Why I give my songs away: free downloads, from the home-made tape to a button on my website

Every one of my songs can be downloaded for free. Not a selection, not a thirty-second preview, not "three tracks on the house if you sign up for the newsletter". All 273 of them, one by one, each with its cover. And the three albums of the GAYFOLK trilogy, each in a single compressed file you grab in one go. At the same time, those very same songs are on Spotify and Deezer, like any other artist's.

A few days ago I wrote about why I give my albums away, and there I talked mostly about what I lose by doing it and what I still haven't figured out. Today I want to tell another part of the story: who I have in mind when I leave a song one click away, where this habit of passing music from hand to hand comes from, and how it works in practice, step by step, on my website.

Two doors to the same song

Let me start with what this is not, because it sometimes gets misread. It is not a protest against streaming platforms. I like having my music on Spotify and Deezer. That is where people build their playlists, discover things through recommendations, and come across me among other artists. Every play there counts, and I'm glad of it.

But a platform is a door with a doorman. To get all the way in, with the music saved on your phone and no interruptions, you have to pay every month. The free tier exists, with its ads and its limits, and it's good that it does. Even so, the song isn't yours: it's a loan that lasts as long as your account does, and as long as the deal between the platform and the distributor holds.

The download is the other door, the one without a doorman. You walk in, take the file, and that's it. No month to renew, no password to remember. If tomorrow you switch apps or phones, the song comes with you.

There's also something that matters to me as a lyricist. A downloaded file is always the same song. Nobody trims it, nobody drops an ad in the middle of the chorus, nobody decides it's no longer available in your country. It sounds exactly the way I released it, with its title and its cover, and that's how it will still sound in ten years if you keep it.

I want both doors to exist at once. If you'd rather listen to me on a platform, go ahead, and thank you. If you can't or don't want to, that shouldn't leave you out.

Who I picture when I leave a song one click away

A good share of the people I write for live on the other side of the Atlantic. I write in Spanish for listeners in Spain and the rest of Europe, but also in Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Peru, and so many other places where people speak the language I think my lyrics in. And I know, without needing to make up any figures, that in many of those places a monthly subscription is not a small expense. It competes with the phone top-up, with the bus fare, with things that can't be skipped.

I also think of young people, wherever they are. The sixteen-year-old who doesn't have a card of his own yet. The student who shares an account with three friends and can't save anything without getting kicked off the session. The boy who lives in a village where the wifi comes and goes and the mobile data runs out halfway through the month. For them, being able to download a song at a friend's place with a decent connection and play it later without spending a thing is not a minor detail. It's the difference between hearing me and not hearing me.

And there's someone else I think about a lot. The person who can't yet listen to certain things in front of others. My music is queer, it's camp, it has lyrics that talk about sex without asking permission. Some people don't want those songs showing up in the history of a family account, or in the "now playing" their contacts can see. A file saved in a folder of your own, played through headphones, is far more discreet. It isn't my place to decide when someone is ready for others to know what they listen to. My place is not to make it harder for them.

A habit older than the internet

None of this is my invention. Music has always travelled like this, from hand to hand, and often without anyone paying.

For decades, the most common way to give someone music was to make them a tape. A blank cassette, the radio on, a finger hovering over the record button, waiting for the DJ to stop talking before the song began. Or a borrowed album copied on a double-deck stereo, the tracklist handwritten on the little card inside the case. Those tapes weren't sold: they were given, swapped, lost in a car's glove box and found again years later.

A tape made for someone was almost a letter. The order mattered: which song opened side A, which one closed side B, what you put right after a ballad so nobody got more miserable than necessary. Whoever received it understood that someone had spent a whole afternoon thinking about them. The song didn't have to be new and the gift didn't have to cost money. What counted was the act of choosing.

Then came the mp3, and it changed the size of the gift. Suddenly a whole discography fit on a burned CD, then on a USB stick, then on a phone. Music was passed along by cable, by Bluetooth between phones in the school playground, through shared folders. That era was messy, and not all of it was fair to artists. But the underlying habit was the same as ever: I loved this, here, you listen to it.

What I do is take the shady part out of that habit. There's nothing to pirate, because the person who wrote the lyrics is handing it to you directly. You can download a song and pass it on to whoever you like with a perfectly clear conscience. In fact, I'm asking you to.

