Reach Has Levelled Up
After two years, I've taken the newsletter to the big leagues; going Pro wasn't a light choice. Here's why you should consider upgrading to a paid subscription, and an enticing offer for subscribers.
Longstanding followers may have raised their eyebrows at the pace of posts coming in through the last month — three posts, including a fairly mammoth review of this year’s Lunchmeat Festival, all in October alone! Reach technically began in January 2022 (if the annual memory fade hasn’t meddled with the facts), and it’s been a bit of a patchy road, regarding regularity of posts, until recently.
Along the way I’ve spent a fair bit of time reading and investigating the emerging media that is Substack, and sizing up the competition, as well as taking stock of my ability to meet the really admirable pace of publishing that many of the industry leaders maintain. A bit of market research is always a good idea, but I’d warn any readers to keep an eye on their proximity to the line of self-doubt.
A good kick out the front door was needed, and I’m happy to be moving forward with the original plan (you can trawl back through the older stuff to see the foreshadowing of the Paid section). This email is a short one, talking through some of the reasons why the decision was made and why you — yes, you — should support some genuine independant journalism and writing (according to this biased source).
The Reach logo and graphic direction was designed by Matěj Moravec
I know what you’re thinking; there’s more than enough things to subscribe to, and more than enough worries about money for everyone right now. Your decision to upgrade to the paid model will likely be one defined by your bank balance, more than any wish you may have to support someone in their initiatives and endeavours.
That’s why I’ve decided to make it more affordable for those who are already here: until the end of the year, there’s a 30% discount on an annual subscription. This doesn’t apply if you pay monthly, or if you would like to be “founding member” (and if this is even a slight consideration for you, please go right ahead!). I think 30% is the first exciting percentile discount, and it brings the annual subscription down to £30.
I’m keeping this up until December 31st, so there’s a fair bit of time to get in on the deal before it expires, and some time for the free subscribers to decide if getting more words from me in their inbox is something that they actually want.
You’ll find the link for the discount code at the bottom of this letter.
Before you seize the deal, one word from me: if you’re able to afford the full price of the annual subscription, it would go much further than the financial difference alone:
What Free Subscribers Get Each Month
Free subscribers will continue to get quite a lot: my regular Radio Punctum show gets archived here, and those articles will see a little expanding, with more short written reviews and track selections, including some that, for whatever reason, I didn’t manage to play. A big plus side of this medium is being able to laugh at my awkward radio host voice, so consider this factor in your maths.
In the past I was curating monthly playlists on Buy Music Club, a Bandcamp-aggregator site that lets you compose and sequence playlists with purchaseable links to the music. I’ll not make playlists on Spotify, so BMC seems likely to be the most viable candidate for hosting playlists. Monthly playlists of very broad genres of music seem to be a little bit divisive, so instead of trying to cover everything that was good in a single month, I’m going to curate gradually expanding playlists that focus on a certain style, genre, or mood.
Free subscribers will also get a heavily-reduced monthly round-up of the things covered across the whole of Reach, including the paid section, which will help keep all the actual music recommendations themselves available to everyone.
There’s probably also be some form of Paid-only article-release — à la First Floor, if you read that one — that’ll be very much dependant on how well I juggle the rest of the content I’m planning. This will let you read the work I spend the most amount of time on, and what will make up the main bulk of the Paid section.
I’m also going to take a more active role in posting music recommendations on Reach’s Instagram, with hyper-short text reviews, for the social media bubble.
What Paid Subscribers Get Each Month
The primary offering for Paid Subscribers is the long-form articles, essays, interviews and artist or label features that I’ll be penning monthly going forward. There’s a critical essay inbound soon, which will be available as a taster for the Paid sub.
There’s lots of names on the drawing board here, but — as something of a warning — the intention is not to only cover whatever’s hot and new: I think the pace and attention of the music industry is shortening to dangerous levels, and I will not avoid reviewing a release that came out one, two, even five or ten months earlier, if there’s sufficient merit.
That said, my own conscience demands more coverage of recent and forthcoming releases in Reach. I’ve been quite picky until now, and that’s meant I’ve had to leave a lot of enthusiastic drafts on the cutting room floor to focus on the releases which I have. Paid subscribers will get an email (of presently indeterminate regularity) that will give them the skinny (literally) on new releases and projects.
As time moves on I’ll consider what I can offer to Paid subscribers in greater detail. There’s room for podcasted articles, a mix series, early-look reviews and much more, but I’m reticent to promise the world before I’ve begun work. Your suggestions about what content you might want to see here are wanted and appreciated:
About Writing, and Reading
The main purpose of Reach is to try to really crack into what makes a piece of music interesting, or a culture or scene important. I do this with words; so much of the world today seems to be pushing against this exact medium — ChatGPT, TikTok and Instagram, the decline of print media — but it’s the medium which I’m best at expressing my thoughts through.
I still think writing is essential to the overall cultural discourse, be it that of music or politics or whatever else. It’s not just about the psychological differences between reading and watching (many studies show a much higher rate of automatic cognitive acceptance with video); I believe that writing itself can be delivered as an art, and that the combination of good music art and good writing art can result in something independant of, yet belonging to, both.
About Being a Writer, and Uptake
When I started writing regularly for Reach, my subscriber list went from 0-200 in a matter of a month or two. Since then, it has stagnated; on November 1st, the number was at just over 250 subscribers. While I suspect a lot of the reasons are due to the erratic posting schedule (and lacklustre social media presence — working on it) and the sometimes niche artists I’ve covered, it’s hard not to let this number sink my hopes a little: on Instagram, Reach has over 350 followers, and I personally have more than 1600 friends, musicians and labels following my account.
If all of my followers on Reach subscribed, and less than half of my personal followers, I’d have quadrupled my audience; if just 1/10th became paying subscribers, I would be able to financially warrant the significant time these posts take to craft (as opposed to just creatively and personally warranting it).
I don’t make a big deal of posting on Instagram; it’s only an archive for newcomers, and to let subscribers know that an email got sent out, on the most ubiquitous social media channel. I don’t suppose I’ll magically find the time to become a much better social media strategist around all the extra writing I’m promising, and the pressing need to find a decently paying job, but I don’t think that would change my stance on social media anyway: everyone, myself included, wants to spend less time there.
What I want to provide with Reach opposes the offering of social media: rich, nuanced text, a focus on a dedicated topic, an ad-free environment; these are all against the cultural grain of our current time. Some say “adapt and thrive”, but for this matter in particular I want to try to at least preserve the dated ways — and at best, further the craft in new directions.
The truth that everyone knows is that many such areas are declining, seemingly beyond hope. Most of my paid work as a writer has evaporated utterly in the last year. What opportunities there are, how much attention people can give writers and Substacks, are extremely limited, and often given to the biggest names in the industry. While I refuse to believe that people in general want writing to fade from culture, it does fall to each individual to make the effort to keep it alive.
I’ll leave this post there to preserve the tone of the thread and my celebratory mood, but with a final, insistent nudge that (especially if you know me personally) it really would mean the whole world if you could subscribe, for free or for paid.
The link below will take you to the 30% off discount:
If you don’t want to, or can’t, upgrade to paid I understand: but, please, help me get the word out about my work by sharing the publication amongst your network. I know that there’s an audience for me out there which loves reading and would love the music I cover. If you can help connect me to it, I’d be forever grateful.
Finally, I’ve set up a permanent 25%-off discount for group memberships. I’ll be honest, I’m not too sure how it works, but I suspect everyone will need to be signed up with an account for Substack, and from there it should be a simple process:
Thank you for reading