Reply To: 📢 LinkedMusicians 1st Anniversary FREE Giveaway Thread! $378 Worth of Prizes!

[LinkedMusicians]

A few things, I realize that a lot of us — those with early adopter under their usernames — have been here as far back as Sept 2024 when we were in beta. I made the logos back than and the vintage emblem reads “established in 2024” which I suppose I should revise to 2025. But we’re counting from the public launch in April 2025, not when we were in a beta test period.

Now, my family, friends, and colleagues will tell you that I get uncomfortable with compliments. As a manager, at a certain point in my career, I realized that I don’t operate like most people and needed to push myself to celebrate milestones and accomplishments for the sake of teams that I’ve led. Personally, I’m satisfied knowing that I did something well or very well and moving on. I’ve always enjoyed being part of a team rather than a solo act. Musically, I’ve always preferred to be part of the band — on the drums and writing songs. I’ve always loved to perform as a musician, but I never wanted to be the person in the spotlight with the mic. I’ve always found more joy in praising someone on my teams and feeling part of something bigger than myself. I’m sure that our resident psychologist (literally) could explain that. So reading these compliments, I just want everyone to know that I am very grateful, but I really just wanted to get your thoughts on what you enjoy and use the most at LinkedMusicians. I hope no one reading this thinks that I intended to solicit any praise. Heavens, no. I just want to learn what features of the site you enjoy the most.

And just like a great band, we’ve had a bunch of members who’ve provided helpful advice, volunteered with moderation, including @bluescat, @joegyork, @doug, and @mustakatu. And there’s one person that has done more on this site than anyone outside of yours truly, who has accomplished most of the things on my wish list for LinkedMusicians, some of which I didn’t expect to happen, because they were out of the budget: @lamia6. For example, our most requested feature for LM has been the Daily Email Digest. Our members asked for that during the beta period, but I was already over far over my budget. Lamia6 came along, told me that she was going to make that happen. She coded it, installed it, and testing it. She’s a very talented web developer and, more importantly, a wonderful, kind, and incredibly thoughtful human being. From day one I dreamed about the ability for each member to be able to include their music streaming on their profile page and shared that with Lamia6. What did she do? She made it happen. I created a page for a rhyming dictionary several weeks ago. Lamia6 looked at it and on her site, she built something 100x better that she called the Songwriter’s Toolbox and asked me if I liked it and wanted her to put it on LM. “Are you serious? Do you even need to ask me that? I love it!!!” I responded. She’s written lots of other code on this site and fixed more issues than I can recall offhand.

So I just want everyone to know, this site, while it is my passion project, I have had family and friends from the beginning and along the way that have put in their time and passion into it — or in my family’s case, listened to me talk about it, complain about issues, ask their opinions, and encourage me time after time. While it started as a solo project, it certainly didn’t stay a solo project for long. It would be nothing without my family, my friends, and every member of the LM community. I thank you for being here, for our shared love for music and making music, our shared values about transparency, ethics, speak honestly but never forget about treating others with respect and kindness.

We have to limit posts in this thread so it’s not a monster to pull out names — so I think I’ll make a spin-off thread. But I just want people to know, while I’m grateful for people who appreciate the site, expressing that gratitude, I did build this site initially on my own with my wife and kids, my friends @thor and @gregjazz giving lots of input on decisions, around a year ago, the site really became something bigger when it became all of us. I’m just the guy behind the drums, hosting the jam session and buying the pizza. It takes all of us together to make the music, that’s why I did this, that’s what makes it all special.

Thanks again to everyone here, and especially those who have volunteered or made any kind of contribution of their time, skills, encouragement, or financial in support of LinkedMusicians.

– Peter

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