❗️🔥 my music is going away ❤️‍🔥❗️

kathleen smith

Nov 20, 2024

Transcript

hello my loves -

some news - please read it if you listen to my music on streaming—it’s relevant to you:

Music Takedown (!!!) - Nov. 30, 2024 is the last day to listen to/download my music on Spotify/iTunes/Apple/etc. It is coming down Dec. 1, 2024.
five things - including a vegan rice pudding recipe, some inspirational writing

I hope you’re tending to your precious heart, and if you have some extra juice / vibes / money / love to go around, the heart(s) of those in your world.

kathleen

MUSIC TAKEDOWN

Okay, deep breath, I’m truly thrilled to announce that….DRUMROLL PLEASE 😂:

My music is coming off of the internet—both streaming and downloading - as of December 1, 2024. This includes Spotify, iTunes, Apple, Tidal, YouTube, etc.

I no longer want to participate as an artist in these icky systems, so I’m taking it back for now. It has always cost me more to have my music on those platforms than I’ve ever earned from them (we artists PAY to have our music on Spotify, iTunes & the like), and while I don’t make art in order to make money, the exchange with the streaming & downloading services—or, rather, lack of any kind of reasonable exchange—has felt increasingly terrible to me over the years.

Since my first forays into the music industry when I started playing shows at age 20, I have participated in things that seemed distasteful, insane and terrible to me, and I have willingly {cringingly} done so based on the idea that “it’s just what you have to do, everyone does this, this is the industry.”

I have twisted and pretzeled and shrunk myself.
I have rationalized and hoped and dreamed.
I have worked and worked and worked and worked, and thrown my love and vulnerability and insight and art and effort into the black hole of the music industry for twenty years.
I have dug to the bottom of my soul and body and energy to create art I believe in and can stand behind, art that I hope speaks to something beyond this limited material plane.
I have extracted from my own self, abused my own self (“Kathleen—you just need to try harder!”), internalized the patriarchal capitalist lie that “If I just make myself different, or stop being wrong, something will work,” and judged myself lacking, lacking, always lacking.
I have tried my real, deepest, best {often desperate best} to make it work.

And now, honestly, and please pardon my sailor lingo here, FUUUUUUCK THAT.
I’m tired of pretending I’m ok with the systems as they are.
I’m tired of making it work.
I’m, well, just plain tired.

The ugly truth is that these systems are extractive and exploitative of artists, dominating, sexist, patriarchal, capitalist, and abusive. They use artists’ love for our art against us as a way to keep us participating in a system of abuse. I.E. “if you love it enough, you’ll be willing to take scraps/ starve/ relinquish health insurance/ do a zillion unpaid auditions while everyone else in the room is being paid/ sign a bad record deal/ let a TV show use your songs for free {even though their licensing budget is $50k per episode} —all for your art! If you don’t love it that much, you must not be an artist!” etc. ad nauseum.

ENOUGH.

I am over it.

SO 👏🏻 OVER 👏🏻 IT 👏🏻 !!

🔥

I’m ready to imagine something more generative, more aligned, more…FUN!

And, I can’t do it while my music is still swimming around in these ecosystems of abuse as part of the massive bulk of Intellectual Property that creates value for Spotify, Apple, YouTube, etc., all while they don’t give us artists any value back.

It’s time for me to bring everything back in so I can begin to imagine new possibilities.

Logistically speaking:

Those of you who have purchased MEDICINE vinyl—those all came with digital download codes. If you lost yours or never received it or whatever, please reply to me here, and we will get you sorted so that you have the digital files of MEDICINE and can listen to your hearts’ content, whenever, wherever, forever.
All physical media {MEDICINE vinyl, LOVE SUPERSTAR & dolls ep CDs}, will *still* be available for purchase, and all vinyl comes with a digital download code. If you get a CD & don’t have a way to make yourself a digital copy, just email me & I can either send you files or give you a download code.
Music you haven’t yet purchased, either digitally or physically, IS available for purchase on my Bandcamp page until December 1, 2024. It’s also available wherever else you purchase music, but, fyi, Bandcamp gives us artists the most generous revenue share for digital purchases (85% versus 66% with everyone else). If money is tight, please get in touch.

