# Your Life at Every Level of the Music Industry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM0BC46FyhQ

[00:00] Level one, the bedroom artist.
[00:02] You are 16 years old.
[00:05] Your bedroom has a twin bed and a closet full of clothes you never wear.
[00:08] In the corner is a cheap USB microphone.
[00:11] You bought it with money from your summer job.
[00:12] You saved for 4 months.
[00:16] You also have a laptop that crashes when you open too many tabs.
[00:19] You have a free version of recording software you downloaded last year.
[00:23] This is your studio.
[00:26] This is where it all begins.
[00:28] You write songs in a notebook at school when you should be paying attention in class.
[00:32] The teacher thinks you're taking notes.
[00:33] You're actually writing about a girl who doesn't know you exist.
[00:38] You go home after school and record for hours.
[00:40] You stack vocals on top of vocals.
[00:42] You hum melodies into your phone at 2:00 in the morning.
[00:44] You wake up embarrassed by what you sang, but you listen anyway.
[00:48] Sometimes there's something in there, a phrase, a feeling, a half idea worth chasing.
[00:52] You chase it.
[00:55] You post your songs on SoundCloud and Instagram.
[00:57] You have 47 followers.
[00:57] 23 of them are from
[01:00] Your high school.
[01:00] 12 are relatives.
[01:03] The rest are strangers who followed you back after you followed them first.
[01:07] You check your stream count every hour.
[01:09] You got eight plays today.
[01:12] You are certain six of them were you.
[01:13] You tell yourself you don't care about the numbers.
[01:14] You care about the numbers.
[01:17] You care about the numbers more than almost anything else in your life right now.
[01:20] They feel like a mirror showing you whether you exist.
[01:22] Your parents think this is a phase.
[01:25] Your father asks when you're going to get serious about college.
[01:30] Your mother listens to your songs and tells you they're beautiful.
[01:32] That is the kindest and least useful feedback in the world.
[01:36] Your friends don't really listen.
[01:38] They say they will and then they don't.
[01:41] You learn early that nobody owes you their attention.
[01:43] The attention has to be earned.
[01:45] You don't know how to earn it yet.
[01:46] You just keep recording.
[01:46] You keep posting.
[01:49] You keep waiting for something to happen.
[01:51] Nothing happens.
[01:51] You keep going anyway.
[01:54] Some nights you delete everything.
[01:56] Some nights you record until 4:00 in the morning and pass out with the headphones still on.
[01:59] The songs are not great yet.
[02:02] You already know that.
[02:04] You are training your ear to hear what's missing.
[02:07] Level two, the local act.
[02:09] You are 19 now.
[02:11] You dropped out of community college after one semester.
[02:14] You work at a coffee shop 3 days a week.
[02:16] The rest of your time belongs to the music.
[02:20] You have upgraded your equipment.
[02:21] You have a real condenser microphone now.
[02:24] You treated your closet with moving blankets and foam panels you bought online.
[02:28] The vocals sound better.
[02:30] Not great.
[02:31] Better.
[02:33] You play your first open mic night at a bar downtown.
[02:34] There are 11 people in the audience.
[02:37] Six of them are other performers waiting for their turn.
[02:41] Your hands shake as you walk to the stage.
[02:44] You forget the second verse of a song you've played a thousand times.
[02:48] You finish anyway.
[02:49] Someone claps.
[02:51] You leave the stage feeling like you died and came back.
[02:54] You are already thinking about the next one.
[02:57] You book another open mic for next Tuesday.
[02:59] You start playing small venues, coffee shops on weeknights, bookstore
[03:04] Backrooms, a vegan restaurant that lets musicians play during dinner service for free food.
[03:10] You get added to bills with three other acts.
[03:13] Everyone is hustling.
[03:15] Everyone is trading Instagram follows and cross-promoting shows.
[03:18] Everyone is splitting the $40 the venue paid the headliner four ways.
[03:23] You make $10 for a 45-minute set.
