Why Public Media Matters (Even If You Don’t Use It)
Plus: Our First Financial Report, and Our First Tape!
Howdy! This is installment #8 (our final one!) in our 🦺Under Construction🚧 series. We’ll kick off our official newsletter on July 7th, but our podcast, The J-Card, will debut on Thursday, July 3rd.
In today’s newsletter:
First Tape Updates 🎧
Public Media Funding Cuts ✂️
Tape Club Finances: Where’s The Money Going? 💸
🎧 First Tape Updates
We’ve got the tracklist for our first tape all ready to go! We received a bunch of submissions that we’re super thankful for, and after listening to them all, we’ve decided on the 12 tracks that’ll be on the first tape.
We’re currently locking in the art and the mastering, and then the next step will be to put the order in with our friends at Duplication.com. Right now, we’re on track to hit our release date of September 2025.
If you’re interested in getting a cassette, now’s your chance to sign up as a paid subscriber.
✂️ Public Media Funding Cuts
To pile on to the pretty dismal news week, a bill that includes a $1.1 billion slash in public media funding is making its way through Washington. In response, beloved station KEXP hosted a 27 hour marathon broadcast this week to bring awareness to the bill and the fight against it.
It goes without saying, but public media is incredibly important in developing careers, promoting local culture, keeping the community informed, etc. Even if you’re not a direct consumer of public media, the media you do consume is likely somehow just a degree or two removed from the influence of public media and the funding that allows it to happen.
If you’re reading this newsletter, for example, you’re closer than you think to public media. Yes, on the surface, it’s hosted on a private platform, Substack (which is actually sort of a gross platform, and who knows maybe we’ll switch to Patreon one day, but that’s not important right now), and it often includes links to Spotify and YouTube, both private platforms, but that doesn’t mean public arts funding hasn’t helped create it.
Some of my first ever gigs I worked, where I learned the very basics of storytelling and filmmaking were for local PBS stations. For the documentary I made a few years ago, I was lucky enough to have consultancy from an accomplished editor who has worked on some well-known publicly-funded documentaries.
People I’ve known in music all over the US have roots tying back to public radio. I’m sure that if it wasn’t for public radio, organizations I work with like Brainrot Radio and WRIR in Richmond would have a much smaller pool of talent to pull from at the very least.
One of the most important things to remember with this bill is that public media is not purely an A-to-B idea. Just because you might not have NPR on in the car all the time, or you might not be watching Nova documentaries before bed, doesn’t mean that public media doesn’t play a role in your day-to-day.
Public organizations provide sociocultural checks and balances. They have higher callings than merely satisfying shareholders. When media is fully privatized (and I guess this goes for most industries), the humanity behind it gets squeezed out.
You can visit ProtectMyPublicMedia.org to learn more.
📈 Help Out By Sponsoring The Tape Club
If you want to help out a small-time art project, support DIY creatives, and shine a small spotlight on physical media, get in touch!
💸 The Tape Club Financial Report
One of our goals with the Tape Club is to be super transparent about our finances. As we’ve been working behind-the-scenes on pre-launch stuff, I’ve been pitching this project to quite a few people and explaining what it is, and every once in a while I’ve been met with people who want to discuss money right away, which is fair (if not a bit out of touch).
This is an art project that will almost certainly never break even. On the off chance that it does, any profit will be fully re-invested into the Tape Club (whether that’s in the form of more tapes, merch, whatever readers/viewers desire).
In order to keep this financial transparency up, I’ve decided to try and give a breakdown of money-in and money-out every six months or so. And as our pre-launch period is coming to an end, I figured why not kick it off right here.
We started this project in January 2025 and through June 2025 we’ve earned $175 through paid memberships. Amazing! Thank you to everyone who has supported; we’re lucky to have you!
In these past six months, here’re the big things we’ve spent money on:
Meta Ads - $140
Domain/Hosting/Email - $96
Riverside.fm Pro Account - $209
The great part about this is that a lot of those are one-time costs. And another great part is that a lot of other expenses (like hardware for recording the podcast, software for editing the podcast, music/sfx library membership, stock footage/gfx library membership, etc) are part of my day job, so they’re not factored into this project.
We’re currently about $270 in the hole. Anticipated costs for the next few months include: cassette printing (~$200 per run), box printing (~$100 per run), and shipping costs (tbd). I’m sure more stuff will come up as we keep developing the Tape Club.
Obviously, as veterans of spending too much money on our hobbies, we knew what we were getting into, and we’re excited to do this thing! If we can pull in $2500 annually (that’s just over $200/month, or just 40 monthly paid subscribers), we should be able to create some really amazing stuff for yall.
If you want to support us, you can either become a paid subscriber or a founding member.
🫶 Your Support…
We sincerely thank you for being a part of the Tape Club. Your support doesn’t go unnoticed, especially in these early stages.
We’re currently seeking music submissions for the second tape (December 2025). If you’re interested in submitting or know anyone who might be, here’s the submission form: https://forms.gle/Mc7En6K8Tb2BbgxJA
We’re also happy to hear your general thoughts and ideas. There’s a form for those, too: https://forms.gle/nTgxrqL6oLfVKms27
Thanks again, and see ya on July 7th for our first official newsletter!
-RDTC