Last week I did something I'd been thinking about for a while. I removed the premium. The entire platform, free, with no tiers or reserved content, without that little phrase "become a member to keep reading" that bothers me so much when I encounter it on other sites.

But opening the door means nothing if there aren't worthwhile things inside. The gesture, by itself, falls short. And that's why these last few weeks I've been pushing hard, because I wanted that when someone new arrived at HiFi Café, they would find reasons to stay.

There are three new things. And there is also, and this is what matters most for me to tell you, everything that was already there and that you probably didn't know about.

I'll start with what's new.

I've put together a compendium of reviews. I've called it Reviews HiFi and the idea is simple. Serious international publications, the long-standing ones, have been reviewing equipment for decades with a criterion that I won't be able to match. Stereophile, Hi-Fi+, fairaudio, LowBeats and others. What the platform does is group them by equipment, bring direct quotes in four languages, leave the link to the original article always available, and update it automatically every week. If you're considering a specific amplifier or loudspeakers, you open its profile and there you'll find what the important critics have said. Without having to open twenty tabs or translate anything manually.

Next is Time Machine. This is the one I'm most excited about, so forgive me if I elaborate a bit more. The idea had been pursuing me for a while. I wanted to delve into an artist's discography in a way that wasn't conventional. Not a playlist, not a biography, not a long article. Something more akin to walking down a corridor where ambient music played, a voice narrated, there were archive images, and the covers of each album appeared in chronological order as you progressed. This is how it turned out. It's a way of listening that I hadn't found anywhere else, and since I couldn't find it, it had to be created.

And the third is a podcast. It's called Un Café con música and features talks, interviews, and audiophile conversations. Each episode is released in Spanish, English, and Catalan, and each episode includes a downloadable PDF with notes and references if you want to delve deeper afterwards. Because listening better is also learned, and it's learned by listening to people who know.

So much for what's new.

What's not new but seems like it is

Added to what I've just told you is everything the platform already had, and which for many of you will be a discovery, because until last week half of it was behind a wall. Now that wall no longer exists. There are groups, there are forums, there's an archive, there are tools, there's a brand directory which is one of the things I've put the most care into and very few people have seen properly. There are more things than I myself sometimes remember. Take your time to look around.

Why all of this is free

Because I can't find another honest way to do it. If I put up advertising, I lose the ability to say what I think about certain brands, and then what I write here is no longer worth the same. If I bring back premium, I'm the one deciding which part of audiophile culture deserves to be paid for, and that seems like an arrogance that doesn't belong to me.

What there is, instead of all that, are the patrons. People who, with voluntary micro-donations, ensure that the server hosted in California finds funds at the beginning of the month. They are not investors. They don't expect a return. They don't condition a single line of what is published. They make something very simple possible: that a site about music and high fidelity can exist on the internet without selling anything to anyone.

Some will say that a project cannot be sustained in the medium term this way. They might be right. The only thing I know is that as long as the server finds funds, this continues, and as long as it continues, I will keep trying to ensure there are worthwhile things inside to seek out.

The house is open. There are more things than ever. Come in when you can.

And one last thing, since you've made it this far. If you're not a patron, I would ask you to consider becoming one. Not for me, though a little bit for me too. It's thanks to small contributions that this place will continue to exist, for you and for many people like you who don't yet know this is here.