[03:26] You spend $15 on an Uber home because you don't have a car.
[03:30] The math doesn't work.
[03:32] The math never works at this level.
[03:35] You do it anyway because it's the only way out of this level.
[03:39] You meet other musicians.
[03:41] You meet a drummer who plays in three other bands.
[03:43] You meet a producer who works at a grocery store during the day.
[03:47] At night, he records artists in his basement for $100 a session.
[03:51] You meet a girl who writes songs that make you feel things.
[03:55] You form a duo with her for 6 weeks.
[03:57] The project falls apart over creative differences and unspoken feelings.
[04:02] You learn that collaborations at this level end faster than they begin.
[04:06] You learn that almost everyone is going to quit.
[04:09] The people who don't quit aren't necessarily more talented.
[04:13] They're just more stubborn.
[04:15] You decide to be stubborn.
[04:17] You make another album on your laptop.
[04:19] You release it for free.
[04:22] It gets 400 streams in the first month.
[04:24] You tell yourself, this is progress.
[04:27] You're not sure if you believe it.
[04:29] You start playing house shows in basements.
[04:33] 40 kids packed into a damp room under a string of Christmas lights.
[04:36] The sound is terrible.
[04:39] The energy is electric.
[04:40] Someone sings along to a song you wrote last month.
[04:43] A stranger knows your lyrics.
[04:46] That moment rewires your brain permanently.
[04:49] You chase that feeling for the next decade.
[04:52] You don't fully understand yet how addictive it is.
[04:56] Level three, the independent artist.
[04:58] You were 23.
[05:00] You have a full-length project out on streaming platforms.
[05:03] You uploaded it through a distribution service that takes a cut of every stream.
[05:06] You have 3,000 monthly listeners on Spotify.
[05:08] That number means more to you than your GPA ever did.
[05:10] You check it every day like a ritual.
[05:13] Sometimes it goes up.
[05:15] Sometimes it goes down.
[05:17] You try not to let it affect your mood.
[05:19] It affects your mood.
[05:21] You were starting to build something that looks like a career.
[05:22] You have a website.
[05:24] You have merch.
[05:27] A friend designed a logo that you had printed on 50 t-shirts.
[05:28] They are currently sitting in boxes in your apartment.
[05:30] You sold 12 of them at your last show.
[05:34] The rest will sit there for a year.
[05:36] You will eventually give most of them away to family members.
[05:39] This is the economics of merch at your level.
[05:42] Nobody tells you this when you start.
[05:44] You figure it out.
[05:46] You tour for the first time.
[05:47] Not a real tour, a DIY tour.
[05:50] Seven cities in nine days.
[05:51] You sleep on floors and couches.
[05:54] One night, you sleep in the back of a van because the host you had lined up stopped answering his phone.
[05:58] You played to crowds ranging from 80 people to four people.
[06:00] The four-person show is in a city where you thought you had fans.
[06:04] You did have fans.
[06:05] They didn't come out.
[06:08] You play the set anyway.
[06:09] You play it like there are 4,000 people in the room.
[06:11] That is the rule.
[06:13] You learned it from every musician you respect.
[06:15] The show has to be the show, no matter who is watching.
[06:19] You start getting written about in small music blogs.
[06:21] You get played on a college radio station.
[06:23] A music supervisor reaches out about using one of your songs in an indie film.
[06:28] The film will never be released.
[06:31] You say yes.
[06:32] You sign a contract you don't fully understand.
[06:33] You get paid $200.
[06:36] You convince yourself this is progress.
[06:39] You are not sure if it is.
[06:41] You keep going because stopping feels worse than continuing.
[06:42] At this level, that is the only metric that actually matters.
[06:46] You are writing better songs than you used to.
[06:48] You can hear the difference.
[06:50] You hope other people can hear it, too.
[06:52] Some of them do.
[06:54] Not enough of them.
[06:57] Not yet.
[06:57] You start emailing booking agents.
[06:59] Most don't respond.
[07:02] One does.
