Update, 11/4 7:56pm: as of this morning, our Piano/Tinypass paywall has been permanently disabled. All user accounts will soon be removed. Current credit card subscribers are currently being migrated over to Pico’s payment processor; once this is complete, we’ll be adding the Pico paywall to the site and credit card subscribers will receive an email prompting them to set up a new account.
Other subscribers – through Paypal and Amazon Pay – should have already received emails containing instructions on how to reactivate once the new paywall is live; these subscribers will receive a reminder email once the migration is complete.
To all subscribers:
Piano, our current paywall provider, is sunsetting operations at the end of this year. To continue operations, we’re moving to Pico – a similar paywall and membership services company with a proven track record when it comes to small online publications like ours. We are currently targeting a switchover date of November 4th, though the full migration could take up to a week.
Depending on how you subscribed, this has different implications for your account going forward. Please read the below carefully – and if you have any questions or concerns, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at support@brightwalldarkroom.com. In all cases, you’ll be emailed with instructions to sign up for a new Pico account to restore your access.
Paypal and Amazon Pay Subscribers through Piano/Tinypass
If you signed up for our current paywall using a Paypal or Amazon Pay account, there is no way for us to migrate your payment information over to the new service; both use a different payment processor to Pico.
With that in mind – soon after we migrate, you’ll receive an email with a redemption code for a certain period of access, depending on how long you have left:
- Monthly subscribers and annual subscribers with less than 30 days remaining will get a code for a month of access;
- Annual subscribers with anywhere from a month to six months remaining will get a code for six months of access;
- Annual subscribers with more than six months remaining will get a code for twelve months of access.
We hope this gesture will encourage you to resubscribe at the end of the current period; we greatly value your patronage!
Credit Card Subscribers
If you directly gave us your credit or debit card details through our current system, you’ll see the least disruption to your service. We’ll securely move your payment information and email address over to Pico in early November, and you’ll receive an email prompting you to sign up for your new account. Provided the card you gave us is valid, your access will be uninterrupted, and will continue to renew at the end of each term.
Patreon Subscribers
You’ll receive an email prompting you to set up a new account, at which point we’ll need to manually approve your unlimited access. Thanks in advance for your patience here – we’ll need to do this on a per-subscriber basis, so this could take a couple of days.
Legacy Subscribers (before Tinypass)
Our first subscription model was through Stripe, the same payment processor as Pico, so the transition should be fairly easy. We have a few details to figure out, but you should see uninterrupted access, as well as new account management features that were previously restricted through Tinypass. As with the other transitions, you’ll receive an email asking you to sign up for a new account.
Thank you for your patience as we go through this migration – we’re a tiny staff here, and there are always unforeseen circumstances when we shift to a new platform. As always, if you need any help at all, please reach out to support@brightwalldarkroom.com and we’ll do what we can to help out. And finally, we just want to stress – aside from the switch to a new paywall provider, nothing about the site is changing. Subscriptions will cost the same, our editorial vision remains uncompromised, and – crucially – we’re still entirely funded by you, the readers.
