In This (New) Home On Ice

OK! If you're seeing this in your inbox right now, it means that I've (more accurately, my new platform's) successfully imported my subscription list over to Letterdrop, which is—tah-dah—my new and post-Substack platform. If you're confused as to why I left Substack to begin with, I wrote about it on, uh, Substack.

That post is roughly two months old now, but there's only been more reasons since to switch to a platform that isn't handing out massive amounts of money to shitheel morons like Bari Weiss justifying genocide and such (free Palestine). Also, I started a newsletter last July because I wanted to do something with writing that didn't involve gossipy discourse or endless circle-jerk industry sessions perpetuated by former alt-weekly editors, and in the year since the conversation around Substack has provided big enough of an annoying tent to somehow include both elements. So fuck it all!

Another thing I didn't like about Substack was the fixed pricing. I always felt like $5/month and $60/year was a bit much to ask for paid subscriptions, especially since a sizable amount of the population believe music writing has no worth to begin with. (Quick: Name one music writer who's been handed a Michael Tracey-esque contract from Substack. I rest my case.)

Letterdrop allows for more flexible pricing, so I've dropped my subscription prices to $3/month and $30/year. A paid subscription means the same as it meant during the Substack era: All the regular posts plus a weekly Baker's Dozen playlist post for paid subscribers only. (Sometimes—like, say, this coming Monday—the Baker's Dozen post is for free to give non-subscribers an idea of what it is in case they've been wondering.)

If you're a previous paid subscriber from the Substack era, you don't have to do anything to get this new pricing—you should be imported over to the new pricing tiers within the next week or so. If you get charged between now and then (or if you get double-charged for anything) and seek a refund, email me at larry.fitzmaurice@gmail.com and we'll work it out on Venmo.

I'll end with a brief apology for not posting enough installments of the newsletter recently. A few different things have been going on in my life over the last three months, and on top of managing those life changes I found myself putting off the nuts and bolts of changing platforms so as not to overwhelm myself and derail those other life changes. Then, I increasingly felt like I couldn't continue sending out newsletter installments until I migrated to a new platform. A lot of excuses, I know! Sometimes excuses are all we have.

Anyway, onward and upward. More interviews/19 Thoughts's/essays/Baker's Dozens coming and regularly to boot. Thanks as always for reading and I hope you continue to read in the future, too.