[07:02] He takes you on, but treats you like a side project.
[07:03] You email him every few weeks asking for updates.
[07:05] He answers one
[07:08] email for every three you send.
[07:10] You start to understand something important.
[07:12] Nobody is going to save you.
[07:15] No agent, no label, no viral moment is coming to rescue you from obscurity.
[07:17] You have to build your own momentum.
[07:19] You have to show up every day and put in work that nobody is paying attention to.
[07:21] You do it anyway.
[07:27] You have no other choice.
[07:29] Level four.
[07:29] The rising artist.
[07:32] You are 26.
[07:33] Something has shifted.
[07:35] You don't know exactly what.
[07:37] You released a single six months ago and it started getting traction.
[07:41] Nothing else you made ever did anything like this.
[07:44] A playlist editor added it to a mid-size playlist, then a bigger one, then a bigger one.
[07:49] Your monthly listeners jumped from 8,000 to 40,000 to 120,000 in 3 months.
[07:56] You refresh the analytics page until your phone died.
[07:59] Labels start calling.
[08:01] Not the biggest ones, but real ones.
[08:03] Independent labels with distribution through major partners.
[08:05] They send emails through your management, which is one
[08:08] Person now.
[08:11] His name is Chris, and he used to book shows at a venue you played twice.
[08:13] He knows nothing about contracts.
[08:15] He is figuring it out alongside you.
[08:18] You take meetings.
[08:20] You fly to Los Angeles and New York for the first time in your life.
[08:23] You sit in offices with A&R reps who tell you they believe in you.
[08:27] They check their phones under the table while they say it.
[08:29] You eat expensive sushi you can't afford.
[08:33] It is paid for by people who want to own a piece of your career.
[08:35] You sign a deal.
[08:37] It isn't the deal you dreamed of when you were 16.
[08:40] It's a 360 deal with an indie label that takes a cut of everything.
[08:45] Touring, merch, publishing, masters.
[08:47] You read the contract six times.
[08:49] You get a lawyer who tells you it's a standard deal for someone at your level.
[08:53] Standard is a word that means different things at different levels.
[08:56] At this level, it means you are giving up a lot to get a little.
[09:00] You sign anyway.
[09:01] You need the infrastructure.
[09:03] You need the marketing budget.
[09:05] You need the team.
[09:07] You tell yourself you'll make the next deal better.
[09:08] Everyone tells themselves that.
[09:08] Some of
[09:10] Them are right.
[09:10] Most of them are not.
[09:13] You quit your day job.
[09:15] You are a full-time musician now.
[09:17] You have wanted this since you were 16.
[09:19] You expected it to feel like flying.
[09:22] It feels like falling.
[09:23] The pressure is immense.
[09:24] Every song has to work now.
[09:27] Every video has to perform.
[09:29] The label expects numbers.
[09:29] Your manager expects numbers.
[09:32] Your own bank account expects numbers.
[09:35] The art you made when nobody was watching was pure.
[09:39] The art you make now is watched before it's finished.
[09:41] Something in you mourns that.
[09:43] You don't talk about it.
[09:43] You keep working.
[09:46] Level five, the touring artist.
[09:48] You are 28.
[09:51] Your second major release went well.
[09:52] Well enough that you are now headlining 1,200 capacity rooms across the country.
[09:57] You sell out most of them.
[10:00] You don't sell out all of them.
[10:01] The ones you don't sell out haunt you for weeks afterward.
[10:03] You study the data.
[10:06] You wonder what went wrong in Cleveland.
[10:08] You wonder if you were losing steam.
[10:11] You are not losing steam.
[10:13] You are just tired.
[10:15] The industry cannot tell the difference between those two things.
[10:17] Sometimes you can't either.
[10:19] You are on a bus now.
[10:22] An actual tour bus.
[10:23] 12 bunks, a small kitchen, a lounge in the back.
[10:27] It smells like whatever the last band that rented this bus left behind.
[10:31] You have a band.
