Letter #169

hi how r u 🐸,

lovewillsavetheday.fm is officially three years old.

But not only that, it’s now self-sufficient, growing (2,000 members), and I’ve written something up that will hopefully convince you to listen in this weekend as we celebrate, join the Discord (if you’re not already there), check out the brand new shiny website, and share the community and station with friends that you think might quite like it too.

So, thank you all for being here, building this with us, and for your continuing support. We couldn’t reach this milestone without you, and so I wanted to write something up to mark the occasion. Please read on…

❤️ love will save the day dot fm is three ❤️

This newsletter, our community, and our radio station have never really been about the numbers.

When I started writing the newsletter back in June 2017, it was really just a way to share music and links to stuff I thought a few friends might like.

The first one went out to about fifteen people. But the numbers (really, honestly) never mattered. What mattered was sharing with each other, because, somewhat inevitably, most of those fifteen people messaged me back with music and links they wanted to share too.

After a few letters, it started to get shared a bit more widely, but the same principle held everything together: sharing art, culture, and music that we thought was worth passing on. Then came the meet ups, the attempts at parties (I was not born to be a promoter – LOL), and then three years in, the WhatsApp group. All the while, our cute little community kept growing as people shared links and invites with friends they thought would be into it.

Then came lovewillsavetheday.fm.

This month marks three years since we launched the station. The numbers still don’t matter, but after three years it feels like a good moment to explain why – and how we’ve worked and what we’ve done to keep it so that the numbers never matter.

When we launched the station, we put together a sort of manifesto. We said that one of the biggest challenges facing grassroots culture today is that ideas born on the fringes too often become commercialised, sanitised and appropriated by investors and businesses. We saw communities, stations and movements grow to a certain point and then find themselves pulled away from the people who gave them their cultural significance in the first place.

Effectively, we’ve watched many communities get the margarine treatment: bleached, reshaped and sold back to us.

We said – and meant with every fibre in our bodies – that it was our community we wanted to protect. We wanted to create a space that was free from outside interference, whether that be from brands, advertisers, sponsors or investors.

Why? Because we’ve seen what can happen when communities become dependent on outside money. Every decision has another audience to consider. Growth becomes an expectation rather than a choice. And before long, the needs of the community risk coming second to the needs of the people funding it.

That isn’t inevitable, but we’ve seen it happen often enough to know we wanted to try and find a different, more sustainable way.

We’ve seen that pattern play out time and again. It’s rarely additive to culture or community; more often it’s extractive and corrosive.

That isn’t to say it’s easy to chart an alternative path– the last three years have given us no doubt about that– but an alternative path IS possible.

Which is why, just for today, the numbers matter.

Today, lovewillsavetheday.fm is three years old. It has 2,000 people in the community, 200 Patreon supporters, and as of last month, it is entirely self-sufficient.

We’ve always said we wanted to be “by and for our” community – owned and operated by the people who make it what it is. Three years in, we’ve taken a massive step towards making that a reality.

The community and the station are self-run, self-funded and self-focused. We’ve turned down investment, advertising and sponsorship – often when we needed the cash the most – because we wanted to build something that answered first and foremost to the people in it.,

It hasn’t always been easy, but today we’re fortunate to be a genuine outlier in a music landscape that’s become increasingly challenging and precarious.

Most importantly, it’s allowed us to keep making decisions for the right reasons. We’ve never had to chase growth for its own sake, compromise on our original vision, or become reliant on money from outsiders.

This has meant we’ve grown organically. We still only run a three-day schedule (which now we’re self-sustained we can start to expand), but even in three days over three years we’ve put out more than 7,400 shows, from more than 300 residents and hosts– many of whom have never had a radio show before. On Mixcloud alone, they’ve been listened to for more than 1.7 million minutes.

If we were chasing growth, changing our vision, and reliant on outsiders, we’d probably struggle to justify running Open Air four times a year. It’s a massive time sink, and hands over three days of our schedule to people brand new to radio. From a traditional ‘brand growth’ perspective, it’s probably a terrible idea. From a community perspective (the only one we really care about), it’s one of the best things we’ve done. It’s created opportunities, brought new voices and perspectives to the station, and given people a space to belong.

Oh, and it’s also why we don’t - and never will - charge ‘subs’ to residents and hosts.

What I love most is that none of it stops when the radio does. People have made friends, started collaborations, thrown parties together, and shown up for one another in ways I never imagined when I sent that first newsletter to fifteen people. We’re still a community with a radio station (rather than vice versa), but today that community is much bigger.

So, the numbers still don’t matter. But today I’m thinking about them briefly, because today they tell us that what we set out to do is happening. It’s slow, it’s arduous, and it can be scary – but it’s working. Through the station we’re amplifying art, culture and music from the margins, and through the community we’re giving people a space to belong.

And those two things are all that has ever mattered – over the last three years, or over the last nine.

Before you go, I just want to say a big thank you to everyone who’s helped create this magical space. First and foremost, thank you for being part of this community, for listening to the station, and for supporting us over the last three years – and, for many of you, the last nine.

Then there’s everyone who’s worked behind the scenes – creating the vision and the plan, building the station, keeping everything running, and somehow keeping it all on track and moving forwards. This team has achieved an immense amount with very little time or money, and shown that it can be done.

Dream team. Thank you:

• Arun

• Becca

• Conor

• Demi

• Ginnie

• Holly

• Jess

• Keith

• Kevin

• Laura

• Lindah

• Maz

• Nick H

• Nick R

• Ruben

• Ruchi

• Sarah

• Sean

• Stef

• Steve

• Steven

• Tara

• Tim

• Will

• Zahra

Right, that’s enough for now, must get on!

See you on the airwaves,
Jed x

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