Thank You to Our Community

[LinkedMusicians]

Today is Thanksgiving in the US. I try not to be too American-centric in my posts (beyond using $ without writing USD, as I think everyone here is aware that the only time that is used is when we’re referring to USD). Of course, that’s important to do here because we’re from all over the world. My worldview was shaped from diverse friendships at an early age. One of my first best friends, we met at around age 3, just moved to the US from South Korea when we met. I was fascinated to hear him tell stories about life in South Korea and everything he loved there. I’ve always kept that love, appreciation, and fascination for our differences. Those differences make life more interesting and are our greatest strength. It is the best thing about the country I am from, the diversity of the people here. Like a lot of national holidays, students of history can find a good deal of problematic issues when exploring the history of this holiday, but there is something special about observing the day to focus on all that we are thankful for, and that is how my family and I observe this day.

I want to take this opportunity — as I am the first one awake at my house, with all my family here — to express to everyone here how grateful I am for you. That goes for everyone. I also want to give a shout out to some folks in particular, starting with expressing my gratitude to a man who has been a consistent source of encouragement and light, Brian AKA @bluescat. He’s been there from the beginning. I wish I could adopt him as a brother. He’s a wonderful human being. He has no idea how much I appreciate him. I want to thank @GregJazz and @Thor. I wouldn’t have bothered attempting to keep pursuing playing music again without their encouragement and friendship.

Then there are some very kind people that I’ve gotten to know as I needed help in various aspects of running this site. @doug and @lamia6, two wonderfully kind people who let me know that they had expertise and could help with the site. lamia6 has done numerous code fixes, tweaks — she’s created plugins that are used to run this site and she’s done all of that without financial compensation, just because she loves the values of LinkedMusicians and, to put it simply, she’s just wired to be a super kind, helpful person. @bluescat and @joegyork had raised their hands early on to moderate the site. Just the offer alone was incredibly encouraging. Another person who came forward to offer help was @mustakatu. He wasn’t part of the Cakewalk Forum, where a lot of the folks involved here originally met. mustakatu and I hit it off early on and his skills, willingness to pitch in, superior editing skills (in general, but I mean, superior to mine), and he has another quality that I greatly value, he shoots straight. I love and appreciate that, especially because I’m wired the same way. What’s also great is that he has excellent instincts and he’s simply a really good and thoughtful person.

There are lots of others here that have provided encouragement and shown friendship and kindness. By now, most of you understand that I created this place to be an environment free of the toxicity that has become normalized in social media, including at the big composing, gear, and music producer forums. Those environments stifle expression — they keep people from being as creative or open as they could be. Right now, we’re very focused on deals, and we’re growing rapidly. I have no intention of minimizing the deals aspect of this site, however, I do want to grow our community to have a greater focus on discussing the music we love, and on discussing the art and craft of songwriting, composing, performing and producing music. I am committed to making further enhancements to LinkedMusicians in the year ahead and want to provide my deepest thanks to all of you who are the heart of this community.

– Peter

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17

[joegyork]

You’ve built a great community here Peter – always a pleasure to read through as a contrast to the more torrid climes at Facebook! Onwards and upwards!

31

[LinkedMusicians]

On joegyork said

You’ve built a great community here Peter – always a pleasure to read through as a contrast to the more torrid climes at Facebook! Onwards and upwards!

Thanks, but WE built it and continue building it! All of us, and you have been an important part of it. Your encouragement and early on offer to pitch in has meant a lot.

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3

[jorge]

Peter, you planted the seed, and we all try to nurture and care for it.

Thank you for making a place like this possible, where so many of us feel at home.

Kr,
Jorge

Computer scientist by profession, and musician as a hobby
https://jorgeserranomusic.com/

31

[jude77]

Peter, you, and a handful of deeply devoted folks, have built this page from zero.  I, along with many others, deeply appreciate you and what you’ve done.  FWIW this is usually my first stop on the ‘net each day.  It’s always a good way to start things off.

21

[patrickwichrowski]

😉

https://linktr.ee/patrickwichrowski/

https://patrickwichrowski.bandcamp.com/

2

[LinkedMusicians]

On jude77 said

Peter, you, and a handful of deeply devoted folks, have built this page from zero.  I, along with many others, deeply appreciate you and what you’ve done.  FWIW this is usually my first stop on the ‘net each day.  It’s always a good way to start things off.

Give yourself credit. I built the initial site on my own — mostly turning to my son and daughter for input — and then the next person I turned to the most was GregJazz. As I soon had Bell’s Palsy and had my left eye constantly twitching when I worked and half of my face paralyzed, I saw building this site as a challenge, as about perseverance. So my family’s encouragement is something I really want to acknowledge (they just don’t come to the site unless I’m showing them something!). But it’s like I built an instrument. It really only came to life when someone came along and played it with skill and emotion.

That is what you and everyone else here have done. They made this all come to life. That’s the most important part of the story, what it became and is still becoming. We only opened this to the public, in, I think April of this year and we’ve grown to what — based on what is publicly known and shown — is likely more than 10x the community most of us met at. I like what Jorge wrote, using the metaphor of planting a seed.