[10:33] Four musicians plus a tour manager plus a merch seller plus a sound engineer.
[10:37] You are the boss of a small moving business.
[10:40] It travels 300 miles a night and performs a 90-minute show every evening.
[10:46] You do it for 70 consecutive days.
[10:49] Your signature is on the checks.
[10:51] Your name is on the marquee.
[10:53] The responsibility of feeding and housing and transporting and paying nine people belongs to you.
[11:00] You do interviews on every day off.
[11:02] You do radio station visits in cities where you have fans.
[11:04] You record videos for social media between sound check and doors.
[11:09] You sign merchandise for 40 minutes
[11:11] Every night after the show.
[11:13] You meet people who tell you your song got them through their divorce.
[11:17] You meet people who tell you your song got them through their depression.
[11:21] You meet people who tell you your song got them through their father's funeral.
[11:26] You look each person in the eye because they deserve that.
[11:29] Then you go back to the bus and sit in your bunk in the dark and stare at the ceiling.
[11:35] The weight of other people's feelings is heavier than you expected.
[11:37] Nobody warned you about that part.
[11:41] Your relationship suffer.
[11:43] The person you were dating when you signed your deal is no longer the person you were dating.
[11:48] You have not been home for more than a week at a time in 18 months.
[11:53] Your apartment has dust on every surface.
[11:56] Your mother cries on FaceTime because you missed another Thanksgiving.
[12:00] You apologize.
[12:03] You mean it.
[12:03] You will miss the next one, too.
[12:05] The tour has to happen.
[12:07] The tour is the whole thing.
[12:10] You remind yourself that you chose this.
[12:14] Some nights, it feels like the choice is choosing you back.
[12:18] Your sleep is ruined now.
[12:20] You sleep on a bus bunk that moves at highway speeds through the dark.
[12:24] You close your eyes in Pittsburgh and open them in Detroit.
[12:28] Your body forgets what time zone it's in.
[12:30] Your voice starts to crack during sound check one afternoon.
[12:34] The vocal coach the label assigned you flies out for an emergency session.
[12:38] She tells you that you have nodules forming on your cords.
[12:40] She tells you that you need to rest for 2 weeks.
[12:45] You cancel four shows.
[12:47] The refunds cost you $40,000.
[12:50] You lie in a hotel room not speaking for 14 days.
[12:52] You write in a notebook instead.
[12:57] The songs you write during the silence are some of the best songs you have ever written.
[13:02] Nobody will hear them for 2 more years.
[13:05] Level six, the charting artist.
[13:08] You were 31.
[13:09] You had a song go viral on a short-form video app.
[13:11] It completely changed the shape of your career.
[13:15] The song wasn't even the song you thought would be the single.
[13:18] It was an album track, a quiet one.
[13:21] A girl in Ohio used it in a video about her dead grandmother.
[13:24] The video got 40 million views and suddenly you were everywhere.
[13:29] The song hit the Hot 100, then the top 40, then the top 10.
[13:34] You are now a pop artist.
[13:35] You were never exactly a pop artist before.
[13:37] You were something harder to describe.
[13:39] A singer-songwriter with crossover potential.
[13:43] That is what the press kit said.
[13:44] Now the press kit says pop.
[13:47] The label is pushing you into collaborations with producers who have worked with the biggest names in the business.
[13:52] You are flown to Los Angeles and put in rooms with 22-year-old songwriters.
[13:56] They have already written three number ones.
[13:58] You write 15 songs in a week.
[14:01] Most of them are not yours.
[14:02] They are Frankensteins of current trends stitched together by committee.
[14:06] You don't love them.
[14:09] You perform on late-night television.
[14:11] You wear a stylish outfit that costs more than your first year of rent.
[14:14] You lip-sync on a morning talk show because
[14:16] the monitors are bad.
[14:19] Live vocals would be a disaster.
[14:20] You have learned which fights are worth having.
[14:21] This is not one of them.
[14:23] You meet celebrities who compliment your song.
[14:25] You can't tell if they have actually heard it.
[14:27] You smile.
[14:29] You thank them.
[14:32] You take the photo.
[14:34] You post it.
[14:37] The numbers go up again.
[14:38] You feel lighter and emptier at the same time.
[14:40] You don't know what to do with that feeling, so you don't do anything.
[14:41] You are making real money for the first time.
[14:44] Not generational wealth, but real money.
[14:45] You pay off your student loans.
[14:47] You buy your mother a car.
[14:49] You buy yourself a small house in the city where you grew up.
[14:51] You don't actually want to live there.
[14:52] You want your family to know the investment is real.
[14:54] Your accountant talks to you about quarterly tax payments and LLCs.
[14:56] She talks about splitting your income across touring, publishing, and merchandise entities.
[15:00] You sign documents you don't read carefully enough.
[15:02] You trust people you have no real reason to trust.
[15:05] Everyone else trusts them, so you do, too.
[15:06] This is how it works at this level.
[15:08] You learn this eventually.
[15:17] Level seven.
[15:18] The headliner.
[15:19] You are 34.
[15:21] You are playing arenas now.
[15:24] 12,000 to 18,000 capacity rooms.
[15:27] You are not the biggest artist in the world.
[15:30] But you are big enough that the business around you has become enormous.
[15:34] Your tour has 42 trucks.
[15:37] Your production has a stage designer, a lighting designer, a video director, a choreographer, a creative director.
[15:45] You also have a tour manager who makes six figures.
[15:49] His job is to keep the whole thing from collapsing every single day.
[15:52] You walk out on a stage designed to make you look like a god.
[15:56] 15,000 people scream your name.
[15:58] They know every word of every song.
[16:01] They sing lyrics back at you that you wrote in the bedroom when you were 16.
[16:05] Nobody cared whether you lived or died back then.
[16:08] You stand in front of them and sing those same words back.
[16:11] The collision of the two versions of yourself almost knocks you over some nights.
[16:15] You have to remember how to be present.
[16:18] Presence is the job.
[16:20] The moment you stop being present, the audience feels it.
[16:23] The audience is why you are here.
[16:25] You have an entourage now, though you don't call it that.
[16:27] You call it a team.
[16:30] Your assistant, your bodyguard, your publicist, your road manager.
[16:35] Your personal trainer travels with you to keep you conditioned for 2-hour shows.
[16:38] Your vocal coach warms you up every afternoon.
[16:41] He gives you herbal teas.
[16:44] He tells you when you need to shut up for 24 hours to save your voice.
[16:47] The big markets come first.
[16:49] You are an athlete as much as you are an artist.
[16:51] The voice is the instrument.
[16:54] The instrument wears out.
[16:56] There are no replacements.
[16:57] You negotiate your second record deal.
[17:00] It is nothing like the first.
[17:02] This one is a partnership.
[17:04] You own your masters going forward.
[17:06] You have approval over every creative decision.
[17:08] You have a budget that would have sounded fictional to you 10 years ago.
[17:12] You also have more to lose than you have ever had.
[17:14] The first deal, you could walk away from.
[17:16] You had nothing.
[17:18] This deal, walking away would be expensive.
[17:20] Not impossible.
[17:20] Expensive.
[17:24] The higher you climb, the more the cage looks like a palace.
[17:28] You remember that phrase from somewhere.
[17:30] You wrote it in a notebook years ago.
[17:32] You underline it in your mind.
[17:34] You start hearing things about yourself that aren't true.
[17:37] Stories circulate in tabloids about affairs you never had.
[17:40] Rumors spread online about your rider being unreasonable.
[17:44] Strangers write long analyses of your body and your face and your choices.
[17:48] You stop reading anything about yourself.
[17:51] Your publicist stops sending you links.
[17:53] She says it will be better for your mental health.
[17:56] She is right.
[17:57] You start meditating.
[17:57] You start therapy.
[18:00] Your therapist signs a non-disclosure agreement before your first session.
