i’m 2 singles into my year long plan of releasing my biggest body of work yet.
self-releasing, self-funding, and boycotting spotify.
this post begins with some boring spotify-related bits, you can just scroll ahead if you don’t want to feel furious today.

i took my music off spotify this time last year, and i’m so glad i did. i knew that if i waited until i was releasing something i really wanted people to hear and to grow my audience, that the temptation would be all too strong to stay.

i’m someone who has ranted on my instagram stories plenty about the enshittification of the entire music industry, most notably through the lack of regulation and fair rights for artists in these streaming-heavy times.

my particular beef with spotify, however, is specific to daniel ek. i’m hoping you don’t need me to tell you why, but just in case you missed it: he invested 600 million euros of his own money (which we can safely assume he earnt from spotify) into military drone technology. while acting as spotify’s CEO, he donated money to trump’s inauguration ceremony in 2025, and in the same year spotify ran ICE recruitment ads.

yes, the entire streaming model has entirely altered how we interface with, and value music (i’ll come back to this later, however). but i just couldn’t stand the idea of someone making enough BANK off of this business that exploits musicians and artists to the hilt, and THIS is how he spends his money? that’s my red line.

ANYWAY. depressing complainy stuff aside - this choice of mine has painted me succinctly into a corner where i’m actually having quite an interesting time contemplating what working on my career in music actually looks like.

lord only knows that relying on going viral and earning 0.003p per stream (after the first 1000 streams, every year - absolute bastards. SORRY i said complaining was over!!) was never really an effective life plan.

so where does that leave me?

1. DE-CENTRE STREAMING

well, firstly, my nervous system is actually a lot calmer during and after these single releases, having de-centred streaming entirely. especially without spotify’s maddeningly detailed analytics reports, i don’t have as much data to check. i don’t have numbers to rank. i genuinely don’t actually know who’s listening to my music, outside of seeing folk download it from my bandcamp (you guys ROCK).

side note - are spotify’s analytics just another form of dopamine hit? akin to social media likes / insights engagement etc? because really - you have NO ACCESS to these listeners. you don’t know who they are, you can’t update them about your work, no emails no data no nothing. spotify holds all the cards, and your left with some funny playlist names and a totally dog poo payout.

2. PIVOT TO YOUTUBE?

as someone who really enjoys making music videos, this seemed like a no brainer. it’s early days. i’ve run a couple of ads to get my videos in front of people, and they are going staggeringly well. but will this lead to actual audience? time will tell. i am going to attempt vlogging / bts over there to create a vibe. join me if you fancy it.

needless to say, google are absolutely up there with the tech-demon bad guys. but… that’s one bridge i don’t have the bandwidth to cross quite yet.

3. CREATE MEANINGFUL FAN CONNECTIONS

and this is the fun bit really. i’m having some reeeeally cool and fun ideas of ways to create mini-collectives of artists and team up to connect with audiences in physical, tangible ways. building baby scenes. creating flows for physical merch outside our own bandcamp pages. doing live shows together around the country??

i’m talking to other artist friends and we’re having IDEAS. we’re working out how we get to live the life we dream of AND reach the people we KNOW are out there who FREAKIN LOVE MUSIC.

when i was a teenager wanting to work in the music biz (this is a whole other story lol) i used to tell my mum - there will always be people who want to make music, and there will always be people who want to listen to it. how we connect them is a job that will always exist.

well maybe that job is ours now.

i listened to a great podcast a few years ago - i can’t for the life of me remember what it was, but will update if i remember - that really stuck with me.

they were discussing the monetization of music. and how when music publishing was first created (ie. the first sales of music related products, in this case sheet music, predating the recording industry) that one of the opposing perspectives was (and i paraphrase…)

how can anyone own music? it lives on the air.

music has always been something you experience. overhear. share together.

we create products that we sell alongside it - recordings, physical media, merch - but the experience of music itself is this wild, magical… offering.

yes i want to write and sing for the rest of my life, and i would love to make a living from that. but truly everything else in between - how i connect with an audience, how i earn money, what systems and structures i partake in - is up to me.

i’m going to relish that freedom while i can, and try and create some cool things people genuinely want to be involved in.

