Dear Paul

The magazine I wrote about earlier is coming along nicely. I am pretty excited for you to read the first issue. We've gotten some great writers on board, and all of them volunteers, which is perfect. If you're doing something just for the love of it, then you're more likely to speak with an unencumbered voice. The name. Boy, we have some seriously talented readers who submitted so many diverse ideas for names it is, frankly, overwhelming. We've managed to narrow the list down considerably and have only a handful of candidates left to choose from. Most of the names submitted were obvious, with clear words of description, like Audio This, or Stereo That. And, at first, that seemed the proper, obvious path to follow. The name should describe the content inside. Or should it? It turns out the problem with the obvious is the forgettable, the me too, the I am afraid to stand out challenge. Few iconic brands are built from stating the obvious - and the few that successfully build on the obvious are already taken. There's got to be 20 or 30 online magazines about stereo, audio, sound, and the things we're interested in - and many of their names work so hard at describing their contents they all seem a blur of sameness. We were hoping for something a bit more iconic. Most online magazines vie for our attention with news and reviews of products - but our mission is more to engage with broader ideas - in the same way a classic magazine like the New Yorker (one of my favorite reads) opens our minds and expands our horizons. Fresh thinking, entertaining, original. Our goal is to learn, engage, and have fun - something to look forward to each and every week. And most important, we want to build something you cannot get anywhere else - a magazine you'd miss if it no longer arrived in your inbox. Its name should be easily memorable, rather than another variation of what's come before. The publication we want to create has never come before, and its name should honor that fact. So we've focused on names that more closely resemble memorable iconic brands that stand on their own without reflecting what's inside: Apple, Sprout, Kleenex, Starbucks. We will try and announce the winner next week. I will be one of the magazine's contributors. I've thought about what I might add and decided a longer version of this daily blog wouldn't contribute much. Folks no doubt get enough of me on a day-to-day basis. So, I thought the best contribution I can make is to answer questions that people have. "Why does this do that?" "How can some folks love vinyl when others hate it?" "What's the best streaming services now?" "What is metadata?" If I knew all the questions that are on people's minds and want to discuss, I would ask them myself. But I don't. Reply to this email with your questions and potential topics for my upcoming column and I'll get to a few of the best ones each week. The questions can range from simple to mind numbing. Excited!