5 million

Creating a better culture together

Today we are celebrating 5 million paid subscriptions on Substack. This comes less than four months after our co-founder Hamish McKenzie shared that we crossed 4 million paid subscriptions. It is a milestone that can be enjoyed in purely transactional terms: these are real people rewarding the work of writers and creators with real money, allowing them to achieve and maintain their independence. But to consider this purely as a financial achievement would be myopic. What we want is to create a wealth of culture.

Five million paid subscriptions represent 5 million different tastes, perspectives, political views, and psyches. They represent dog lovers, cat owners, food allergics, hat wearers, high-heel haters, opera aficionados, recipe experimentalists, nudists, puritans, cinephiles, royalists, classicists, crocheters, and some who would prefer not to. Five million paid subscriptions represent 5 million multitudes, yet by buying a subscription to support a mind they love, they are united in their desire for a better cultural model. No matter who they are and whose independence they decide to protect within this ecosystem—from political commentators to fiction writers to chefs to podcasters to musicians—these subscribers understand that what they are truly paying for is the structure of a better collective consciousness built on a foundation of trust. They may be paying as little as $5 a month to curate their attention, take back their mind, and protect creative freedom, but they know that not exercising this agency would be a much higher price to pay.

Thank you to all who are building Substack with us, and thank you to all the millions of free subscribers too, who are keeping it a vibrant and healthy, ever-expanding network. To want to create a better culture is a mad ambition, to be sure. But 5 million paid subscriptions proves that we are well on our way to realizing it. And the best is yet to come. We are building not just a wealth of culture but an embarrassment of riches.