[18:04] She costs $600 an hour.
[18:06] She is worth every penny.
[18:08] You learn that the version of you that exists in the public imagination is not the same as you.
[18:13] You have to protect the private one from the public one.
[18:16] Most people never figure that out.
[18:19] The ones who don't figure it out are the ones who don't survive this level.
[18:23] Level eight, the icon.
[18:25] You are 39.
[18:27] You have a catalog now.
[18:28] Not just songs, a catalog.
[18:31] A body of work that plays continuously on radio stations and streaming playlists in every country on Earth.
[18:37] You have won major awards.
[18:39] You have performed at the biggest ceremonies in music.
[18:42] You have stood on a stage and held a trophy.
[18:45] You have thanked your mother and your team and the fans.
[18:48] You have walked off into a night that every major outlet would cover the next morning.
[18:53] You are one of the people now.
[18:55] One of the people who exists in the public consciousness as a figure rather than a person.
[19:00] Your name is shorthand for a certain sound, a certain era, a certain kind of feeling.
[19:06] Young artists cite you as an influence in their own interviews.
[19:09] You watch them accept awards and mention your name.
[19:12] You feel something strange.
[19:15] It is like watching your own reflection in a window from across the street.
[19:19] You are the thing you used to look at.
[19:21] You are the person in the poster on somebody's bedroom wall.
[19:25] You have real money now.
[19:27] Generational money.
[19:28] The kind of money that requires wealth managers and tax attorneys and estate planners.
[19:34] You have investments in tech companies and real estate and a tequila brand that a friend talked you into.
[19:40] You have a charitable foundation run by a small staff.
[19:43] They answer to a board that you technically chair but rarely attend.
[19:47] You are a business now.
[19:49] The business employs dozens of people whose mortgages depend on your continued relevance.
[19:55] That knowledge sits with you in the quiet moments.
[19:58] The weight of it is not something you can explain to anyone who hasn't felt it.
[20:02] You also have enemies now.
[20:05] You didn't know you had enemies.
[20:07] You find out slowly.
[20:07] Through lawsuits.
[20:10] Through leaked emails.
[20:11] Through former collaborators who give interviews about what you were supposedly like to work with.
[20:16] You read these things and they don't sound like you.
[20:19] Some of them contain just enough truth
[20:21] that you can't fully deny them.
[20:24] Fame does something to memory.
[20:26] It makes the past negotiable.
[20:28] You have to decide which version of
[20:30] events you are going to believe about
[20:31] yourself.
[20:33] That decision is harder than it sounds.
[20:36] Level nine, the legend.
[20:38] You are 52.
[20:40] You have been doing this for three and a
[20:42] half decades. You have outlasted entire
[20:45] genres. You have outlasted entire
[20:47] platforms. You have outlasted entire
[20:50] generations of artists who were supposed
[20:52] to replace you.
[20:53] You have released 14 albums. Some of
[20:56] them are masterpieces. Some of them are
[20:58] missteps you have made peace with. Some
[21:01] of them were made during periods in your
[21:03] life that you barely remember. The drugs
[21:05] or the divorce or the depression, made
[21:08] that year a smear across your timeline.
[21:10] You headline festivals now. Not as the
[21:12] current hot act, as the legacy act. The
[21:16] name at the top of the poster, printed
[21:17] slightly larger than everyone else's.
[21:19] The one parents bring their teenagers
[21:21] to. The one that closes the main stage
[21:24] on Saturday night, while fireworks go
[21:25] off behind you. The crowd is older than
[21:28] it used to be. But there are also young
[21:30] faces down front. Their parents played
[21:32] your songs in the car when they were
[21:34] children. They know every word the same
[21:36] way the previous generation did. Music
[21:38] travels through families in ways that
[21:40] the industry doesn't fully understand.
[21:42] You benefit from that now. You are being
[21:45] honored at tributes. Other artists cover
[21:47] your songs at televised ceremonies,
[21:49] while you sit in the audience and try
[21:51] not to cry. A museum opens a permanent
[21:54] exhibit about your career. A film studio
[21:56] approaches you about a biopic. You read
[21:58] the script. The script is not very good.