until the birth of my next mad idea…

lo x

***
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for existential rants, you’re in the right place.

so needless to say, in terms of a release campaign - i’m in it for the long haul.

and that has had me asking myself a lot of questions about sustainability, burn out, and the reality of my life as an artist.

before we get into that, here’s the song and its video… 🌹

it feels extremely fulfilling to me to steadily release music. to become prolific, even in this small-ish sense of a single every 6 weeks. this year i began a side gig working in production on shoots (big clipboard energy), and it showed me how much i can hold in terms of project scale, moving objects, spinning plates.

i feel very fortunate to be a creative person who also loves a spreadsheet.

but, working on a sizeable and unrelenting project with no team, no fellow bandmates (i have wonderful collaborators but none of them own the project, and i [mostly] pay them to work for me) and my own ego roped in…

fellow independent musicians will attest that a release campaign often has a very pedal to the metal quality. lots of outgoings, strict timelines, heaps of admin… and if any of it falls off the wagon, it’s only your art and life’s purpose that will suffer 🫠 - let alone the inevitable feeling that release day itself is underwhelming, and often actually disheartening and sad.

IT’S TOUGH OUT THERE.

so here i am, the summer of 2026, planning my release timeline, and i began to wonder…

“will i survive this?”

now, look - i know that’s heavy language. i’m melodramatic, i take things too seriously, and i’m incredibly existential.

but hear me out.

i am someone who suffers from burnout.
release campaigns push me to the edge.
and i will be releasing 3 EPs with 2 singles each for a full year.

i’m shooting 2 music videos this month, paying for PR for my second single (coming oct 29th), producing my 2nd EP and getting that mixed and mastered… and wondering what exactly i’ve gotten myself into.

as grateful as i am that i can handle sizeable projects, one thing has become clear.

when it’s my own (soul’s purpose) project… i don’t think the clipboard holder should be me.

i want to waft and drift in a bohemian dressing gown, pulling in string arrangement ideas from the ether, materialising the narrative arc of my releases with colours, clothes, moodboards…

i want to be AN ARTIST.

and as it was put to me recently in a zoom call for indie musicians, instead i am
AN ENTREPRENEUR.

and i guess this is the price we pay for wanting to make a career out of it.

many people struggle with admin, business decision, scheduling…
i could “hire myself” in my big clipboard energy to do this myself.
or i could ask for help! hire a teammate! isn’t that what a business advisor would suggest?

no one has their dream life handed to them on a plate.

we should be so lucky as to spend our life making art of our own choosing.

i’m chasing a dream. and that dream requires work.

the sooner i lock in on that, the sooner i’ll work out a way to survive ~ and THRIVE ~ making the music i love.

darling readers, it has been quite a while. after an exceptionally existential winter, i emerged into spring with confounding busy-ness, which distracted me out of my funk and threw me straight into capitalism’s churning belly of working-earning-spending-repeat.

gratefully, amongst the long days and big work projects, i managed to create the plan (and the funds) to put my next release together. and i am very pleased to tell you that the first single from my upcoming collection of EPs will be released on september 17th - available everywhere but spotify. i’m excited for you to hear what i’ve been brewing.

several years ago, when i first moved to margate after a big pivot in my life story, i was in a guided meditation where we were invited to see ourselves in the future, see what they were like, how they lived, notice them. my future self was… calm. grounded. easeful. and wondrously successful. 🤞✨

since then i have found myself wistfully dreaming of the day she will arrive into my life, on a ship of riches and opportunity - and FINALLY - i can slow down.

but it’s become apparent that, in order for my timeline to meet hers, i must become her - not in the ways that outside of my control, but the ways that are. i must learn to be grounded, calm, and easeful.

i notice that many people, including myself, go through waves of extreme busy-ness that feel like they push you right to the limit. and then periods of quiet that feel like drought, which jolt us into existential quandary. having being self-employed my entire working life, i should know that this yoyo-ing is natural, and that by radically allowing my droughts, i can sometimes recover enough to be able to handle the next onslaught that is just around the corner.

however ~ i have also come to learn that i am addicted to stress and the validation of being productive. so even in my restful periods, i often create side projects or donate my time to other people’s work. and then complain when i am perpetually tired and weary.

and i simply. cannot. do it anymore.

i cannot be busy all the time.

and most pertinently for right now, as i prepare for what will be a straight year of releases (!!) and trying to, independently, with no team, give my music the sunlight of human attention i believe it deserves…

i cannot be in charge all the time.

i cannot have all of the ideas all of the time, and execute them all too.

i have to be a human being, of finite resource, who needs rest, a reset, a brain break.

