Shuffling Things Around

🔀 SS# 101 • more changes are coming... again!

Hello there, feels good to be back! 👋🏼

January marks 2 years since I started writing Shuffle Sundays, and to celebrate it, today I’m introducing not one but two big news moving forward, but more on that later.

This project started as a place for me to share various recommendations on things to watch, read, play, listen to, look at, etc, until I decided to pivot it to almost exclusively music content in the summer of 2021, when life got super busy overnight and I didn’t really have much time to consume other types of content besides music. It wasn’t the easiest decision, as I knew I was risking seeing many readers departing, which did happen, but at the same time, I knew I was being true to myself and sticking to something I was passionate about. Looking back, it was one of the best things I could have done, for many reasons.

Music was my first and continues to be my biggest passion, and I honestly couldn’t imagine life without it. I still remember the first album I got as a gift, the first one I bought it intentionally with my own money, and the first few concerts I attended. In high school, I fell in love with the drums almost by accident, which greatly impacted my life. Music continued to influence me throughout my late teens and college years until I bought my first DSLR camera and became a music photographer, something I could have never dreamed to do professionally before. And nowadays… I get to recommend and write about music for y’all!

Over the past 2 years, I recommended 79 unique albums and 125 individual songs, excluding special issues and the usual new releases list. I also got to interview a few artists and collaborate with other writers, which made things even more interesting.

🔀 Extra Shuffle = more content!

One of the big news is that starting this week, you’ll be receiving extra content from me. I’m calling it “Extra Shuffle”, and these will be posts coming out on Thursdays. They will be about music, for the most part, but without following the same structure of the Sunday posts that you’re already familiar with. Those will remain the same, and these new ones will be a selection of essays, lists, deep dives, explorations, collaborations, and much more. In the perfect world, I would be sending these extra issues every Thursday, turning Shuffle Sundays officially into a twice-a-week publication, but since this will be a big experimentation for me (and for you), I decided not to follow a strict calendar and let things happen a bit more organically, that’s also why I’m calling these “extra” content.

⚡️ Paid Subscriptions

Another big change coming is the introduction of paid subscriptions. If you have enjoyed my work here so far, or happen to have found one of more new favorite artists through my publication, you now have the option to support my work through a monthly or yearly subscription. This is obviously not mandatory, and you can continue to enjoy Shuffle Sundays for free as it has always been. My initial thought was to put the new extra content behind a paywall, making that exclusive for those who choose to support it, but I am so excited about these changes, that I decided to keep all the posts open to everybody for an undetermined time, so more people can have access and enjoy it. At some point down the road, I may create some sort of paywall for the extra content, or simply come up with other perks in order to make the subscription more interesting.

But for now, for less than the infamous “convenience fee” we all currently pay when buying concert tickets, you can choose to support my project and help Shuffle Sundays to continue to expand to new heights.

🎶 Upcoming

This was a bit of an unusual post, with no music recommendations, so be on the lookout for two issues next week: the very first “Extra Shuffle” on Thursday, and the first regular “Shuffle Sundays” issue of 2023 on Sunday. Until then, you can follow my 2023 playlist on Spotify and catch up with some of the new music released so far: