The whiteboard in Alex's bedroom, a once-innocent surface for homework reminders and doodles, was now a chaotic battlefield of arrows, circles, and jagged, urgent handwriting. It was the war room, and the campaign they were planning was a quiet, subversive insurgency. At the center of the board, circled in red ink, were two titles: "She's Broken" and "Fingers Crossed."
Alex stood before it, a dry-erase marker in his hand, the ghost's strategic mind operating at full capacity. Across the room, Finneas sat in the armchair, his long legs stretched out, an expression of deep, analytical concentration on his face. The stunned silence that had followed Billie's ukulele performance a few days ago had given way to a new, more potent energy: the thrilling, nervous hum of a high-stakes gamble.
"Okay," Alex began, his voice crisp and focused. "We need to be clear about one thing. We can't launch these songs. Not in the traditional sense. The strategy that worked for 'Ocean Eyes' will be a catastrophic failure for this music."
He capped the marker and turned to face Finneas, his gaze direct and serious. "Think about it. 'Ocean Eyes' is a beautiful, universal sentiment. We could release it wide, let it float into the mainstream, and people would get it instantly. It's an open door. But 'She's Broken'? 'Fingers Crossed'? These songs are a locked room with a riddle on the door. If we push this music at the mainstream, they're not going to try to solve the riddle. They're just going to walk away."
Finneas nodded slowly, his pragmatic producer's mind already seeing the logic. "So we can't service it to radio. Pop playlists on Spotify will bury it. What's the alternative? We just put it out and hope for the best?" The skepticism in his voice was clear. Hope was not a strategy.
"No," Alex said, a flicker of excitement in his eyes. "We don't hope. We cultivate."
This was where the ghost's knowledge became an almost unfair advantage. It remembered a future that hadn't happened here, a landscape of fractured subcultures and niche communities that had risen and fallen on platforms the major labels still treated as a novelty. It remembered the disruptive, ground-up explosion of what they had called "SoundCloud rap," a genre built not on radio play or big-budget marketing, but on a raw, direct connection with a small but ferociously dedicated online audience.
"We don't go to the radio," Alex explained, his voice gaining momentum as the strategy crystallized. "We go to the places the radio programmers and the A&R scouts are five years too late to understand. We go to the blogs, the subreddits, the forums, the niche playlist curators. We don't build an audience. We build a cult. We make it feel like a secret, a discovery, not a product that's being sold to them. The most powerful marketing tool in the world isn't a billboard; it's one friend turning to another and saying, 'You have to hear this.'"
He turned back to the whiteboard and began to sketch out the plan, his movements sharp and precise. It was a multi-stage, counter-intuitive strategy, a quiet revolution against the industry's established rules.
"Phase One: The Whisper," he said, writing the words in a clean, black script. "Next week, we upload 'She's Broken.' Not to Spotify, not to Apple Music. Exclusively to SoundCloud. We don't announce it. No press release from Claire, no Instagram post, nothing. We just… drop it. Let it exist. The algorithm, the real music nerds who spend their lives digging for new sounds, they'll find it. It might take a day, it might take a week, but they will find it."
Finneas was leaning forward now, his skepticism giving way to a grudging intrigue. This was the opposite of every industry best-practice he had ever read about. It was insane. And it was starting to sound brilliant.
"Phase Two: The Community," Alex continued, drawing a box around the words. "Once it starts getting a little traction—a few hundred, maybe a few thousand plays—that's when you and Billie engage. Not as a marketing team, but as artists. Someone leaves a comment saying they love the weird vocal layering? Billie replies herself. 'Thanks, I recorded it in my bedroom.' Someone asks a technical question about the ukulele sound? You answer it, Finneas. You make them feel like they've stumbled into the studio, into an inner circle. You make them co-conspirators in the secret."
He drew an arrow to a new section. "Phase Three: The Louder Whisper. Two weeks after 'She's Broken,' we do the exact same thing with 'Fingers Crossed.' Another unannounced SoundCloud drop. We create a pattern. People will start to anticipate it. The first group of fans will feel a sense of ownership. They'll become evangelists. They'll spread the word for us, and their recommendation will have more credibility than any paid ad ever could, because they found her. They were there first."
Finneas stood up and walked over to the whiteboard, his eyes tracing the flowcharts Alex had drawn. He saw the elegant, patient logic of it now. It was a high-risk, high-reward strategy that was completely dependent on the quality of the music and the authenticity of the connection. It was a plan that no major label, with its quarterly reports and risk-averse shareholders, would ever, in a million years, approve.
"And 'Ocean Eyes'?" Finneas asked, his voice quiet. "We just sit on a guaranteed hit?"
"No," Alex said, pointing to the final section of the board. "Phase Four: The Official Launch. We wait. We let the SoundCloud hype build for a month, maybe two. We let the music blogs write their 'Who is Billie O'Connell?' articles. We let the cult grow. And then, once we have a small but unshakable foundation of dedicated, passionate fans, then we officially launch. We drop 'Ocean Eyes' on all the major platforms. We service it to radio. We give the mainstream what they want, but we do it on our terms, backed by a level of organic credibility that money can't buy. By the time the world hears 'Ocean Eyes,' Billie won't be a random new artist. She'll be an underground phenomenon on the verge of breaking through. We won't be asking for their attention; we'll be rewarding it."
The full scope of the plan hung in the air between them. It was a masterclass in modern, artist-driven marketing, a strategy born from a future that hadn't happened yet. Finneas stared at the whiteboard, then looked at Alex, a slow, disbelieving smile spreading across his face.
"You're completely insane," Finneas said, the words a compliment of the highest order. "And it's the smartest thing I've ever heard."
The moment was a turning point. It solidified their partnership on a new, more profound level. Alex wasn't just the artist who had gotten them started anymore. He was a mentor, a strategist, the quiet, steady hand guiding the ship through treacherous, uncharted waters. He was actively, methodically building the safe harbor he had promised them, using the ghost's knowledge not for his own gain, but to protect and elevate the people he believed in.
They spent the next hour filling in the details on the whiteboard, their markers moving in a quick, excited rhythm. They brainstormed a list of niche blogs to quietly send the tracks to. They planned out potential fan interactions. They worked not as a boss and his subordinate, but as true, equal partners in a quiet, thrilling conspiracy.
As they were finishing, stepping back to admire their chaotic, beautiful battle plan, Alex had a final, quiet internal thought. The ghost was silent, its strategic work done. The boy's voice surfaced, and it was thinking of Leo. He remembered Leo's pure, uncomplicated joy in finding a new song, a new artist, something that felt like it was his before it was the world's. He remembered Leo making him listen to obscure bands he'd found in the deepest corners of the internet, his eyes shining with the thrill of discovery.
This is how you would have found her, man, Alex thought, a familiar, gentle ache in his chest. Not on the radio. Not on some corporate playlist. You would have been one of the first ones, digging through SoundCloud in the middle of the night.
The thought wasn't just sad; it was a reaffirmation. This strategy wasn't just a smart business move. It was an act of love. It was a plan built not for the masses, but for the real fans. The first fans. The ones like Leo. It was another quiet, invisible way of keeping his promise, of honoring his friend's spirit in the very DNA of the label they were building.