{"id":3817,"date":"2025-01-02T06:00:53","date_gmt":"2025-01-02T06:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/?p=3817"},"modified":"2024-12-23T17:47:26","modified_gmt":"2024-12-23T17:47:26","slug":"new-year-letter-from-rafe-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/articles\/new-year-letter-from-rafe-2025","title":{"rendered":"A New Year’s note from Rafe, Sofar’s Founder"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How was your year?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Regardless of how you answer that, if you\u2019re reading this, I\u2019ll bet that music has played a significant role in your life. That music was a constant. I\u2019ll wager you sought refuge in it when times were tough, used it to match your mood, or cranked it up when celebrations were in order.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here lies the joy and flexibility of music. At the touch of a button or the drop of a needle, it lifts, soothes, and creates harmony. No matter our perspectives or views on the world around us, we can come together simply by sharing songs and singers, riffs, and rhapsodies.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Music truly provides the shortest distance between human beings, a place where you can find common ground. This is exactly what we aspire to do at Sofar. In many hundreds of cities, strangers walk into our events, step into rooms filled with unfamiliar faces, and leave with new friendships forged through the magic of live music.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-3819 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/sofar-sounds-blog.imgix.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/Rafe-and-the-London-team.jpg?crop=faces%2Centropy&fit=scale&fm=pjpg&h=683&ixlib=php-3.3.1&w=1024&wpsize=large\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sofar-sounds-blog.imgix.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/Rafe-and-the-London-team.jpg?crop=faces%2Centropy&fit=scale&fm=pjpg&h=200&ixlib=php-3.3.1&w=300&wpsize=medium 300w, https:\/\/sofar-sounds-blog.imgix.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/Rafe-and-the-London-team.jpg?crop=faces%2Centropy&fit=scale&fm=pjpg&h=683&ixlib=php-3.3.1&w=1024&wpsize=large 1024w, https:\/\/sofar-sounds-blog.imgix.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/Rafe-and-the-London-team.jpg?crop=faces%2Centropy&fit=scale&fm=pjpg&h=512&ixlib=php-3.3.1&w=768&wpsize=medium_large 768w, https:\/\/sofar-sounds-blog.imgix.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/Rafe-and-the-London-team.jpg?crop=faces%2Centropy&fit=scale&fm=pjpg&h=1024&ixlib=php-3.3.1&w=1536&wpsize=1536x1536 1536w, https:\/\/sofar-sounds-blog.imgix.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/Rafe-and-the-London-team.jpg?crop=faces%2Centropy&fit=scale&fm=pjpg&h=1365&ixlib=php-3.3.1&w=2048&wpsize=2048x2048 2048w, https:\/\/sofar-sounds-blog.imgix.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/Rafe-and-the-London-team.jpg?crop=faces%2Centropy&fm=pjpg&ixlib=php-3.3.1 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So how was our year? Well, it marked several milestones. We celebrated 15 years since our first show in my London living room. And we explored new territory \u2014 offering you <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/articles\/introducing-new-show-types\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">different types of shows<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and even branching out into <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/lists\/dance\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">dance<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/lists\/comedy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">comedy<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Including other creative arts feels like a natural evolution, and if these first shows are any indication, we\u2019re super excited about what lies ahead.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here\u2019s to a happy 2025 with more milestones, friendships, and the kind of bonds that don\u2019t need words.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">May music and art continue to bring us together.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rafe Offer\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How was your year?\u00a0\u00a0 Regardless of how you answer that, if you\u2019re reading this, I\u2019ll bet that music has played a significant role in your life. That music was a constant. I\u2019ll wager you sought refuge in it when times were tough, used it to match your mood, or cranked it up when celebrations were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":3818,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}