07/29/2019 - Huge Update: Obscura Premium, Black Label News, Budget Exploration (Patreon)

Listeners,

Episode 10 will mark the end of Season 01 for Black Label. Don’t stress. You’re still going to have exclusive content here. You can jump forward if you’re only interested in that part.  

Black Label will have a season 02, a season 03, and beyond. The show is something I never want to get stale. Each of the episode I’ve kicked around covering for some time.  I want to cover a wide variety of subjects/cases each season. The theme of each episode is something I like to explore the most.  

Black Label 01: Getting my feet wet/a feel for the show

Black Label 02: The episode that I had in mind when creating the show. Covers 

Black Label 03: A meditation of the infectious nature of tragedy spurred on through Facebook live streams. 

Black Label 04: A continued examination of the themes from 03. With a focus on exploring the role of Social Media sites and their unwillingness to police content. 

Black Label 05: Spousal Abuse

Black Label O6: The Animal Crush Industry

Black Label 07: The dangerous realities of tourism. 

Black Label 08: Children facing the predatory nature of the internet with apathetic parents who don’t protect them. 

Black Label 09: Our first heavy hitter Black Label. 

Black Label 10: A case so controversial it shut down entire sites, removed many subreddits on reddit, and people were arrested for sharing the footage. 

I’m in love with the reaction of Black Label. It has always been intended to be the punk rock version of the main show. I knew I was doing something right when, after the release of an episode, I get messages about how the episode was too dark or too light from both crowds. Honestly? It can be hard to tell what is going to affect certain people.  From what I gather these are the most controversial episodes: 06, 02, 08, and 04 in that order. Personally, I found 08 to hit the hardest for me and had to take a break for a few days after the release. 

So, what’s next? 

Soon we launch Obscura Premium. You can expect darker episodes of the podcast to land here and often feature real world audio. Just don’t expect the same tone/production of Black Label. Still, these episodes will be fully produced, written, narrated versions of the show. The idea is that when Black Label season 02 comes back we will able to have Obscura Premium and Black Label co-existing. Meaning that you’ll get twice the premium content you’re getting now when that happens. 

Okay, transparency time! I like to fill you guys in on things others tend not to when possible. How about the production of the show? Well, I plan on elaborating on this in more detail in the Q&A episode, but I want to break down some of it for you here. Short and to the point: The current production of the show is $3,000. The podcast is generating around $5,000-$6,000 a month after Patreon, Himalaya Premium, ads, and merch sales. Advertisers have paid out more than what I expected and that has really helped us grow. I won’t get into the boring numbers, but my plan has been to always put half of what I make back into the show. 

Right now the Patreon and Himalaya make up the budget. What does that mean? You guys are the backbone of the show. Obscura started with a $50 budget from a broke person’s pocket. With your help the writing, music, narrating, etc has grown to what is has become. Listening to some of those early episodes things started a bit rough so I’m glad you’re still here. 

I’m going to be speaking at Podcast Movement in Orlando this month. It’s more of an industry show but if any of you are going to be there then I’d be happy to meet you. Now that the show is progressing at a quicker rate, I hope to attend more public true crime conventions in 2020. 

And, I think that wraps things up.

Keep the fire burning,

Justin