- 3 days ago
From a bedroom with a cheap USB mic to a hologram touring after your death, this is your life at every level of the music industry.
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VIDEO TOPICS/TIMESTAMPS
0:00 The Bedroom Artist
2:07 The Local Act
4:56 The Independent Artist
7:29 The Rising Artist
9:46 The Touring Artist
13:05 The Charting Artist
15:17 The Headliner
18:23 The Icon
20:35 The Legend
22:55 The Ancestor
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VIDEO TOPICS/TIMESTAMPS
0:00 The Bedroom Artist
2:07 The Local Act
4:56 The Independent Artist
7:29 The Rising Artist
9:46 The Touring Artist
13:05 The Charting Artist
15:17 The Headliner
18:23 The Icon
20:35 The Legend
22:55 The Ancestor
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Level 1. The Bedroom Artist
00:01You are 16 years old.
00:04Your bedroom has a twin bed and a closet full of clothes you never wear.
00:08In the corner is a cheap USB microphone.
00:11You bought it with money from your summer job.
00:13You saved for 4 months.
00:15You also have a laptop that crashes when you open too many tabs.
00:19You have a free version of recording software you downloaded last year.
00:23This is your studio.
00:25This is where it all begins.
00:26You write songs in a notebook at school when you should be paying attention in class.
00:31The teacher thinks you're taking notes.
00:33You're actually writing about a girl who doesn't know you exist.
00:36You go home after school and record for hours.
00:39You stack vocals on top of vocals.
00:41You hum melodies into your phone at 2 in the morning.
00:44You wake up embarrassed by what you sang, but you listen anyway.
00:48Sometimes there's something in there.
00:49A phrase.
00:50A feeling.
00:51A half idea worth chasing.
00:53You chase it.
00:54You post your songs on SoundCloud and Instagram.
00:57You have 47 followers.
00:5923 of them are from your high school.
01:0112 are relatives.
01:03The rest are strangers who followed you back after you followed them first.
01:07You check your stream count every hour.
01:09You got 8 plays today.
01:11You are certain 6 of them were you.
01:13You tell yourself you don't care about the numbers.
01:15You care about the numbers.
01:17You care about the numbers more than almost anything else in your life right now.
01:21They feel like a mirror showing you whether you exist.
01:24Your parents think this is a phase.
01:26Your father asks when you're going to get serious about college.
01:29Your mother listens to your songs and tells you they're beautiful.
01:32That is the kindest and least useful feedback in the world.
01:36Your friends don't really listen.
01:37They say they will, and then they don't.
01:40You learn early that nobody owes you their attention.
01:42The attention has to be earned.
01:44You don't know how to earn it yet.
01:46You just keep recording.
01:48You keep posting.
01:49You keep waiting for something to happen.
01:51Nothing happens.
01:52You keep going anyway.
01:54Some nights you delete everything.
01:56Some nights you record until 4 in the morning and pass out with the headphones still on.
02:00The songs are not great yet.
02:02You already know that.
02:03You are training your ear to hear what's missing.
02:06Level 2.
02:08The Local Act
02:09You are 19 now.
02:11You dropped out of community college after one semester.
02:14You work at a coffee shop three days a week.
02:16The rest of your time belongs to the music.
02:19You have upgraded your equipment.
02:21You have a real condenser microphone now.
02:23You treated your closet with moving blankets and foam panels you bought online.
02:27The vocals sound better.
02:30Not great.
02:31Better.
02:32You play your first open mic night at a bar downtown.
02:35There are 11 people in the audience.
02:38Six of them are other performers waiting for their turn.
02:41Your hands shake as you walk to the stage.
02:44You forget the second verse of a song you've played a thousand times.
02:47You finish anyway.
02:49Someone claps.
02:51You leave the stage feeling like you died and came back.
02:54You are already thinking about the next one.
02:57You book another open mic for next Tuesday.
03:00You start playing small venues.
03:02Coffee shops on weeknights.
03:03Bookstore backrooms.
03:05A vegan restaurant that lets musicians play during dinner service for free food.
03:10You get added to bills with three other acts.
03:13Everyone is hustling.
03:14Everyone is trading Instagram follows and cross-promoting shows.
