If I donate now, will I get additional songs as they are added?
Will my donation line someone’s pocket?
Are you a non-profit? Is there a precedent for this sort of thing?
Is this just a temporary fix?
Isn’t print dying? What makes you think you will survive?
Why weren’t you prepared for this?
Have you considered going online only?
Why don’t you sell or get an investor?
Are you bi-monthly?
Did the CD go away?
I just subscribed. Will I get what I paid for?
I haven’t subscribed yet. Would subscribing help?
What else can I do?
What can my company do?
I’m a musician. Can I contribute?

Over 100 artists and labels have submitted rare and exclusive tracks for us to give as a thank you to those who donate. Artists include The Decemberists, Neko Case, She & Him, Cowboy Junkies, Of Montreal, Indigo Girls, Jayhawks, String Cheese Incident, G. Love, Josh Rouse, The Hives, Matthew Sweet, The Avett Brothers, Joe Henry, John Roderick of The Long Winters, Over the Rhine, Bob Mould, Arrested Development, Brandi Carlile, John Doe, Josh Ritter, Marc Broussard and more. For the full list of artists, see the new Paste Station Download Vault.

Yes, you'll have access to all songs as they are added. If you donate, you'll have a login that will allow you access to these songs in the new Paste Station Download Vault. We'll email you as more songs are added. If additional items are added to the drawings, you'll also be entered for those gifts. (Note: You will need the Adobe Flash player for these songs.)

Will my donation line someone’s pocket?

In short, no. Paste is owned by the people who run it, and we’ve sunk our meager life savings into the business. No one—no investor, no owner, no employee, no vendor, no writer (God knows)—has ever received any windfall from Paste. We’ve been blessed with fun jobs, but this is and always has been a labor of love. Of course, in some sense, the money you give will line lots of pockets. It’ll pay for printing, Internet bandwidth, mailing, writers and photographers, etc. And ultimately that keeps paychecks in various people’s pockets (and Paste coming to you).

We are not a non-profit, and it is unusual—but not without precedent. One of the most prominent examples comes from Ted Turner, who solicited donations for a for-profit station he owned in Charlotte. The station survived and went on to become an NBC affiliate. A few magazines have done this sort of appeal. Most don’t try, presumably because they are too big to successfully downsize, too small to have enough readers to contribute or too far gone to rescue. We’re blessed to still be small and nimble, with a sizeable and passionate group of readers—and to have started adjusting our business to lower advertising dollars over nine months ago (though, admittedly, not quickly enough).

No. We’ve adjusted costs to survive our current levels of income, and we can’t imagine that getting significantly worse. We just need a little cash infusion to make up for running at a loss for a while. We’re excited about finally getting to a sustainable level that puts us in a great position when the economy comes back—whenever that is.

Certainly, some have proclaimed the death of print. And it’s true that newspapers and magazines have been hammered by the advertising environment. Magazines, however, are in much better shape to continue. Every study shows that magazine readership overall is strong, even among teens and twentysomethings, and advertising in magazines is more effective than any other medium. Large news-focused magazines (serving much the same purpose as newspapers) have seen readership decline, but most others have fared well. While we might get our daily news from blogs and other websites, nothing beats good, old-fashioned paper for settling down to read a good profile.

That’s a good question. We saw signs of the recession early on, with some advertisers pulling back. Nonetheless, our business was up until the last four months of 2008. Since then, we’ve been adjusting costs but that takes a while for a magazine. As just one example, despite knowing that 70% of subscribers said they’d rather have our sampler as a download, we wanted to give everyone else ample opportunity to indicate their choice for a physical CD. That led to an almost five-month process (planning, printing, two issues of notice, etc.) before those costs savings could take effect. 

We’ve certainly talked about that often, and that’s not out of the question. But we still believe in print, and many of you have indicated you never want to lose that tactile experience. Going online-only does eliminate many costs; it also eliminates a lot of revenue. And many subscribers would be owed refunds (a sizeable amount of money, much more than we are trying to raise).

While we value our independent voice, we’ll consider all options. The investors we’ve quietly talked to are mostly waiting for the economy to turn around (especially for advertising-based businesses).

Sort of. “Normal” issues of Paste will go out every other month. In between, we’re sending out single-topic special editions in a smaller format. Each month, subscribers will also get a sampler. The smaller format every other month saves a lot of cost and will allow the standard issues to get even thicker as advertising comes back, while allowing us to focus on topics such as a festival guide and best-of-what’s-next in the intervening months.

No. We’ve defaulted existing subscribers to digital samplers, but they can request physical CDs. For new subscribers, we’re going to ask their preference up-front but there will be a shipping-and-handling charge for the physical CD.

Barring a worst-case scenario, absolutely.

Definitely. If you buy on the newsstand, you pay more but we see a fraction of that money, many months later. We’re also offering lifetime subscriptions to anyone who gives $350 or more.

There’s a whole page devoted to that.

Where it makes sense, buy advertising and give gift subscriptions. For these and other needs or ideas (promotional opportunities, custom web development, custom content, etc.) contact publisher Nick Purdy at nick@pastemagazine.com.

If you’d like to donate a rare song to the effort, click here.