close to getting to 100 paid subscribers. So my goal from the 2024 year-end letter, it didn't happen at all. That's a big part of the story.

And that means I've got to change up what I'm doing here, and I think that's going to be a lot of fun. I think you and I are going to have a lot more fun because I have the chance to reimagine this.

So, one of the things I started doing content-wise in the free weekly and in Subscriber Fridays was recurring features. I kind of tried to "productize" different things that I did at Rhythm Changes, so that they might be easier to advertise or include in this kind of plan of how I was trying to grow it.

So I started doing a feature for you in Subscriber Fridays called 10 Things, where I rounded up 10 things that I'd experienced over the month, mostly like short live show recaps or bits of important stories that have been going on.

I did features in the free weekly like Rhythm Changes Across Canada, which is like a roundup of short album reviews. This was mostly a way that I could deal with things that were pitched by publicists, or deal with new album releases that would be relevant to us.

I did a feature called Outside the Changes, where I wrote about non-local, non-Canadian albums that I thought you might like, or just music that I enjoyed over the course of the year. It was an outlet for me to share that with you.

I also did an interview series called RCTV, and that involved my YouTube channel and video. And we'll talk a little bit about that in a second too.

But I came up with all these different series ideas and the frequencies that I would deliver these. And I don't think that's necessary anymore, because we're not going to try and grow the free weekly by another couple thousand people this coming year. That's not going to be part of the plan like it was over this past year. If we do, great! But I mean, that's not what I'm trying to do at all. I'm going to try and do it a different way than what I laid out before. So I'm going to stop doing those regular series.

And there's another thing that I'm not going to do, which I've alluded to in previous year-end letters: the venue guide. I don't think I need to create a venue guide and try and put advertising dollars behind it to get people to sign up to the free weekly. Because that was going to be the plan: I could create either a PDF or a webpage that had more detailed information about all the venues in our community, and then offer it as a download incentive freebie for people who sign up to the free weekly.

Again, we're not trying to maximize how many people sign up for the free weekly anymore. We're not building the bridge to nowhere funded by this Creative BC grant that we didn't get. I have demonstrated zero ability to convert a lot of people who sign up for the free weekly to paid subscribers at this point, based on what I'm offering. So I have to change what I'm offering. The venue guide is something that I've talked about a couple of times with you now, but it is going to be stuck in limbo. It's not going to happen. I'm not going to put together a venue guide at this point to supplement the gig list or anything like that.

The gig list itself is not going anywhere. I'm not going to stop doing it; it can be done in a totally reasonable amount of time. It doesn't take a lot of time, and I'll continue doing it. But it really has been the front door and the flagship thing at Rhythm Changes, as evidenced by the advertising dollars I've put to try and drive traffic to it and get people to sign up to the free weekly. It's not going to be so much emphasized anymore. It's still going to be there for the people who want to use it, that's for sure. There's no reason for me to stop doing it. But it's not going to be the thing that I throw out there, above all else, as why you should come and sign up to Rhythm Changes, because it's pretty clear that there's no strong evidence that a lot of people are becoming paid subscribers after coming in that way.

Now in terms of the podcast – the Rhythm Changes Podcast with Chris Fraser – it's still going totally fine. I still back Chris 110% in his hosting of the show. I like the episodes that he makes. I hope that he continues to enjoy making episodes. I know he's got some guests that he's considering bringing on soon that I really like. His guest selection has been really great for me. I've really enjoyed watching it.

I think it's quite possible that the Rhythm Changes Podcast comes to an end in 2026. I don't know exactly when, what the occasion for that will be. We don't have a quota of episodes that we need to do between now and then. But Chris is a busy guy, and I don't know how much longer I'll have him available as a host. And I don't know where he's going to want to go in, like, the different mix of things that he's doing, so I'm not 100% certain that the podcast will just keep running indefinitely. I think it's possible that we wrap it up. It has some anniversaries and occasions that might come up soon that would facilitate that, but Chris and I, you know, we'll talk and we'll decide that. But he knows that I'm not going to pull the plug on it, so for as long as he wants to keep doing it, it will keep happening. But it's not necessarily guaranteed to keep happening like the gig list is. The gig list is guaranteed to keep happening. But the podcast, I don't know.