03:18Everyone is splitting the $40 the venue paid the headliner four ways.
03:23You make $10 for a 45-minute set.
03:26You spend $15 on an Uber home because you don't have a car.
03:30The math doesn't work.
03:32The math never works at this level.
03:34You do it anyway because it's the only way out of this level.
03:39You meet other musicians.
03:41You meet a drummer who plays in three other bands.
03:43You meet a producer who works at a grocery store during the day.
03:47At night, he records artists in his basement for $100 a session.
03:50You meet a girl who writes songs that make you feel things.
03:54You form a duo with her for six weeks.
03:57The project falls apart over creative differences and unspoken feelings.
04:01You learn that collaborations at this level end faster than they begin.
04:06You learn that almost everyone is going to quit.
04:09The people who don't quit aren't necessarily more talented.
04:12They're just more stubborn.
04:14You decide to be stubborn.
04:17You make another album on your laptop.
04:19You release it for free.
04:21It gets 400 streams in the first month.
04:23You tell yourself, this is progress.
04:26You're not sure if you believe it.
04:29You start playing house shows in basements.
04:3140 kids packed into a damp room under a string of Christmas lights.
04:35The sound is terrible.
04:38The energy is electric.
04:40Someone sings along to a song you wrote last month.
04:43A stranger knows your lyrics.
04:45That moment rewires your brain permanently.
04:49You chase that feeling for the next decade.
04:52You don't fully understand yet how addictive it is.
04:56Level 3.
04:56The independent artist.
04:58You are 23.
05:00You have a full-length project out on streaming platforms.
05:02You uploaded it through a distribution service that takes a cut of every stream.
05:06You have 3,000 monthly listeners on Spotify.
05:09That number means more to you than your GPA ever did.
05:12You check it every day like a ritual.
05:14Sometimes it goes up.
05:16Sometimes it goes down.
05:17You try not to let it affect your mood.
05:19It affects your mood.
05:21You are starting to build something that looks like a career.
05:24You have a website.
05:25You have merch.
05:26A friend designed a logo that you had printed on 50 t-shirts.
05:29They are currently sitting in boxes in your apartment.
05:32You sold 12 of them at your last show.
05:34The rest will sit there for a year.
05:36You will eventually give most of them away to family members.
05:39This is the economics of merch at your level.
05:42Nobody tells you this when you start.
05:44You figure it out.
05:45You tour for the first time.
05:47Not a real tour.
05:48A DIY tour.
05:49Seven cities in nine days.
05:51You sleep on floors and couches.
05:53One night, you sleep in the back of a van because the host you had lined up stopped answering his
05:57phone.
05:58You play to crowds ranging from 80 people to four people.
06:02The four-person show is in a city where you thought you had fans.
06:04You did have fans.
06:06They didn't come out.
06:07You play the set anyway.
06:09You play it like there are 4,000 people in the room.
06:12That is the rule.
06:13You learned it from every musician you respect.
06:16The show has to be the show, no matter who is watching.
06:19You start getting written about in small music blogs.
06:22You get played on a college radio station.
06:24A music supervisor reaches out about using one of your songs in an indie film.
06:28The film will never be released.
06:30You say yes.
06:31You sign a contract you don't fully understand.
06:34You get paid $200.
06:36You convince yourself this is progress.
06:39You are not sure if it is.
06:40You keep going because stopping feels worse than continuing.
06:44At this level, that is the only metric that actually matters.
06:47You are writing better songs than you used to.
06:50You can hear the difference.
06:51You hope other people can hear it too.
06:53Some of them do.
06:54Not enough of them.
06:56Not yet.
06:57You start emailing booking agents.
06:59Most don't respond.
07:00One does.
07:01He takes you on but treats you like a side project.
07:04You email him every few weeks asking for updates.
07:07He answers one email for every three you send.
07:10You start to understand something important.
07:12Nobody is going to save you.
07:14No agent, no label, no viral moment is coming to rescue you from obscurity.
07:19You have to build your own momentum.
07:21You have to show up every day and put in work that nobody is paying attention to.
07:25You do it anyway.
07:27You have no other choice.
07:29Level 4.
07:30The Rising Artist
07:31You are 26.