[22:01] You negotiate changes. You hire a
[22:04] consultant to work with the
[22:05] screenwriter. The movie will come out in
[22:07] two years, and it will be fine. Fine is
[22:10] the best you can hope for when someone
[22:12] else tells the story of your life. Fine
[22:14] is better than most artists get. You are
[22:17] also, for the first time in your life,
[22:19] genuinely thinking about what comes
[22:20] after. Not death, exactly. Though death
[22:24] is closer than it was. The question is
[22:26] more about what the work was for.
[22:28] Whether the work was worth what it cost.
[22:31] You think about the birthdays you
[22:32] missed. The friendships that eroded
[22:34] under the weight of tour buses and time
[22:36] zones. The children you didn't have
[22:38] because the career didn't allow for
[22:40] them. Or the children you did have, who
[22:42] you saw less than your fans did. You
[22:44] don't regret the music. The music is its
[22:47] own thing. It exists now in a way that
[22:49] is bigger than you. But the cost was
[22:52] real. It was always real.
[22:54] Level 10. The ancestor.
[22:57] You are gone.
[22:59] It happened quickly, or it happened
[23:01] slowly. Either way, you are gone.
[23:04] The obituaries run that morning in every
[23:07] major publication.
[23:08] Every streaming service puts your
[23:10] catalog at the top of the homepage.
[23:12] Your songs trend on every platform for
[23:14] 48 hours straight.
[23:16] Artists you never met post tributes.
[23:19] Presidents release statements.
[23:21] A stadium in your hometown holds a
[23:23] memorial concert. Millions watch online
[23:26] and cry into their phones.
[23:28] Your music outlives you.
[23:30] That is what you wanted. That was always
[23:32] the deal.
[23:34] You traded the years for the songs, and
[23:36] now the trade is finalized. The songs
[23:39] remain.
[23:40] A 17-year-old in a country you never
[23:42] visited discovers your first album on a
[23:44] playlist 30 years after you died.
[23:47] She listens on cheap headphones in the
[23:49] dark.
[23:50] She cries in her bedroom at 2:00 in the
[23:52] morning to a song you wrote in your own
[23:54] bedroom at 16.
[23:56] She doesn't know anything about you.
[23:58] She knows everything that matters.
[24:01] Your estate negotiates with a
[24:02] holographic technology company. A
[24:04] version of you will tour again without
[24:07] your consent or presence.
[24:09] Your children will approve the setlist.
[24:12] The ethics of this are debated in
[24:13] articles nobody in your family reads
[24:15] carefully.
[24:16] The checks continue to clear.
[24:18] Your name gets sampled. Your voice gets
[24:21] recreated by artificial intelligence.
[24:24] A young producer loops 4 seconds of your
[24:26] old vocal into a beat.
[24:28] The beat becomes a hit on platforms that
[24:30] didn't exist when you were alive.
[24:32] He has never heard your album.
[24:34] He heard your sample on a pack he bought
[24:36] online.
[24:38] You are currency now.
[24:40] You are raw material.
[24:42] You are a source.
[24:44] Somewhere tonight, a 16-year-old is
[24:46] sitting in a bedroom with a cheap USB
[24:48] microphone and a laptop that crashes too
[24:51] often.
[24:52] She is recording vocals over a beat she
[24:54] made yesterday.
[24:55] She is shaking.
[24:57] She has 47 followers online and a
[24:59] notebook full of songs nobody has ever
[25:02] heard.
[25:03] She has the same feeling you had at her
[25:05] age.
[25:06] She has no idea what she is about to
[25:08] give up or what she is about to gain.
[25:11] She has no idea how much the road will
[25:14] cost her.
[25:15] She has no idea what it leaves behind or
[25:19] what it builds.
[25:20] She will figure it out.
[25:22] They always do.
[25:24] The cycle continues.