“A publishing company?” she angled her head at me. “What’s that?”
“You know, the big companies that take your music and make it popular. Right? Up and coming artists make deals with them to get noticed and then later they wish they’d dealt with the devil instead.”
“Was that a joke?”
“No, that’s how it works. That’s why you can’t listen to some music online because the company doesn’t get money out of it. Doesn’t it work that way here too?”
She shook her head. “Your world sounds terrible.”
“Then how does anyone get popular? How does anyone listen to music?”
“You listen online!” she turned away and took my hand. “C’mere!” She pulled me towards the edge of the brick walkway, where sunlight glinted off an invisible string hanging in the air parallel to the path.
She pinched my fingers to the shimmering line and my heart sang. “Think of a song!” she said, my hand still in hers.
I felt the song flow through my arm and sing inside my soul. The devil went down to Jorjia, he was lookin’ for a soul to steal…
She smirked, just a little, but listened. The song was almost the same as the one I knew. I pulled my hand away from hers and the tingling stopped.
“Isn’t that nice?” she said. I was running my fingers up and down the wire, thinking and listening. “Whenever you listen to a tune like that, the music rolls around in you and gets a little stronger so it can stick around for the next person who wants to listen. That’s called the rockchain.”
“That seems wrong,” I thought. “Don’t the musicians make any money?”
“And ‘cause nobody needs extra money here, the musicians can spend their time on whatever they want–music!”