Hi friends & readers of For The Punks!
Karalyn, the owner and editor here. There are some words I want to say about 2023 and what our readers should expect in 2024.
This year we made about 250 posts on our website with a few more to come, which is similar to what we did last year (if not a few more posts).
We now have about 3,000 followers on Instagram now and about 1,500 followers on Twitter. We’ve grown a lot recently and it is all thanks to you! We really appreciate it.
We also have over 400 likes on our Spotify Biweekly Playlist and we were able to feature so many amazing artists both on the cover and through the playlist. We gained about 100 likes on the playlist this year. That means a lot.
Simply put: just wow.
There were a lot of emotions throughout 2023. We weren’t able to successfully do our Women’s History Month series in March but we were still able to do a lot of amazing things like work with Flyover Festival, launch our ‘Monthly Mix’ playlist, share posts each season of artists you should be listening to, and so much more.
We were very honored to work with the Flyover Festival for the second year in a row. We were a sponsor of the festival and published interviews, reviews, and other related coverage! I made a zine for the festival again. It’s a 60 page zine (full color) with photos, interviews, recent releases, other promo, and more. This was truly one of the coolest things of 2023, both for myself and For The Punks. If you want to download the digital version, head to our Flyover Fest page.
We lost some team members, we gained some team members. We officially added a “photo assistant” role to our team (which has been amazing not only to distribute work but I’ve given others the opportunity to learn more about the industry). Even though we are not looking for new team members to add, we are thankful and honored that so many people reached out to be part of our team.
There are so many bands, managers, publicists, and people to thank for letting all of this coverage happen. If you worked with us this year, we thank you for taking the time! We can’t list everyone here but you know who you are.
If we weren’t able to work together, we still thank you for taking the time to reach out and think of us. We were pitched so many amazing musicians this year and it feels impossible to feature every single person. Maybe we can make something happen in 2024, we always strive to feature new faces we haven’t before!
I didn’t accomplish everything I wanted to this year and I do feel like in some areas we were not as strong as others. As I’m sure many can understand and agree, running an online publication of this size with full time students, others with jobs, etc., is … hard.
Thank you for all being patient with us if there was a delay in response or posting.
Even though there were some difficulties, this year was still amazing. It’s great to see we were just as active this year compared to last year. I said this last year and I will say it again: I’m proud of all of our team members whether they have been on our team for over a year or two OR if they are brand new to our team. I am proud of my team members for the things that they have accomplished outside of the magazine as well.
2024 will bring a lot of emotions. A mix of everything. It’s our five year anniversary. We’re introducing a new project soon with Florida based contributor Miranda Jayne (which I am super excited about), we are scheming for our first print issue (you might be contacted about this soon), and of course, we will continue our playlists and other fun things for you all to check out.
There’s a lot to think about and plan for 2024 but we are hoping you will stick with us and be understanding.
I wanted to end 2023 by making this post as a way to thank every single one of you and to let you know of some things that are coming your way in the next few weeks.
Happy holidays & happy 2024 – hoping for a good year for everyone!
Best,
Karalyn
