2026 October 3
Since I moved the music, books, and images to Patreon this year, I get the occasional complaint that I’m asking people to pay.
I get why it feels like a weird ask.
Example: Music
The normal way to hear a song changed twice. Napster, in 1999, turned recorded music into a file you took. LimeWire kept that habit going until a court shut it down in 2010. Streaming then made the legal version feel free: YouTube, Spotify, press play. After twenty years (a generation) of that, being asked to pay just to listen sounds like a tollbooth.
Those players are not free to the person who made the track. Spotify does not publish a fixed rate, but the money that comes back is often around a third of a cent a stream. Mary Spender, in her 2026 video about leaving Spotify, said streaming was under 1 percent of her income from original music, and that she had probably spent more on subscriptions than Spotify had ever paid her.
A song of mine takes weeks to write and thousands of dollars to record, mix, and master. At a third of a cent a stream, the recording cost alone needs on the order of a million and a half plays to come back, before the weeks of writing are counted.
The history explains the flinch. It’s not a bid to rewind it.
The preview stays on this site so you can hear the song the way you hear anything else. The same door applies to a book or a photograph: the preview is here; the file is on Patreon.
Membership adds the actual file, the other mixes, and the video from making it. The top tier is the conversation around that work: a vote on what gets written next, a seat at an intimate soundcheck, a role in a photoshoot, and, in 2027, a visit to the new creative space.
You’re invited to join Patreon if you want the file and what was made around it.
Access to My Art System
This article is available for my Patreon members including the Free Tier. Just sign up for a free account!
READY TO EXPLORE THE FULL PROCESS?
Join our community on Patreon for complete articles, creative process breakdowns, minimalist frameworks, and downloadable tools — including reusable templates and behind-the-scenes access.