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Chords, Updates, Dreams

 SUp

Been working on the next update for the past few days. At first, I was only going to include "Styles" in the paid app. The styles button is a shuffled set of chords that are popular by genre. Naturally, I added about 20 new chords to the original layout. 

As I was programming "plus" (I'll refer to it that way), I imagined some kid playing the free version and feeling curious about the additional buttons, or even what potential they may find if they prefer one sound over another. It didn't feel right to put a price barrier, and that's sort of been my whole memo with this app. I don't like "in app purchases" or "pay to play". I also started to see the impact that the ads were having and figured it may work out in my favor anyway to just offer the whole package for free. So... that's where I'm at. 

 SO, this ads thing. It has been on my mind every day for over a week. I found out the hard way that I needed to make this website, and that I needed to have these things approved prior to even having the app published. Play Store was easy, paste and go. Apple is more involved with this. It's funny how publishing on each platform isn't any harder or easier with Apple or Play. They both took roughly the same time to publish with equal effort, but in different ways. 

 As I wait for approvals from Apple, I've been toying with the new chords. There are so many fucking chords. So many variations of even one chord. Like... how do I cherry pick one when the entire tree is ripe?

 Dm7 for example. Now, I'm no expert, at all, but when I recognized Dm7, I was between two variations. They're both the same but sound so different. Dm7 is my first twin set in the deck because I simply could not decide which one I liked better. 

I'm hoping that things will be resolved in the next week because my goal is to break even by next year. Launching this app has costed $1200 so far, and I'm on my last leg of savings. I'm not complaining, because this process has reignited something in me that I had trouble finding again over the past few years. I am also so grateful that I can do something to contribute to the community in some way, children particularly. 

What I am really saying is that I hope I can keep it up for more than a year, because aside from this gig, I'm not sure how I'll make up the $1200 to keep this thing up when the subscriptions reset.

 Thanks for reading.

-B 

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