Giving isn't throwing away

There's a difference between giving something away and selling it off cheap, and it matters to me. Selling off cheap means pricing your work at clearance rates because you don't believe it's worth more. Giving means deciding that something of value deserves to reach someone with no strings attached.

Behind each of those 273 songs there's a lyric I wrote, rewrote and crossed out; a production I directed with Suno until the music and the AI vocals fitted what I had in my head; a cover; hours and hours of listening before release. It took me about two years to put out the singles and the music videos. None of it was rushed or done just to tick a box.

That's exactly why I don't want price to decide who gets to hear it. A gift says something about the giver: that they believe what they're handing over is worth it. If I thought my songs were worthless, I wouldn't bother preparing them one by one so they can be downloaded with their cover and a properly spelled title. I give them away because I care about them, not in spite of it.

And a gift done right comes with no obligations. You don't download one of my songs and fall into debt. You don't have to write to me, follow me or leave a five-star review. If you like it, wonderful. If you don't, delete it and no harm done. That seems a much healthier relationship to me than those offers that give you something and then chase you for months to make you pay for it some other way.

In "La música me está salvando" ("Music Is Saving Me") there's a cry that sums up what music sometimes does for people:

¡La música me está salvando! ¡La música me está elevando!

Music is saving me, music is lifting me up. If a song can do that, even for a single afternoon, it would feel very strange to put a paywall right in front of it.

What I get out of it

It would be hypocritical to say I get nothing. I do get things; they just aren't the kind you measure with a calculator.

• Listeners I would never have had. Every download is someone who might not have reached me any other way. Some will stop at one song. Others will end up looking for the next.
• Songs that travel on their own. A downloaded file can be forwarded, played at a party or slipped into someone else's playlist. It does a job of spreading the word that I wouldn't know how to do myself.
• Listening with no middlemen. When someone downloads a song from my site, the relationship is direct: I offer it, you choose it. No algorithm deciding for either of us.
• A catalogue that depends on nobody. As long as my website exists, my songs will be available on the terms I've chosen.

And anyone who wants to give something back can. There's a page to support my music through Ko-fi, PayPal or Bizum, whatever amount each person chooses and with no obligation at all. It also lists ways to help that cost nothing: sharing a song, following me and saving the tracks on the platforms. I'll say it once and leave it there, because a gift with small print stops being a gift.

How to download my songs on mikesaintlouis.com

Now for the practical part. Everything is in the Downloads section, and it works with no sign-up, no email address and no payment.

• Full albums. At mikesaintlouis.com/en/descargas you'll find the three albums of the GAYFOLK trilogy, in order: "Descubierto un nuevo planeta llamado GAYFOLK", "Ojalá se pudiera viajar a GAYFOLK" and "El día de la liberación". Each one has its "Download the album (ZIP)" button. You get a compressed file, open it, and all the songs are inside.
• Singles, one by one. At mikesaintlouis.com/en/descargas/singles you'll find all 273, each with its cover and its own button. There's a search box at the top: type part of the title and it pops up. If you're after something specific, that's the quickest way.
• From each song's blog post. Every single has its own blog post, and underneath there's a button that says "Download this single free". If you're reading about a song and feel like taking it with you, you don't have to leave the page.

When you press the button, the file starts downloading without you leaving my site. Singles arrive as an audio file that opens in any player. Albums arrive as a ZIP, and there are a couple of things worth knowing. On a computer, a double click is enough to unzip it. On a phone, nearly every built-in file manager opens ZIP files without trouble: find it in your downloads folder, tap it and choose extract. After that, the songs show up like any other audio saved on your phone.

If something goes wrong, which sometimes happens with connections, don't worry: the site sends you to a backup download page on gayfolkplanet.com, the other home of Planeta Gayfolk, so you don't end up without the song.

If the sheer number feels overwhelming, there's no need to grab everything at once. Start with one album, or with three or four singles whose titles make you smile, and follow the thread. The songs don't expire or vanish from the downloads section, so you can come back for more whenever you like.

A tip for anyone on their phone: if your data is tight, download on wifi and listen later whenever you want. And another for anyone who doesn't know where to begin: try "Vas a escuchar un disco muy raro" ("You're About to Hear a Very Strange Record"), which warns you from the very first line what you're in for:

Si vienes con prejuicios, échate a un lado.

If you've come with prejudices, step aside. And if you're still here after that warning, you know where the rest is. Download them, play them on the bus or in secret, pass them on to whoever you fancy. That's what I made them for.