07:33Something has shifted.
07:35You don't know exactly what.
07:37You released a single six months ago and it started getting traction.
07:40Nothing else you made ever did anything like this.
07:44A playlist editor added it to a mid-sized playlist.
07:46Then a bigger one.
07:48Then a bigger one.
07:49Your monthly listeners jumped from 8,000 to 40,000 to 120,000 in three months.
07:56You refresh the analytics page until your phone died.
07:59Labels start calling.
08:01Not the biggest ones, but real ones.
08:03Independent labels with distribution through major partners.
08:06They send emails through your management, which is one person now.
08:09His name is Chris, and he used to book shows at a venue you played twice.
08:13He knows nothing about contracts.
08:15He is figuring it out alongside you.
08:18You take meetings.
08:19You fly to Los Angeles and New York for the first time in your life.
08:23You sit in offices with A&R reps who tell you they believe in you.
08:26They check their phones under the table while they say it.
08:29You eat expensive sushi you can't afford.
08:31It is paid for by people who want to own a piece of your career.
08:35You sign a deal.
08:36It isn't the deal you dreamed of when you were 16.
08:38It's a 360 deal with an indie label that takes a cut of everything.
08:43Touring, merch, publishing, masters.
08:46You read the contract six times.
08:49You get a lawyer who tells you it's a standard deal for someone at your level.
08:53Standard is a word that means different things at different levels.
08:56At this level, it means you are giving up a lot to get a little.
08:59You sign anyway.
09:01You need the infrastructure.
09:02You need the marketing budget.
09:04You need the team.
09:05You tell yourself you'll make the next deal better.
09:08Everyone tells themselves that.
09:10Some of them are right.
09:11Most of them are not.
09:12You quit your day job.
09:14You are a full-time musician now.
09:16You have wanted this since you were 16.
09:19You expected it to feel like flying.
09:21It feels like falling.
09:22The pressure is immense.
09:24Every song has to work now.
09:26Every video has to perform.
09:28The label expects numbers.
09:30Your manager expects numbers.
09:32Your own bank account expects numbers.
09:34The art you made when nobody was watching was pure.
09:37The art you make now is watched before it's finished.
09:40Something in you mourns that.
09:42You don't talk about it.
09:44You keep working.
09:45Level 5.
09:47The Touring Artist.
09:48You are 28.
09:49Your second major release went well.
09:52Well enough that you are now headlining 1,200 capacity rooms across the country.
09:57You sell out most of them.
09:59You don't sell out all of them.
10:01The ones you don't sell out haunt you for weeks afterward.
10:04You study the data.
10:06You wonder what went wrong in Cleveland.
10:08You wonder if you are losing steam.
10:10You are not losing steam.
10:12You are just tired.
10:14The industry cannot tell the difference between those two things.
10:17Sometimes you can't either.
10:19You are on a bus now.
10:21An actual tour bus.
10:2312 bunks, a small kitchen, a lounge in the back.
10:26It smells like whatever the last band that rented this bus left behind.
10:30You have a band.
10:32Four musicians, plus a tour manager, plus a merch seller, plus a sound engineer.
10:37You are the boss of a small moving business.
10:40It travels 300 miles a night and performs a 90-minute show every evening.
10:45You do it for 70 consecutive days.
10:48Your signature is on the checks.
10:50Your name is on the marquee.
10:52The responsibility of feeding and housing and transporting and paying nine people belongs to you.
10:59You do interviews on every day off.
11:02You do radio station visits in cities where you have fans.
11:05You record videos for social media between soundcheck and doors.
11:09You sign merchandise for 40 minutes every night after the show.
11:13You meet people who tell you your song got them through their divorce.
11:17You meet people who tell you your song got them through their depression.
11:21You meet people who tell you your song got them through their father's funeral.
11:25You look each person in the eye because they deserve that.
11:29Then you go back to the bus and sit in your bunk in the dark and stare at the ceiling.
11:34The weight of other people's feelings is heavier than you expected.
11:39Nobody warned you about that part.
11:41Your relationships suffer.
11:43The person you were dating when you signed your deal is no longer the person you are dating.
11:48You have not been home for more than a week at a time in 18 months.
11:52Your apartment has dust on every surface.