AND who will give my 12 month release plan EVERYTHING I’VE GOT.

it feels so counter-intuitive. like i am speeding up and slowing down at the same time. like i am going full hustle-mode, while also leaning all the way back in my posture.

and then i think of

a tree.

going down, to come up.

it’s so goddamn corny but MY GOD do i need it right now.

i need both. i need slow my pace so i can move quicker. i need to ground so i can expand. i need to experience consistent pockets of rest and recalibration that help me sustain through bigger pressures and opportunities.

i need to even more intentionally give myself exactly what i need and not hold back. to create a life that is sustainable, that i can keep on living, where i can do the more i have been yearning for for so very long, without completely sacrificing myself in the process. i will not suffer for my art. it has nurtured me through so much, quietly, gently soothed and consoled me, in the most private and subconscious of ways. it feeds me and holds me. why would it want me to suffer?

i will live. i will live well. i will breathe and dance and feel fire’s heat and cool wind. i will blow away like smoke from my own mouth, and then be the ash that falls to the ground. i will have it all. and by that i mean - enjoy the dream of a life i have drawn down into reality - enjoy making and sharing my art with the world.

grounded. calm. easeful.

ok great. now my nihilistic intro is over, you may be thinking - wow lo, i thought you were substacking about music and the act of creativity, how did we get here?
well - the short answer is: i feel hopeless, and untethered from the future. and as a result, i am caught in a wee loop of only having energy to do the bare minimum, and finding it very difficult to strategically plan for the future, let alone create.

i am sorry to be bleak but an apparent side effect of my malaise is the requirement for absolute honesty, and the yearning to be met in my true state. so shout out anyone reading this that is also experiencing february blues of the ‘continuous unprecedented times’ variety.

as a musician, i genuinely don’t know what the fuck i’m supposed to do in this condition - beyond wait for it to pass, and explain my lack of output to my irl acquaintances with a more surface level reason along the lines of “writer’s block” or “i needed some time away”.

i want to live in a world where i can create. i want to believe that making music will soothe me, and potentially upon sharing it, give some energetic encouragement to its listeners.

but i currently feel very what’s the point and would rather watch shit tons of telly.

so to explain my sorry state, i’ve concluded that i’m grieving. grieving the death of the old world.

i am not unattached to the old world. i was born from it. i learnt all my values from within its belly; was taught who to trust, who to run to in a crisis, what success and failure look like inside it.

i was taught that learning a pretty tune on the piano would make me a better prospect as a diplomat’s wife. that wearing expensive jewellery in a seafood restaurant in mayfair would increase the chances of a bachelor lawyer wanting to talk to me. but that turning to sex work in a time of financial crisis was a good enough reason to disown a best friend. that my pubescent face would look better if i had surgery, and its accompanying body was out of proportion and overweight. and i was taught that i absolutely was not allowed to be a musician.

i have spent half my life trying to untangle these knots, while still living in the machine that created these belief systems.

in my own musician-hood, i realised last year (at the ripe age of 36) that i am a musician because i’m naturally good at it - not because i’ve had much experience of it genuinely pleasing me. don’t get me wrong. i love music. i love singing. i love writing. but more than my love for any of these things, i have loved the hope of success. of proving people wrong, who said i couldn’t do it. of earning the money i should have been given from my diplomat husband’s salary. and i have loved the idea of being seen, and being told i am finally good enough. (see last entry)

last summer, i finally experienced joy in my own company while creating. the freedom to do what i want, make what i feel, only having myself as the arbiter of my success.

but there was always a goal attached to that feeling: to reach a heightened state of creative expression that would be enough to finally LAUNCH MY CAREER!! 🚀🔥🔥🔥

reporting from the year 2026, what the fuck is a career in music? what does that even mean? in 10 years time will there still be money? internet? adverts for my music to get sync’d to? i have no doubt there’ll be art, but in what form, and for who?

