29/12/2023
Hello everyone, hope you’re well and had a lovely Christmas with your loved ones - filled with food, presents and joy.
Firstly, we want to sincerely apologise for our lack of activity and content on both the website and across our social channels in the last few months. There is a reason for the absence and we want to take this opportunity now to explain to you all as 2023 comes to a close.
2023 in review
While we’ve been cracking on in covering live shows and reviews since the start of the 2023, we've also been doing a lot of reflection behind the scenes on the current state of Tap The Feed - given how things are at the moment with cost of living, the music scene in general, our internal resources and personal commitments.
The end of the pandemic saw life open up once again after such a long time and the music scene thriving again; it was truly great to get things moving with Tap The Feed after a turbulent period as you already know. Writers and photographers came back on board, content was flowing on the site again and it felt like we were back doing what we love best – all while helping artists, bands, venues and promoters in Bristol and beyond get the exposure they need and deserve.
However, while things have seemingly been good from the face of it, the reality of running Tap The Feed was always lurking in the background. Although writers and photographers were back covering live shows and releases, they were no way near the quotas we had pre-COVID times. External costs of running the website and other channels have steadily gone up - even more so with inflation at an all-time high and other cost of living impacts. Demand from the music scene was and still remains extremely high and we've done a very commendable job in sorting coverage across the spectrum. But, due to our limited resources, we can only cover so much, often missing out on greater opportunities or causing further delays which we wholeheartedly apologise for.
Lastly, and most importantly, our team’s personal commitments. Tap The Feed has always been voluntary from the very start with both contributors and ourselves giving up personal time from our daily schedules to run the platform and support the local music scene. But with the current climate at the moment, there are just things that have taken more priority at this particular stage of our lives.
Outcome
All of these points have been building up gradually over the months and been under constant review as we continued to look at solutions to help support Tap The Feed as much as possible. In the last 12-18 months, we’ve reached out to close networks within the music community, requested additional funding and so on - all of which unfortunately were unsuccessful to secure. This has left us in a rather tired state both physically and mentally, and given everything that we’ve mentioned above, we are feeling uncertain on what the future truly holds for Tap The Feed going forward.
With these assessments, we personally feel the time is right to bring Tap The Feed to a close for the foreseeable future.
This is not a decision we’ve taken lightly, but ultimately we feel we’ve done everything we could to keep Tap The Feed going as long as possible. We’re in debt to you all and incredibly thankful for the opportunity, support and contributions over the years. We’ve achieved so much in terms of the content we’ve shared and produced, the artists/bands/labels we’ve had the honour of reviewing and interviewing and the live shows, festivals and more that we’ve both attended and hosted.
However, our biggest achievement has been a chance to bring like-minded people who love music and arts together to achieve something great; and it's been an absolute honour and pleasure to work, learn and grow with everyone involved within Tap The Feed. We’ve even seen our contributors advancing further in their professional careers from their experience with us - from established copywriters, full-time photographers, event managers, TV/radio reporters and much more.
To conclude, we want to say a massive thank you to everyone for all the help and support with Tap The Feed. We can only apologise for our failings in the last few months and not doing enough to keep this platform going further. We feel so proud of what Tap The Feed is and has become (formerly The Flux Presents) in the last decade and hoped we have aided those involved in the Bristol music scene and beyond in some way shape or form to achieved their goals and dreams to progress in their music careers.
We sincerely wish you all the very best and good health going into 2024.
Take care and hopefully see you around soon.
Mustafa, Phil, Stuart
