Hello Slipmatians!
First, apologies for my absense from the platform for past few weeks. As the world has been in a turmoil my personal life took a pretty bad hit as well and I’m doing my best to cope with the situation and move forward. I’m fully aware of the issue of silence but this has been kind of a “put the oxygen mask on yourself before trying to help your children”-kind of emergency so some of the challenges here were quite literally in a whole other league and things like Slipmat just had to be put aside for some time. I’ve not been able to work on the site during this time other than doing minor security fixes and maintenance but I’m expecting things to get back to normal in a couple of weeks time.
In more positive news, I’m preparing a pretty large update for the end of this week. It’s been really nice to see the community keeping things hot here on Slipmat and new DJs finding a place to play with the support of the few active heroes. Thank You everyone for keeping the ball rolling and helping out – your support makes all the difference 
Technical Updates
Moving to Voluntary Subscriptions
As we haven’t been able to push out new features and some of the promised subscription features are still under development, I’ve decideed to open up all purchased Frankie Pro keys for the time being. So, if you have purchased a Frankie subscription at any time, your key is valid even if you don’t wan’t to keep paying for it. This change is now in effect and it affects all Fankie Pro keys.
After considering all options this seemed to be most fair to everyone. So, if you want to support Slipmat community and development, you can keep your subscription as is, but if you want to stop paying until we get the promised features online, you can just cancel your subscription but keep on using your keys.
(Note: the UI will probably nag about expired keys but that shouldn’t stop you using them. If you find other problems, please report them here on Backstage and we’ll fix them.)
Tip Payouts
The new tipping feature has been online for few weeks now but we still don’t have an automatic way to do payouts. The whole point of the tipping system is to make earnings for our DJs so this is obviously a big issue! If you have earned over $50 from your shows and want a payout, please dm me here and post the public Slipmat links to the shows you want payout from. Any payout request will be processed in two business days.
The automated payout system should be online with the next bigger site update after this weeks update. (So, in practise this means in 2-3 weeks time.) Any tips that have not been paid out by this, will be automatically handled after the system goes live. Please just make sure your PayPal address in your DJ profile is correct.
Slipmat Funding / Profitability Status
First, Slipmat has been online and evolving for a long time already, don’t worry, it’s not just going away
But, we are a fully community driven site. We don’t have a for-profit company paying for our bills, and currently the only active funding we have is Frankie Pro subscriptions. Our current subscriptions cover about 50% of the montly costs, the rest are covered from donated tips from some of the DJs and personally by me. While I don’t mind paying for nice things, my current situation unfortunately means that we need to figure out how to get the site profitable soon.
Here’s the current plan:
The best and easiest way to help the development and the community is to keep using the site and help new DJs onboard. The process is fully community-driven so DJs are 100% in control. And that’s the way it should be! Do vote with your wallet! So, if you like Slipmat and want to help keeping it running, please consider subscribing to Frankie Pro and telling about the site to your fellow DJs.
We’re planning to offer a possibility for the listener community (which is about 50x larger than the DJ community) to help as well. There aren’t a lot of places online where you can listen to good quality AD-free content on a platform that doesn’t spy on you and instead gives back to the community. Individual listener support works for many sites, it can help us as well.
Finally, I’m currently in a process negotiating a deal with a for-profit company for buying out the rights for the site with a license that would keep the main focus of giving back to the community intact and the prices and fees as low as possible. In case this moves forward, I’d like to offer current community members some way to invest in Slipmat for a proper way to show monetary support and in the long term maybe get some proper money back as well. These talks are still at very early stages but I’ll keep you updated
Slipmat and Politics
In the past I’ve made it very clear how I feel about big tech giants stealing our data and making the world literally worse place to live by making money by inciting hate and intolerance. Slipmat exists for exactly the opposite reason; for inclusive and welcoming community and making the world a better place via music and connecting people around the world in a safe and secure manner.
We’ve had a Community Diversity Statement in place for years and we currently inconvenience all our users by not letting them forget that Black Lives Matter every time they load the homepage. This is not virtue signalling, this is the very core and driving value of the site and our community. In these dark and dividing times it’s very important to fight unjustice and bad policies by not staying quiet and voting with actual ballets but also with your feet and wallet.
At this time I’d also like to politely ask any members of this community who feel that they don’t share these values to please leave. Just delete your account and leave.
But lastly, as important it is to not to tolerate hate speech and intolerance, it’s very important to allow everyone to express their opinnions freely even if you disagree. Being able to discuss and disagree in a safe and civil manner is all we have that separates us from other animals. Please be respectful and help make this community a safe and positive place to be for everyone. (And while we’re definitely not in cancelling business, if you see clear harrasment or any bad behaviour that breaks our code of conduct, please report it via email to conduct at slipmat dot io.
I’m very proud of this community and feel privileged to be a part of it. Thank You for being awesome, keep on being just that – yourself