having been listening to spiritual folk predict some version of system collapse for at least the last year, i’ve been having some internal thoughts about doomsday preparation, or contemplating alternative ways of living that could be more supportive if our centralised means of survival started to crumble.

but what’s surprised me the most has been the amount of people who are far more “normal” than i think i am, telling me they’re thinking the same thing. and that makes it feel real, rational, & like a genuine possible outcome.

i feel rather fortunate that i don’t fear system collapse entirely. i am optimistic that small + localised communities will create new (old) ways to take care of themselves, and i am already thinking about the practical skills i could offer, or would like to learn.

i believe art will continue, and most likely become a more prominent and necessary tool for human survival. i imagine communal song and dance, functional yet beautiful homeware like pottery and wovenwear, the freedom to appreciate life through drawing, painting & photography…

but in this utopian buffet of my imagination, i do not see me in a recording studio, making an album, uploading to streaming services and touring the world.

and i don’t think it’s because the tech won’t exist (although in this micro village of my mind, it might not). i think it’s because the energy behind that dream won’t survive into this next reality.

i cannot bring my capitalistic desire for success into the new age with me.

i cannot bring my hopes for recognition and validation.

i cannot contaminate my expression with the need to be rewarded by a polluted system.

as a vocal coach, i often tell my students that the singing i love the most is human: flawed, imperfect, lived in… expressive and emotive above technically exact.
if a voice is too pretty and precise, i feel genuinely bored.

i want the music i listen to to be a transmission of an actual life force. i want its frequencies to hit me with meaning and consciousness - whatever the story is: heartbreak, revenge, euphoria, folklore… i want the artist to feel it and then transmit it to me.

THIS kind of music will prevail.

will mine prevail with it?

today i woke up to multiple piles of cat vomit, discovered over several hours, and spent my day both cleaning up and consoling the poorly feline. i managed to avoid screentime (outside of writing this piece) and then spent the evening working a bar shift at an open mic where my spirits were greatly restored.

could it be that the cat’s puke was a symbolic parallel to my own much needed purge, evidenced here? (i think she ate some very salty cheese rind but let’s selfishly pretend her suffering was a sign from the heavens instead…)

in better spirits than i started this with,

lo x

i feel the most creatively terrified i’ve ever been, and i can’t put my finger on why.

i’ve been building a musical project for over 10 years now; gone through many a winding road of building confidence, technique and approach, and am by no means mature, successful or an expert. but i am, at least, more experienced than i was before.

the songs i am putting together now feel the most challenging and scary yet. and none of my “experience” seems to be making it any easier. my skin feels thin, tender and pink. my ego is tantrum-y and naïve, constantly in need of affirmation and approval. and my fear is… off the scale.

in the winter of 2021, after leaving a long term creative (and romantic) partnership, i had to reclaim my creative process as solely my own. re-love it into existence from the edge of my bed, dressed in slobby 3 day old pj’s, with my hand-me-down nylon string guitar i taught myself to play on. garageband demos recorded on my iphone, open mics with no friendly faces having returned to my hometown and finding it startlingly unfamiliar.

i made a promise to myself then, that felt so terrifying that my ribs squeezed into my chest like a plastic bottle getting scrunched up for the recycling bin:

if i want to keep growing, i have to keep doing things i’ve never done before.
that means every next step will involve the unknown and the uncomfortable.

i sat with the fear, and the commitment to be consistently challenged and said yes.

but i thought that on this path i would at least get to accumulate. develop thicker skin. adapt to my autonomy and learn to love it.

sadly, like most things in life - this work is just a mirror. another inescapable landscape for my abandonment and hyper-independence to play out.

i want to do this by myself - but i can’t.
i don’t want to do this by myself - but i must.

the songs are perhaps a bit more complex, but nothing 10+ years of fucking around and finding out can’t handle. being my own producer is a bit intimidating, but my ideas are so clear that i truly believe no one else would create the world i dream of except me.

so why do i feel so deeply afraid?

because the part of me that trembles as i try and decide if a recording is “good enough” is the same part that has no idea what “good enough” means because i never felt it myself.

a few months ago i drafted a reframe of this phrase “good enough”.
could it be that “good enough” didn’t mean THE BEST A MAN CAN GET
- but instead: a pass in an exam. the weight that just tips the scale towards where you want to go. THE MINIMUM REQUIREMENT.

firstly: the word good. it’s not excellent. it’s not the best. it’s not incredible. it’s certainly not perfect. it’s just good.

put to the test:

• Q: what did you think of the dinner i made?
  A: it was good.

  okaayyyy… not exactly high praise is it?

secondly: the word enough. it’s not a lot. it’s not plenty. it’s just… enough.