11:56Your mother cries on FaceTime because you missed another Thanksgiving.
12:00You apologize.
12:01You mean it.
12:02You will miss the next one, too.
12:05The tour has to happen.
12:07The tour is the whole thing.
12:09You chose this.
12:11You remind yourself that you chose this.
12:14Some nights, it feels like the choice is choosing you back.
12:18Your sleep is ruined now.
12:20You sleep on a bus bunk that moves at highway speeds through the dark.
12:24You close your eyes in Pittsburgh and open them in Detroit.
12:27Your body forgets what time zone it's in.
12:30Your voice starts to crack during sound check one afternoon.
12:34The vocal coach the label assigned you flies out for an emergency session.
12:38She tells you that you have nodules forming on your cords.
12:41She tells you that you need to rest for two weeks.
12:44You cancel four shows.
12:46The refunds cost you $40,000.
12:50You lie in a hotel room not speaking for 14 days.
12:54You write in a notebook instead.
12:56The songs you write during the silence are some of the best songs you have ever written.
13:02Nobody will hear them for two more years.
13:05Level 6.
13:06The charting artist.
13:07You were 31.
13:09You had a song go viral on a short-form video app.
13:12It completely changed the shape of your career.
13:15The song wasn't even the song you thought would be the single.
13:18It was an album track.
13:19A quiet one.
13:20A girl in Ohio used it in a video about her dead grandmother.
13:24The video got 40 million views.
13:26And suddenly, you were everywhere.
13:28The song hit the hot 100.
13:30Then the top 40.
13:32Then the top 10.
13:33You are now a pop artist.
13:35You were never exactly a pop artist before.
13:38You were something harder to describe.
13:40A singer-songwriter with crossover potential.
13:42That is what the press kit said.
13:44Now the press kit says, pop.
13:46The label is pushing you into collaborations with producers who have worked with the biggest names in the business.
13:51You are flown to Los Angeles and put in rooms with 22-year-old songwriters.
13:56They have already written three number ones.
13:58You write 15 songs in a week.
14:00Most of them are not yours.
14:02They are Frankensteins of current trends stitched together by committee.
14:06You don't love them.
14:07You record them anyway.
14:09You perform on late-night television.
14:11You wear a stylish outfit that costs more than your first year of rent.
14:14You lip-sync on a morning talk show because the monitors are bad.
14:18Live vocals would be a disaster.
14:19You have learned which fights are worth having.
14:22This is not one of them.
14:23You meet celebrities who compliment your song.
14:26You can't tell if they have actually heard it.
14:28You smile.
14:29You thank them.
14:30You take the photo.
14:31You post it.
14:32The numbers go up again.
14:34You feel lighter and emptier at the same time.
14:37You don't know what to do with that feeling, so you don't do anything.
14:39You are making real money for the first time.
14:42Not generational wealth, but real money.
14:45You pay off your student loans.
14:46You buy your mother a car.
14:48You buy yourself a small house in the city where you grew up.
14:51You don't actually want to live there.
14:53You want your family to know the investment is real.
14:56Your accountant talks to you about quarterly tax payments and LLCs.
14:59She talks about splitting your income across touring, publishing, and merchandise entities.
15:05You sign documents you don't read carefully enough.
15:07You trust people you have no real reason to trust.
15:10Everyone else trusts them, so you do too.
15:13This is how it works at this level.
15:15You learn this eventually.
15:16Level 7.
15:18The headliner.
15:19You are 34.
15:21You are playing arenas now.
15:2312,000 to 18,000 capacity rooms.
15:27You are not the biggest artist in the world.
15:29But you are big enough that the business around you has become enormous.
15:34Your tour has 42 trucks.
15:37Your production has a stage designer, a lighting designer, a video director, a choreographer, a creative director.
15:44You also have a tour manager who makes six figures.
15:47His job is to keep the whole thing from collapsing every single day.
15:52You walk out on a stage designed to make you look like a god.
15:5615,000 people scream your name.
15:58They know every word of every song.
16:00They sing lyrics back at you that you wrote in the bedroom when you were 16.
16:04Nobody cared whether you lived or died back then.
16:07You stand in front of them and sing those same words back.
