2024’s Version of the Chorus Update

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Last year, I wrote about the annual state of Chorus in August. The state of the website was, more or less, that costs had increased, ad revenue had decreased, and supporter revenue had more or less stayed the same.

This year, I’m only a couple of months behind my already haphazard schedule of checking in on everything. Packing up a home and moving will toss everything into disarray like that.

The story of the past year is similar, with a few new bright spots.

The website’s costs have remained flat. I forecast that within the next twelve months, I’ll need to upgrade the forum server’s hard drive space again (we’re a little over half full, mostly from image attachments).

Ad revenue continues to be predictable and predictably less than the year before.

Supporter revenue continues to be strong and growing, which is why I can run this website and community.

Here’s the last 62 weeks of revenue for the website—ad revenue in blue, supporter revenue in green. The big green spikes you see are the main recurring annual renewals each year. One is right around when I wrote this very post last year, another is around the time when the website first launched, and the other is around the end of the year and previous site update posts.

First, a massive thank you to everyone who continues to visit the website and support us every month. If you’re already a member, I greatly appreciate you every single month when the renewals come in. It is because of all of you that I am able to keep the website online, dedicate time to updating it with news each day, and spend time making it better.

If you’re not yet a supporting member, and you like this website, this is my yearly pitch that becoming one can help make sure we can keep running now and into the future. As you can see from the above numbers, we’re very much a community-backed operation at this point. I’m confident that ad revenue will never again outpace the supporter revenue. So, as the PBS jingle goes, it’s because of readers like you that we are able to exist.

My plan for the rest of the year is to finish getting settled after the move; we’re close to being done with the significant parts and then I can settle back into a routine of working on the website and being able to sit down each week to write the weekly newsletter again. I’ve really missed writing about music in more detail, and the past few months have been packed with many incredible albums. If everything goes as planned, that should be starting up again soon.

Thank you again to everyone who reads this website. It’s been a wild but good year. And I’m as excited as ever about the future of Chorus and our little place on the internet to talk about music, entertainment, and all the rest of it.

Please consider becoming a member so we can keep bringing you articles like this one.