2018 in the Rear View

A very Happy New Year to you all!

As 2018 comes to a close I thought I'd take a few minutes to look back and take stock of what has been happening in Tabletop Audio land. This is something of a tradition now as this is my 5th installment in this series. (And, as I typed that, I really can't believe it's been 5 years since I started this little experiment.)

Before I start, I'd like to thank each and every person who has supported the site in 2018. Without you, none of this would be possible. So thank you, thank you, thank you.

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I started 2018 with the ambience "Russian Winter" and followed it with 28 more 10 minute tracks. Additionally I created 6 new SoundPads containing over 200 individual sounds, bringing the total number of sounds available in the Custom SoundPad to over 600. Back in July I was awarded my 3rd ENnie award at GenCon, this time a silver medal for "Best Free Product".

After about a month of climbing "code mountain" I finally completed the often requested SoundPad feature of timed-intervals. You can now select most sounds to play on a timer. This lets you create complex scenes without having to click constantly, a feature which makes SoundPads almost as fire and forget as the 10 minute ambiences.

Thanks to friend-of-the-site, Jim Young, the Tabletop Audio Alexa skill got an overhaul. Some new features and now expanded into all the English speaking markets. I'm still trying to get other languages done at some point. Amazon is funny about requiring language translations even if people would be happy to speak English to it. Hopefully we'll get to this in the coming year.

I did a variety of custom projects in 2018. I created over 2 hours of composition and sound design for an audio book (my first foray into that world), I made sounds for a Finnish children's theater company, completed a number of tracks for various escape rooms in the U.K. and U.S., some podcast intros and themes and some corporate composition and sound projects for old time's sake. As the majority of Tabletop Audio is done in isolation, it really is nice to be able to work collaboratively on projects.

One of the most fun things from 2018 (and nerve racking!) was talking to 5 sections of Murrow high school students here in Brooklyn. I was invited by Grammy winning jazz producer Jon Rosenberg to speak to kids about 'alternate careers in audio' . Alternate, according to Jon, meant 'something other than being a hip-hop producer!'. I am only too aware of this as my 14 year old son is constantly inviting me to listen to his latest beats. (They're very good actually!). Anyway, the kids were engaged and it was a real treat, especially to see an amazingly equipped A/V room with a working TV studio in a high school - all sponsored by Alicia Keys. (Note to famous music people: This is what you should do with at least some of your money!)

According to Google Analytics the site served over 3 million 10 minute ambiences. I use the data only for figuring out where traffic is coming from (87% is direct or from Google). I don't track SoundPad sounds or sounds played from the roll20 jukebox (they host those) or sounds used in videos on YouTube.

I'm looking forward to more great things in 2019. Have a happy and safe New Year's and I'll see you all in January.

All the best,

Tim

TL;DR - We did lots of cool stuff in 2018, looking forward to 2019. Thanks for your support!