I’m aware this might be {i.e. IS} clunky!

But, for now, this is what feels right, and what, honestly, actually excites me. {If you have other productive ideas, please, respond to this & LAY ‘EM ON ME, STRING BEAN. I love a good brainstorm & a good idea that someone else came up with!}

I am daydreaming the heck outta a bunch of things that are JUST for YOU, you mighty, wonderful Love Blast & Freak Flag folks. There will be a paid subscription option soon, and most of my music & videos will probably live behind that paywall for the foreseeable future. I can also see a possible future where I share A LOT MORE music regularly here—demos, new songs, writing process videos, etc. Additionally, there are a ton of Freak Flag podcast episodes coming down the pike (can’t wait to share those with you!!!), and I’ll be sharing more writing writing in this space. The pod & majority of writing will continue to be free and available to everyone.

Beyond the {semi-boring} logistics of digital downloads & streaming, here is my wish:

May we all know what Real Love is. (After all, Real Love will ***never*** ask us to shrink, betray our own Hearts, or willingly put ourselves in abusive situations.)

May we all heed the call of our Souls to express fully, to love, to experience, to share the unique magic we *each* have for these times.

May we imagine beautiful, generous, generative, sustainable ways to do life and money and art and love and exchange on this glorious planet—ways that heal the Earth, ways that include food and shelter and water for EVERYBODY.

May we take care of ourselves and each other and the Earth.

AND!

MAY WE HAVE LOTS AND LOTS OF RIDICULOUS FUN.

I can imagine these possibilities, and I am excited to keep daydreaming more like them.

I love you.

Thanks for being on this wild ride with me.

Kathleen

FIVE THINGS
(really ten, ok! major harvest vibes!🌾🍁)

Find & donate to your local Food Pantry
Vegan Rice Pudding - made it this week. LOVE.
Rob Brezsny’s recent newsie - “Rise Up Singing”
Yoli Maya Yeh’s recent newsie - “What Are Our Next Steps? Rest!”
Fit With Coco - OMG THESE WORKOUTS. I have *never* been stronger or felt more aligned & healthy in my body than when I’ve done Coco’s challenges. I just came back to her programs yesterday after injuring myself, again, doing a workout on another platform a few weeks ago. Not the platform’s fault, but something about Coco’s peaceful vibe keeps me totally centered in my body and injury-free, even though her workouts are the actual hardest I’ve ever done (!). Plus there are TONS of meal plans & nutrition info packets. Chock full of goodness up here in Coco’s world. {Full transparency: This is an affiliate link.}
My Thanksgiving table Pinterest board - We are hosting this year, and I am beside myself with excitement! We were supposed to host in 2022, but Shawn & I and everyone else got Covid, and I couldn’t walk to and from the kitchen sink without nearly passing out from exhaustion. So, THIS IS THE YEAR, and I have the Pinterest pink gold pumpkin mood board to prove it. ;-)
Also, regarding the fact that traditional American Thanksgiving lore is a tall tale (to say the literal least), I appreciate an excuse to gather with loved ones and eat yummy food. As indigenous author & chef Sean Sherman says in this article, “We do not need the illusion of past unity to actually unite people today. Instead, we can focus simply on values that apply to everybody: togetherness, generosity and gratitude. And we can make the day about what everybody wants to talk and think about anyway: the food.”
How to Decolonize Your Thanksgiving - a few practices & ideas—so inspiring.
Laura Lambe, Menopause Practitioner - her IG is fire, and her Menopause Lab *free hub* is mind-blowingly full of actionable info (nutrition, sleep, workouts, meal plans, etc.) for walking hand in hand with the dark Goddess we call Menopause, without Her (Menopause) derailing … um…. everything. 🔥🔥❤️‍🔥
What Fresh Hell Is This: Perimenopause, Menopause, Other Indignities, and You - a modern, gender-inclusive, hilarious, radical feminist book about The Change! Loved it. Read it cover to cover.
Chela Davison’s recent newsie - Crash, Rest, Repeat