I Downloaded a Whole Discography and Nobody Asked for My Card: Notes on Why Mike Sain't Louis Gives Every Song Away

MADRID, 25 October 2026 — I kept waiting for the catch. A pop-up asking for my email, a trial that turns into a monthly charge, a polite request to log in. It never came. I clicked a button on mikesaintlouis.com and a song by Mike Sain't Louis landed on my phone, cover art and all. Then I clicked another. By the end of the evening I had more music from this Madrid indie alternative artist than from most bands I have followed for years, and I hadn't spent a cent.

The door without a doorman

Mike, who presents himself as "the first AI singer-songwriter", has released 273 singles and more than 280 music videos in roughly two years under the name PLANETA GAYFOLK. Every one of those songs can be downloaded free. Not a sampler, not thirty seconds as a teaser: the full tracks, one by one, plus the three albums of the GAYFOLK trilogy as single compressed files. The same songs are on Spotify and Deezer too, like any other artist's.

When I asked him why, he described two doors. "A platform is a door with a doorman," he said. "That's fine, I love that people find me there. But to come in properly, with the music saved on your phone and no interruptions, you pay every month. A download is the other door. You walk in, you take the file, and that's it. If you change your phone tomorrow, the song comes with you."

There is a detail that matters to him as a lyricist. A downloaded file is always the same song. Nobody cuts it, nobody drops an advert into the middle of the chorus, nobody decides it is no longer available in your country. It sounds exactly as he released it, and it will sound the same in ten years.

The anniversary nobody celebrated

The first song I played from my new collection was "Primer aniversario", First Anniversary. In the note he published with it, Mike calls it a song written from the irony and solitude of the independent artist. It is about what almost everyone feels and few admit: that in a digital world, dreams are celebrated in silence, achievements go unnoticed and the applause goes to whoever didn't do the work.

He laughs, in the note, at twenty WhatsApp statuses viewed without a single like, at the echo of social media, and at the people who say "that doesn't make money, find something else". It is, he writes, a tribute to emotional resistance — to everyone who keeps betting on their own thing without applause, likes or validation — and a reminder that value lies not in the views but in the truth.

Listening to it on a bridge over the river at dusk, earbuds in, I understood the free downloads differently. This is an artist who knows exactly how little the numbers give back, and has decided not to put a price between his songs and the people who might need them.

The mother-in-law of his dreams

Then I needed something lighter, and the catalogue obliged. "Ojalá hubiera tenido de suegra a Carmina Barrios" — If only I'd had Carmina Barrios as my mother-in-law — is a deliciously Spanish fantasy. Carmina Barrios is the mother of the actor Paco León, and the narrator, after a bitter end with his last husband and a last mother-in-law he'd rather not discuss, imagines another life: lunch in her garden, Paco León at his side, the two of them celebrating their fourteenth anniversary.

The best line is the narrator's reply to his real former in-laws: "no están hablando con un imbécil" — you are not talking to an idiot. I laughed out loud on the bridge, and a man walking his dog gave me a look.

"Half my songs are me settling scores with my past," Mike told me, "and the other half are me imagining the past I deserved. Carmina belongs to the second half. Everyone should have a fantasy mother-in-law."

Who the gift is for

Mike writes mostly in Spanish, and he has said that a large part of his audience lives across the Atlantic, in Latin America as well as Spain and the rest of Europe. Not everyone there can pay for a subscription every month. The download is his way of making sure nobody is shut out for that reason.

Why it matters in Ireland

Ireland knows something about music passed from hand to hand: tunes shared in sessions, songs learned from a neighbour rather than paid for. There is also a large Spanish and Latin American community here now, students and workers who may find in these songs a piece of home. And for any Irish reader curious about AI in music, there is no easier way to make up your own mind than to download a few tracks and read the lyrics beside them.

Where to get it

Every song is free to stream and download at https://mikesaintlouis.com, each with its lyric. The music is also on Spotify, Deezer and other major platforms. The GAYFOLK trilogy — "Descubierto un nuevo planeta llamado GAYFOLK", "Ojalá se pudiera viajar a GAYFOLK" and "El día de la liberación" — maps a journey to a planet where everyone can live as they are.

About Mike Sain't Louis

Mike Sain't Louis is a Madrid indie alternative artist who writes all of his lyrics and directs the AI production of his music and vocal performance. He is also the composer, producer, art director and CEO of his own label, MIKE SAIN'T LOUIS, working without a record company or intermediaries. His queer, uncensored and camp songs move from electropop and copla to ballads, and "Tan Cateto" went viral on TikTok in 2024. With professional help, he turns relationships with narcissistic partners into songs that make psychological abuse visible.

Press contact

Mike Sain't Louis — MIKE SAIN'T LOUIS (independent label) Email: info@mikesaintlouis.com Website: https://mikesaintlouis.com Instagram: @planetagayfolk