Hey all. The gang at Whiskey Media is again planning some silly stuff on September 9th with our second annual Big Live Live Show Live (This Time it's Live!). If you missed it last year, we basically gave Vinny a panic attack and invited the community to join us for some good-natured mayhem as we broadcast a live variety show for a full 8 hours.
This year's show will also mark the one-year anniversary of the launch of our premium subscription offering. It's become a big portion of our business and for the most part keeps the lights on in our little crypt here in San Francisco. While I'd like to assume most subscribers feel they've gotten their money's worth, we figured it would be smart to do a check-in and see how you guys feel about how things are going one year later. If you've got the time, we've put together a quick little survey to help us out in that regard.
We're also planning on doing an open podcast sometime next week with our various heads of state in which we'll take calls, ideas, and threats from the community about what we should focus on in this next year. In the meantime, I can make the following general announcements about our upcoming system-level changes.
- The price of subscriptions will not go up in September.
- Yes, if you're an annual subscriber, you'll get the option for another free t-shirt. There will be a new design by community member buzz_clik.
- There will be other options to choose from in addition to the t-shirtl. We plan on giving all annual subscribers the option of a $15 coupon for use against any of our store goods. So if you don't want the member shirt, you can give that money to charity, pay it forward to another user, and a whole lot of other stuff. This option will essentially drop the extra $10 cost international members have incurred.
- We're working on full-featured Boxee, Roku, XBMC, Plex and iTunes/Apple TV solutions for each site where you'll be able to login and receive HD video if you're a member.
- We're also working on a general subscriber hub, as well as rebuilding our login and billing hubs, so you can manage your accounts a bit more cleanly and get a better overview of the features your membership offers. This should launch in the next week or so, and you'll be able to update your credit card (in case it's expired) then. This should also help alleviate the facepalms I do when I get a tweet from someone who's just finally discovered the full mobile site or iTunes feeds or something else that we added for members months ago.
- You will be able to gift subscriptions to a friend.
- Lastly, we've decided to scrap the World Tour. We didn't come close to our goal and at this point, we've got better ideas for how to meet up with our community in person (like our party at PAX East). Personally, I still plan to go to Russia and Ukraine and try to meet someone from the STALKER team in the next year or so. At the worst, I will ask for a job at gamebomb.ru.
