Remember when Pledge Music stole our money?!

Laura Kidd
2 min readJul 17, 2023

For this new article I was invited to share my thoughts on how artists can take control of their online presence, instead of leaving it all in the hands of big companies who don’t care about us.

After Pledge Music folded in early 2019, stealing £6000 of my fans’ money aka the profit from my 2018 album “Brace For Impact”, I created my own Patreon-style membership club.

I invited everyone on my mailing list to join, and since February 2019 I have been able to do this weird and wonderful job full-time, instead of frantically freelancing in the day, trying to write songs at night and putting albums out every few years.

This is an unusual state of affairs. Most music makers have to juggle making their art with paid work doing other things. There’s nothing wrong with that, and the art isn’t any better or worse because the artist has to support themselves in other ways — but wouldn’t it be lovely if more of us could have a bit more time to make the things you love?

I’ve always been a grafter, and I enjoyed my freelance career making videos, taking photos and doing all sorts of digital bits and pieces — BUT I love what I do now way more. It’s what I’m best at, and I am forever grateful and thankful to everyone who’s:

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Laura Kidd

Mindful productivity, digital minimalism, creativity and music. Solo artist Penfriend, “Attention Engineer” podcast host. She/her.