A bunch of updates all at once (Patreon)

Hey folks! So... I've had a bunch of things I've been meaning to post here for a while so I decided it's probably best to do it all together so I don't forget any of them. A lot of these are things I could use y'all's feedback on, so if you have any thoughts on any of it, please let me know! Ok, let's do this.

1) As you may have noticed, there was no video today. If you follow me on twitter you probably already know why, but for those of you who don't, the short version is this: I'm dropping down to 3 videos per month. There'll still be a song analysis, and then two other videos. This is for a lot of reasons, including burnout and an increase in work-related travel, but ultimately it's a solution to a pretty inevitable problem: Over the years my videos have gotten longer and more in-depth, but I haven't given myself any additional time to *make* them. This means the time I used to spend on things like research and analysis (and self-care) is increasingly being consumed by production, so in order to balance that out, I need to carve out some additional time. The other option would be to stop making long, in-depth videos, but I don't want to decrease the quality of my work, so quantity is the only other option.

2) Relatedly... I'm considering stopping directly posting videos on Patreon when they publish. My reasoning is this: Patreon has a lot of exclusive posts (Song polls, sneak peeks, EOTM, updates like this one, etc.) and I want patrons to be able to see them, which means I hope you're leaving your email settings on, but if I'm spamming your inbox every week with redundant information you can get elsewhere, that seems like it'd get in the way. There's other ways to get an email when videos go live: You can use the bell notification on YouTube, and I also have a mailing list at http://eepurl.com/bCTDaj if you want to sign up for that, but I think that since Patreon doesn't give you enough control over *which* emails you get, it's probably best for me to minimize the amount I send so you only get the ones that matter. I wanted to ask y'all first, though, 'cause if I'm overestimating how intrusive it is then maybe this is a bad idea. So... considering other options exist for the same result, would you rather I did or didn't cross-post videos directly to Patreon?

3) On a similar note... does anyone care about the Sneak Peeks? I started doing them early on mainly 'cause I wasn't sure what else to do at the $5 tier, but they almost never get any engagement so I have to assume most people aren't all that interested. I could be wrong, though: It might be that people like them and just don't feel the need to respond, in which case I don't mind doing them, but if most folks find that they're just crowding their inbox then, again, I should probably back off. If you like them, though, please do let me know, but otherwise I'm open to suggestions for changing that tier.

4) Also, on the topic of tiers, I have to own up to the fact that I'm pretty consistently falling behind on the physical Elephant Of The Month rewards. I'm trying not to, but it turns out it involves a lot more logistics than I had initially anticipated, and as I've gotten busier it's fallen through the cracks a lot. It's also not super popular: Of the people at the $20 tier, only about half of them have even given me a mailing address, so I feel like there's probably something better I could be doing at that tier, both for me and for y'all. I still intend to do the digital one, and I owe y'all a couple months already which I don't intend to skip out on, but for those of you at that level... Is there something else you'd want? I can't promise anything specific, but I do know I'm not doing a very good job with this thing so I'm looking at other options. If y'all's preference is that I stick with the physical mailers and just accept that it'll wind up being intermittent and not on time then I can probably make that work (Maybe do a quarterly thing where I send three at a time? That seems a little easier to organize, and a little less time-sensitive.) but I don't want to make that decision for you.

I think that's it for now? Lemme know your thoughts!