I think of it like when I was a young working musician. I would play clubs, colleges, fests, and various venues with different bands (I got to know agents and would work in some bands regularly and fill in for other drummers in other bands). I would take all the work I could get, because I loved to play. In college, I met a horn player (trombone) pursuing a master’s in music (he passed away earlier this year; he eventually taught jazz performance at Purdue University and was a school band director). He told me that he had a gig coming up and his drummer refused to play it because it didn’t pay. It was a fundraiser for an 11 yr old boy with cancer. So, I started doing fundraiser gigs. It felt great to do something meaningful and combine my love of playing music. And then on Sunday afternoons, I would invite musicians I got to know from all of that playing for jam sessions where we could perform music we loved that we weren’t able to play professionally. The jam sessions might run from 2PM to 10PM — and I’d only stop them due to noise ordinances.

I look at LinkedMusicians a lot like I look at my organizing those jam sessions back in the day. I supplied the place, I sometimes even bought the pizza, but it took the musicians coming and playing — all of us playing together — to make it special. It’s the same here. I was happy just to be a part of it all. I mostly would play drums, but sometimes jumped on piano or organ, depending on whether or not someone else could play drums. But my joy was in playing with talented, inspiring musicians. So, much like those Sunday jam sessions I organized, I’ll take credit for starting and guiding this place. Managing digital — website, advertising, email, search, etc. and then starting a small dot com of my own — is my career. So, I have the skills and experience to lead this. But that’s not what makes it special. It takes ALL OF US to bring it to life and make it special. It takes you being here. So thank you for being a part of this.

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4

[jorge]

I like what Jorge wrote, using the metaphor of planting a seed.

🙂

Computer scientist by profession, and musician as a hobby
https://jorgeserranomusic.com/

11

[Satya]

u should invite and allow developers to post deals too

[LinkedMusicians]

On Satya said

u should invite and allow developers to post deals too

I have done that — but not very much, and I have shared why on the site before. I’ve advised more than 3 dozen developers. But I’ve only reached out to a few to tell them about LinkedMusicians. Why? Because our level of community interaction is so low and people’s first impressions are so important. I don’t want to invite a developer only to see them disappear because they don’t see much interaction.

The developer from WrongTools found this site because, I think, he found us in a Google search. I think it was because he saw that I made a post stating how much I love his sample libraries, that they’re really creative and I compared them to Sound Dust, in that they’re really different and have a lot of personality in them. A couple of weeks ago he sent me an email and stated that he posts here and he sees more traffic and sales from LinkedMusicians than VI-Control, yet no one besides me has ever interacted in any threads where he posts about his new libraries and sales. This guy is seriously talented. He’s a film composer that does sample libraries. You’d think that our community, even our early group from Cakewalk Forum, would be interested, but they’re not engaged.

So, very candidly, that’s one of the challenges this community has, to bring up engagement. I had hoped that the early adopters of the site would continue posting, but except for a small group, they’ve largely disappeared, and they’re not posting at Cakewalk Forum either. My guess is that when Larry made a racist trope post about a certain race of Americans being lazy and on welfare — like he prolifically posts about in social media — and I wrote, “Hey Larry, you’re my friend, but if we start making political posts, this place will implode.” And Larry responded by calling me a stupid, useful ****** idiot,” and announced he was leaving the community, a lot of our early adopters stopped posting. Then he did a campaign sending people emails and PMs — I know because a couple people forwarded them to me, making a bunch of false claims that there was something else that happened — there wasn’t. But I think in all of that, our early adopters stopped posting for the most part, and posting activity here — and at Cakewalk Forum when Larry returned to try to kill off LinkedMusicians  (there have been three LM / Peter hate threads about it since; we’ve also had several people register here to troll me and the community from Larry’s group of friends; earlier this month, one of them registered under an insult nickname someone made up for me at Cakewalk Forum earlier this year; I banned them, but I sent them an email, and surprisingly, after I told the guy the true story of what happened with Larry behind the scenes, how Larry called me vile names after I shared that my family is part Jewish after I saw some very sickening antisemitic posts that Larry made on Facebook, the guy apologized to me for creating a troll account here; I then created an account for him under the same username he has at Cakewalk Forum — okay, I ended up misspelling it — oops — but he never posted here or at Cakewalk Forum since then) — have resulted in a lot of the early adopter group just not feeling the same.

Of course, as we opened registration to the public, the majority of our community is not from Cakewalk Forum. However, it’s still difficult to get conversations started in a new community and that’s the biggest challenge, not website traffic, which is robust because I’m posting a lot of deals. I do have plans to impact that which I will roll out in 2026. From my experience growing online communities, I anticipate that we will see this community grow by several times in 2026. When we start seeing more interaction — not just more website traffic — I will invite developers I know.  I’m probably going to speak to Tawnia — 8Dio’s CEO soon. FTR, while I’ve consulted to 8Dio, Tawnia and I quickly became friends. She even introduced me to her employees as her “newest BFF!” So I think her and I could have a lot of fun here. If I start a podcast in 2026, I absolutely want to interview the developers I’ve given advice to over the years, including 8Dio, Steven Slate, SonicCouture, Orange Tree Samples, Kirk Hunter… and friends like Peter from IK, my new friend, Jon from WrongTools… I have much more experience with small sample developers, as opposed to effects developers, BTW.

I am hoping as we enter the holiday season that we’ll see more social interactions on the site. I’m very open to everyone’s suggestions. I look at this place as it belongs to all of us. I’m just the manager of it. In all candor, I would rather be a regular member!

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