So if the negative thing about 2025 was, oh, I tried to get to 100 subscribers and everything I did didn't work, and it didn't even come close so far, the positive thing was that video entered my life as a maker of stuff for you. I really hadn't been doing a lot of video before this year, but now I came up with a lot of different outlets to practice my video skills. Believe me, I still have a long way to go. I'm still learning. I feel like I'm where I'm at in maybe Rhythm Changes Podcast episode 20 or so, if you go back there and you check out what that was like: 18, 19, 20, 21, around that time, I feel like that's where I'm at with video right now. But there's a learning curve there that I am traversing, and I'm really happy that that happened this year.

I started doing my podcast called Upsample with my friend Carson Tworow, where we talk music, business, and tech regularly. We've done over 20 episodes of that. I've been doing an interview series called RCTV on my YouTube channel, which has been my main outlet for interviewing people now. I've done almost 10 episodes of that. I've done the Inlet Music Series monthly interview partnership, where I interview each artist that comes to that monthly series and put that out on my YouTube channel. I'm getting used to doing more stuff with video, and I really needed to do that. So that's probably the most positive thing that I can look back on this year, was that video really started to happen. And that is definitely going to continue. There's still going to be a lot of Rhythm Changes content that comes out on my YouTube channel. It comes out as video.

So if I've been talking about stuff that I don't want to do anymore because it wasn't working and all that, well, what am I going to do now? How do I plan to keep trying to get to 100 subscribers? Because the goal for 2026 is still that. That's still the same: that is the one true goal I have at Rhythm Changes. I'm going to try and find my way to 100 subscribers no matter what. I have to. There isn't any other number I want to measure. I don't really care how many more people sign up to the free weekly. I don't care if we lose net subscribers of the free weekly, if I find some way to get more of them to become paying subscribers. That's fine with me. The only number I want to measure is still trying to get to this goal that didn't work out this go around. But the next go around, I'm gonna try and approach it differently.

So how? So what am I going to do? Well, I've got to go back to the content itself. I want to think about it in a quality-over-quantity way. I want to think about stories that only we are in a position to tell and publish, that are as fun or interesting or insightful as possible. There are a few examples that I've been pointing to lately as my favorite pieces I've done over the years. You know, the Jamie Lee feature, the Ghibli Jazz Orchestra feature, the Fort Langley story. Even David Blake talking about the Tangent change of ownership, you know, that was kind of a different one.

Those first three I mentioned in particular, I want to do more things like that. And I've got a couple examples hopefully coming at you very soon – perhaps one that will be the last story of the year here in the free weekly coming up on December 16th, and also perhaps the first thing I come back with in the new year – as examples of the kinds of stories I want to tell. They involve talking to a lot more people. They involve doing what you could call original reporting, even though I don't have a background in that and that's not something I'm experienced with. It's something that I have to learn how to do. But it needs to be done to expand on these stories, like to talk to everybody in a band, or everybody who was at a certain event, or everyone who was impacted by this artist or this series at this venue, everybody who knew this person.

There are events and stories that I want to dig into because I have awareness of them. I also have capacity – and a mandate, honestly, from your interest in supporting my work here – to explore these stories. I know I can do that, even though I don't have experience with it. I'm excited to try. I'm excited to get more experience with it. So there's going to be bigger stories. There's going to be more, you could say, original reporting or journalism involved in putting those together. And we're going to mix that up with some other things that are more lighthearted and don't take as much time to put together, for sure. But that's going to be a big focus, is how many bigger stories can I produce in the coming year that I feel end up having this kind of impact?

And I just have to believe and tell myself that if I have an impact with these kinds of stories, that that is going to eventually lead to 100 subscribers. And if it doesn't, we'll be back here at the 2026 year-end letter going back to the drawing board all over again. But you know, the difference is I'm not intimidated by that anymore, to be honest. Like, Rhythm Changes is not something that is in a crisis, or it's not existential. I'm going to keep doing it. It's totally fine as something to keep doing. I just want to figure out how. I want to figure out what the best way is.

And it means so much to me that you're along for that ride with me, and that you've seen these different chapters. So I want to close by thanking you once again for your attention and your support of Rhythm Changes. I feel it all the time. I think about it all the time. And we're going to do a lot more fun stuff in 2026. I look forward to that very, very much. I hope your holiday season is full of warmth and time with people you love and care about. You won't see very much of me for the rest of December, I don't think. But you will in the new year. We're going to try and close it out, and start it up again, with a bang. Practically speaking, the January gig list will come out maybe on January 6th or so. There will be a couple of down days in there while I prepare the first month on the gig list of 2026. But the dates of when we'll stop and come back will be confirmed in the Subscriber Friday when you get this video. So thanks once again. I'll see you very soon.