Letter #77

I hope you’re well. This is letter seventy seven, and it’s a bit different. I know I say that phrase quite often, but I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on this project, and many of you noticed that last week’s letter was a little different. Over the course of the last eighteen months, we’ve had some brilliant guests (thank you to every single one), some letters that I’m proud of, and to be frank, some letters where I’ve felt I’ve phoned it in a bit. Many of you have asked how I find the time to do this every single week; the truth is that I love writing this letter and sharing music with you, and I find time because of that reason.

I never started this project with any goal in mind, and if I’m honest, I never really expected anyone to read it. I thought that after the first wave of enthusiastic friends and family had gotten bored, I’d probably have just packed this in and considered it an interesting idea, but not much else. So I was as surprised as everyone else when people I didn’t know started to subscribe. Then when people that I massively admired from music and culture started joining, I had to pinch myself.

Right now there are 962 of you, and while you don’t all listen to every single letter, over the course of each month around 85% of you listen to at least two. A further 10% dip in and out, and I think about 5% never see the email because of spam filters. Over the last eighteen months around 80 people have joined us, and later unsubscribed (I know this letter isn’t for everyone). Amazingly, there is a hardcore of around 450 of you that listen to every single letter (and most of you within ten hours of it being sent out). This is (literally) a hundred times more people than I ever expected.

I can’t thank you enough for reading, listening, and sharing stuff. Without you, I wouldn’t have continued.

Before you / some of you / my dad start to think this project is finished, it absolutely isn’t, but I’ve decided to take a break for December. I never thought this would go beyond ten letters, and now it has, I’d like to spend some time thinking about this properly. I want to think about if the format, content, frequency, and distribution of the letter, and mixtape content, structure, platform, and length are still the right thing to do.

I would love your thoughts on how this could develop and progress. I’d also love for you to share our project with your friends if you think it’s good, and if you think they’d like it. The more people we have, the more suggestions people send in, and the better the quality the letters are. It genuinely makes a massive difference, so please share.

Rest assured my obsessive compulsion for listening and buying records won’t stop (it never has), and so when this is back, it’ll hopefully be better than ever. I’ll be back on the 11th of January, and until then, as always…

If you’ve read to here, thanks for indulging me ♥️.