16:10The collision of the two versions of yourself almost knocks you over some nights.
16:15You have to remember how to be present.
16:18Presence is the job.
16:19The moment you stop being present, the audience feels it.
16:23The audience is why you are here.
16:25You have an entourage now, though you don't call it that.
16:28You call it a team.
16:30Your assistant.
16:31Your bodyguard.
16:32Your publicist.
16:33Your road manager.
16:35Your personal trainer travels with you to keep you conditioned for two-hour shows.
16:39Your vocal coach warms you up every afternoon.
16:42He gives you herbal teas.
16:43He tells you when you need to shut up for 24 hours to save your voice.
16:47The big markets come first.
16:49You are an athlete as much as you are an artist.
16:52The voice is the instrument.
16:53The instrument wears out.
16:55There are no replacements.
16:57You negotiate your second record deal.
16:59It is nothing like the first.
17:01This one is a partnership.
17:03You own your masters going forward.
17:05You have approval over every creative decision.
17:08You have a budget that would have sounded fictional to you ten years ago.
17:11You also have more to lose than you have ever had.
17:14The first deal, you could walk away from.
17:17You had nothing.
17:18This deal, walking away would be expensive.
17:21Not impossible.
17:23Expensive.
17:23The higher you climb, the more the cage looks like a palace.
17:27You remember that phrase from somewhere.
17:30You wrote it in a notebook years ago.
17:32You underline it in your mind.
17:34You start hearing things about yourself that aren't true.
17:37Stories circulate in tabloids about affairs you never had.
17:41Rumors spread online about your writer being unreasonable.
17:44Strangers write long analyses of your body and your face and your choices.
17:48You stop reading anything about yourself.
17:51Your publicist stops sending you links.
17:53She says it will be better for your mental health.
17:57You start meditating.
17:58You start therapy.
17:59Your therapist signs a non-disclosure agreement before your first session.
18:03She costs $600 an hour.
18:05She is worth every penny.
18:08You learn that the version of you that exists in the public imagination is not the same as you.
18:13You have to protect the private one from the public one.
18:16Most people never figure that out.
18:18The ones who don't figure it out are the ones who don't survive this level.
18:22Level 8, The Icon
18:24You are 39.
18:26You have a catalog now.
18:28Not just songs.
18:29A catalog.
18:31A body of work that plays continuously on radio stations and streaming playlists in every country on earth.
18:37You have won major awards.
18:39You have performed at the biggest ceremonies in music.
18:42You have stood on a stage and held a trophy.
18:45You have thanked your mother and your team and the fans.
18:48You have walked off into a night that every major outlet would cover the next morning.
18:53You are one of the people now.
18:55One of the people who exists in the public consciousness as a figure rather than a person.
19:00Your name is shorthand for a certain sound.
19:03A certain era.
19:04A certain kind of feeling.
19:06Young artists cite you as an influence in their own interviews.
19:09You watch them accept awards and mention your name.
19:12You feel something strange.
19:14It is like watching your own reflection in a window from across the street.
19:19You are the thing you used to look at.
19:21You are the person in the poster on somebody's bedroom wall.
19:25You have real money now.
19:27Generational money.
19:28The kind of money that requires wealth managers and tax attorneys and estate planners.
19:33You have investments in tech companies and real estate and a tequila brand that a friend talked you into.
19:40You have a charitable foundation run by a small staff.
19:43They answer to a board that you technically chair but rarely attend.
19:47You are a business now.
19:49The business employs dozens of people whose mortgages depend on your continued relevance.
19:54That knowledge sits with you in the quiet moments.
19:57The weight of it is not something you can explain to anyone who hasn't felt it.
20:02You also have enemies now.
20:04You didn't know you had enemies.
20:06You find out slowly.
20:08Through lawsuits.
20:09Through leaked emails.
20:11Through former collaborators who give interviews about what you were supposedly like to work with.
20:16You read these things and they don't sound like you.
20:18Some of them contain just enough truth that you can't fully deny them.
20:23Fame does something to memory.
20:25It makes the past negotiable.
20:28You have to decide which version of events you are going to believe about yourself.
20:32That decision is harder than it sounds.
20:35Level 9.
20:37The Legend
20:37You are 52.
