Huge Post about all kinds of things (May 2017) (Patreon)

First off I want to welcome to all new patrons, and to those of you who have been here a while, thank you so much for sticking around! :D
You all push me towards making more and better content, and I’m extremely grateful for all the things you do for me!
 
This is sort of like a late “1 year on Patreon” post. It’s going to be long… so brace yourselves...

I’ve also added titles so you can read the parts you might be interested in and also a TL;DR in the end if you don’t like walls of text :D

This part is about how your pledges are helping me
Licensing songs to be able to publish them on iTunes, Google Play and Spotify used to be free, but ever since a change around the end of last year, licensing songs cost $10 per song, which has lead to a lot of smaller artists not being able to afford licensing. Thanks to you though, I’ve been able to continue publishing songs without having to worry about the fee. Getting songs on Spotify has now also become a huge deal for me as an artist, seeing as quite a few of my songs have ended up with more plays there than on YouTube!

I’ve also been able to cover the costs of having Adobe Creative Cloud for another year, which directly causes my videos and album artwork to look a lot better than they did back when I didn’t use any unique visual elements. Also, like I wrote in the $100 goal (again, thank you so much!), your support has also made gear and music software acquisition hurt a lot less than they used to!

This part is me asking for help setting new Patreon goals
I need new goals!! I have literally no idea what to write. What do I set as the goals and at which amounts? Do you have any suggestions as to what I might put there? I really need help! xD
I’ve got one suggestion already to hold a Q&A, is that something you might be interested in?


This part is about how I now want to follow a schedule
Ever since I launched this Patreon I’ve been trying (and failing) to establish some kind of schedule for releasing videos. I’ve worked to speed up my workflow, by increasing ergonomics, customizing software and just prioritising making my environment better in general.
I’ve had to realise that making less complex and shorter remixes in between bigger releases isn’t bad thing, if it means I can remix songs I otherwise wouldn’t have. I’ve also recently started to treat the music work as a part-time job, limiting it to certain times of day in order to push for progress rather than dawdling and procrastinating in front of the screen. All of these things seem to be working seeing as I was able to release 4 songs in April, which is a new record for me :D

This part is where I actually get to the point and talk about that schedule
This new speedy workflow gives me an opportunity though. Instead of sporadic updates whenever something is finished I can now plan for the future, make remixes slightly in advance, and create a release schedule to consistently release new remixes every other week, meaning 2-3 remixes per month :D
There are lots of advantages to sticking to a schedule and making stuff in advance. It limits dry periods of no updates, effectively mitigating the damage if something should happen that keeps me from making music. It also gives me time to send the songs to licensing in advance of a new remix’s release, making it appear on spotify and such the same day that it’s released on YouTube if it’s possible to license it. So I’m thinking I want to pursue this mythical “schedule” that other musicians and youtubers have been talking about :)

Now, I do a few questions regarding this.
I’ve set Thursday to be the preliminary remix-upload-day, it’s the first day of “YouTube popularity curve”, it doesn’t have to compete with the popular friday and saturday upload boom, and it seems to cheer people up to get a remix near the end of the week. So what do you think about this? If you have a good argument for another day, I’m happy to hear about it :) 

Next question: regarding 16-bit patrons ($5 and above). I’ve written that I’m giving you the audio for remixes as soon as I’m done with them, do you still want this if I go with a schedule and make remixes in advance? Another alternative could for instance be that I can upload the audio a week in advance (or as early as possible if I’m done later than a week in advance). Let me know what you think about it :D

TL;DR as promised
1. Thanks, you are all awesome, and you help me and my music a lot! :D
2. I have no idea what to set up as new goals! Plz help!
3. I can make remixes faster now!
4. I’ll try to release videos every other Thursday! (Starting tomrrow!)
5. $5 Patrons, do you still want songs when they’re finished, or do you want them a set time before the video goes live?

That should be all!
Thanks again, and sorry about the long post :/