• Q: did you want some more to eat?
  A: no thanks, i’ve had enough.

  Q: would you like me to ask you some more questions?
  A: no! i’ve had enough!!

so why does this phrase “good enough” haunt my inner world, like the absolute barometer of my value as a human being? it’s a pretty low fucking bar when you truly think about it!!!

so i’m trying to hand in 60% pass-mark work and shed a bunch of perfectionism (all inherited from the various formative virgos in my life, can you guys pleeease chillllll).

all very well and good until you have to hit RELEASE on a bunch of music you made with no one to tell you it’s… good enough. let alone pure fucking magic, which is how i actually want it to feel. *cue whimpering hysterical laughter*

and i find myself googling the dumbest shit ever like:
how to make art when no one likes it
how to create when you’re scared shitless
will the world end if no one likes the song i poured my soul into

and this one gets into my journal, but thankfully not my search history:
does anyone actually care?
does anyone actually care that this is the bravest, boldest thing i’ve ever done?
does that make it any better than something i didn’t really give a toss about, but sounds aesthetically tough as tits?

and we finally confront the sleep demon squeezing the air out of my chest:
am i actually just making this for me?
am i the only one who has to like it?
is that good enough?

there’s the saying :you only fail when you stop trying:

then there’s :you only fail if you actually try:

the latter could be interpreted 2 ways.

1. as a kick up the arse to actually fucking try. like motivation by fear of being called pathetic (lol - unsure why this is funny to me. like girl, you didn’t even try, get over it).

2. to remind us to not create a punishment for ourselves over something we didn’t really care about in the first place. otherwise we’re just looking for excuses to berate ourselves.

i’ve noticed that every few months i tend to have an existential crisis (commonly referred to as an exi-c in my house) that gratefully, and rather pleasantly, has come to result in a goal or focus setting mega journalling sesh.

since the beginning of the summer i’ve been enrolled in maisie hill’s online coaching membership (she wrote the book period power and has a fab self-help style podcast). and in that container we are encouraged to set seasonal goals, which i’ve found suits my exi-c rhythms very well.

i’ve found that through the years of wailing-flailing myself into setting goals, and graduating to being professionally coached towards them, that doing so really massively helps me. am i someone motivated by ticking things off a checklist? yes. do i have a trauma informed personality that relies heavily on achievements and productivity? also yes. HOWEVER! i swear! this isn’t just good for satisfying my need for validation!

what it’s good for:

• self knowledge

getting real, specific, and extremely intimate with what actually matters to me right now. sometimes it might be something frigid seeming like “put 2k into savings for xyz”. but most of the time, it’s something a lot softer, more vague, and most likely conceptual. it’s fluid enough for only me to be the true arbiter of whether or not i followed my north star. and for those things to be the case, i have to know, on my soul’s journey, what actually serves my growth right now.

maybe it’s telling a bunch of people to fuck off. maybe it’s prioritising rest. maybe it’s keeping everything the same but trying to be more present and mindful along the way. the point is not to pick something general and random. it’s to know, or choose, what is most useful for me right now, and commit to it. at the very least we’ll be able to test over time whether that thing is helpful or not, by giving it a concerted effort.

this was going to be a list, but to be honest, self knowledge is the only thing that i consider notably important. the rest you can infer, i am sure - accountability, confidence, focus, blah blah, good stuff.

coming back to my ‘you only fail if you try’ starting position:

if it’s not important to me, i’m not going to give it my all. and if i don’t give it my all, i probably don’t care much about the outcome.

what are the areas where i really do care about the outcome?

where are the fields of my previous suffering that need a fallow year?

where is my desire?

what are my recurring dreams?

i want the answers to these deep ass questions. and i’m sure as heck gonna follow through when my psyche is kind enough to divulge some intel.

lo x

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