I'm flattered and honored that something I'm making is being appreciated and considered something that "as many people as possible should be able to see," though this is of course primarily due to my subjects. I do find the recurring comments and discussion on the ethics of a "paywall" in my case curious. I never see any serious adults publicly suggesting that Special Interests or Rocker zines have some inherent obligation to be uploading their great contents that they work hard on for free to the internet, or criticizing them for potentially turning a profit through their efforts. If you want to read what's in the magazine, you have to buy it - simple as that. It feels a bit like teenagers who whine to get on guest lists of their friends' shows because they can't stand shelling out $10 at the door. If this were 10+ years ago, I might be releasing DVD boxsets full of 2 hour video interviews and charging whatever that costs, but instead I'm uploading them to the internet on a weekly basis for a rather light subscription fee.
Believe it or not, but the preparation and execution of each interview, then editing and mixing the 2+ hour video, then uploading it in various formats to various platforms, amounts to full-time-job hours. There are recurring monthly costs in platform and software fees. The Club Moral episode in particular cost me an additional several hundred Euros in travel costs and a secondary mic set up I needed. It's obviously my decision to do all of this, and I love doing it, but I got tired of grinding my ass off each week, uploading it for free, and then constantly rattling my cup, begging the "scene" to donate to support the product that they heavily praised. Especially since having a kid, my time and money is no longer to be played with, so I've take the responsibility of simply placing a fair price on it, instead of constantly trying to convince my friends and colleagues to "help me out." The free episodes are for newcomers and casual followers. I do think everyone who is truly interested should see these, and I know some people simply can't afford it, but in many cases if you're refusing to pay €5/month towards a weekly in-depth noise video interview series, it either means I'm not making it good enough, which is a challenge I continually embrace, or you're refusing out of principle, which I can't respect. Nowadays with digital content, streaming, youtube etc., people are used to everything being free because they are paying with big money advertisements and their data. Well, I don't make any money off those things. Things cost time and money to make, that's why you have to pay for them, and in my case we're not talking about getting rich. On the other hand, I do receive strong support from a lot of people who get it, but interestingly enough, a lot of my personal friends and closer contacts are missing from the list. It just seems that the closer someone is to you, or the more independent, the easier it is to undervalue and undercompensate what they do. I can vaguely understand the stubborn stigma around a paywall, but Patreon really is the best way you can directly support an independent operation like this in 2024.