20:39You have been doing this for three and a half decades.
20:43You have outlasted entire genres.
20:45You have outlasted entire platforms.
20:48You have outlasted entire generations of artists who were supposed to replace you.
20:53You have released 14 albums.
20:56Some of them are masterpieces.
20:58Some of them are missteps you have made peace with.
21:00Some of them were made during periods in your life that you barely remember.
21:05The drugs or the divorce or the depression made that year a smear across your timeline.
21:10You headline festivals now.
21:12Not as the current hot act.
21:14As the legacy act.
21:15The name at the top of the poster printed slightly larger than everyone else's.
21:19The one parents bring their teenagers to.
21:22The one that closes the main stage on Saturday night while fireworks go off behind you.
21:27The crowd is older than it used to be.
21:29But there are also young faces down front.
21:31Their parents played your songs in the car when they were children.
21:35They know every word the same way the previous generation did.
21:38Music travels through families in ways that the industry doesn't fully understand.
21:42You benefit from that now.
21:44You are being honored at tributes.
21:46Other artists cover your songs at televised ceremonies while you sit in the audience and
21:51try not to cry.
21:52A museum opens a permanent exhibit about your career.
21:55A film studio approaches you about a biopic.
21:58You read the script.
21:59The script is not very good.
22:01You negotiate changes.
22:03You hire a consultant to work with the screenwriter.
22:06The movie will come out in two years and it will be fine.
22:09Fine is the best you can hope for when someone else tells the story of your life.
22:14Fine is better than most artists get.
22:16You are also, for the first time in your life, genuinely thinking about what comes after.
22:21Not death exactly.
22:23Though death is closer than it was.
22:25The question is more about what the work was for.
22:28Whether the work was worth what it cost.
22:30You think about the birthdays you missed.
22:33The friendships that eroded under the weight of tour buses and time zones.
22:37The children you didn't have because the career didn't allow for them.
22:40Or the children you did have who you saw less than your fans did.
22:44You don't regret the music.
22:46The music is its own thing.
22:48It exists now in a way that is bigger than you.
22:51But the cost was real.
22:52It was always real.
22:54Level 10.
22:55The Ancestor.
22:57You are gone.
22:59It happened quickly.
23:00Or it happened slowly.
23:02Either way, you are gone.
23:04The obituaries run that morning in every major publication.
23:08Every streaming service puts your catalog at the top of the homepage.
23:12Your songs trend on every platform for 48 hours straight.
23:16Artists you never met post tributes.
23:19Presidents release statements.
23:21A stadium in your hometown holds a memorial concert.
23:24Millions watch online and cry into their phones.
23:27Your music outlives you.
23:30That is what you wanted.
23:31That was always the deal.
23:34You traded the years for the songs.
23:35And now the trade is finalized.
23:38The songs remain.
23:40A 17-year-old in a country you never visited discovers your first album on a playlist 30 years after
23:46you died.
23:47She listens on cheap headphones in the dark.
23:50She cries in her bedroom at 2 in the morning to a song you wrote in your own bedroom at
23:5416.
23:55She doesn't know anything about you.
23:58She knows everything that matters.
24:00Your estate negotiates with a holographic technology company.
24:04A version of you will tour again, without your consent or presence.
24:08Your children will approve the set list.
24:11The ethics of this are debated in articles nobody in your family reads carefully.
24:15The checks continue to clear.
24:18Your name gets sampled.
24:20Your voice gets recreated by artificial intelligence.
24:23A young producer loops 4 seconds of your old vocal into a beat.
24:27The beat becomes a hit on platforms that didn't exist when you were alive.
24:44Somewhere tonight, a 16-year-old is sitting in a bedroom with a cheap USB microphone and a laptop that
24:50crashes too often.
24:52She is recording vocals over a beat she made yesterday.
24:55She is shaking.
24:57She has 47 followers online and a notebook full of songs nobody has ever heard.
25:02She has the same feeling you had at her age.
25:05She has no idea what she is about to give up or what she is about to gain.
25:11She has no idea how much the road will cost her.
25:15She has no idea what it leaves behind or what it builds.
25:19She will figure it out.
25:22They always do.
25:24The cycle continues.
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