c.

[Victims of Capitalism Memorial Foundation @karaokecomputer]

To all who celebrate

[c. @aznboichris_]

@MadeInTyjuan mfs wasn’t around for 2019-2021 😭

[Dashy™️🦥 @Dashytwo]

I’m ngl, If I wake up hungover & one of the boys is cooking up something like this I have no choice but to hug him from behind, kiss him on the neck and tell him I love him.

[Know Your Meme @knowyourmeme]

On this day 12 years ago, Denise Walker uploaded the "Grapfruit Technique" video to YouTube.

[Shrek @Shrek]

Y’all mind if an ogre speaks a little español tonight?

[ste @lanelifer]

amo falar “não” e em seguida fazer o que a pessoa pediu

[c. @aznboichris_]

this took way too long to happen.

[Pop Crave @PopCrave]

d4vd has been arrested for the death of 15-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez.

[AKIN-MADE @bibzyCarter]

You need a good level of stupidity to stay in love.

[ye @kanyewest]

I know it takes time to understand the sincerity of my commitment to make amends

I take full responsibility for what’s mine but I don’t want to put my fans in the middle of it

My fans are everything to me

Looking forward to the next shows

See you at the top of the globe 🌏

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

A 13-year-old Canadian kid uploaded R&B covers to YouTube in 2008 from his bedroom. A talent manager named Scooter Braun stumbled on the videos and signed him.

For the next 15 years, Braun controlled everything. Tours, branding, business deals, public image. The kid became the biggest pop star on the planet, sold 150 million records, racked up 32 billion Spotify streams, and had three Diamond-certified singles before turning 25.

Then in 2022, he got hit with Ramsay Hunt syndrome. Partial facial paralysis. Cancelled the world tour. Disappeared from public life entirely.

Here's where it gets interesting.

In January 2023, he sold his entire 290-song catalog to Hipgnosis for $200 million. Every song he'd ever released. "Baby." "Sorry." "Love Yourself." All of it. Gone. At 28 years old, he cashed out his past.

Then he dropped Scooter Braun. After 15 years. No manager. No agent. For the first time in his career, nobody was making decisions for him.

Fast forward to this weekend. Coachella calls. He picks up the phone himself. Rolling Stone confirmed he negotiated his own headlining deal directly with Goldenvoice. No agent commission. No manager cut. $10 million for two weekends, and he kept all of it.

Then he walked onto the biggest stage in music, sat down behind a MacBook, and pulled up YouTube.

He played "Baby" from 2010. He played his bedroom covers from 2008. He harmonized with his 13-year-old self in front of 100,000 people. Katy Perry joked about whether he had YouTube Premium.

Half the internet called it lazy. The other half called it genius.

They're both wrong. It was a receipt.

He sold his catalog for $200 million. He fired the man who discovered him. He negotiated his own deal. And then he went back to the exact platform where it all started and said: I built this from a laptop. I'm headlining Coachella from a laptop. And for the first time in my life, every dollar is mine.

The kid from YouTube just closed the loop.

[WBR @W_B_Rick]

Justin Bieber might be the coldest white boy to ever do it

[alex @hatesthiscity]

AND he looked genuinely happy on stage for the first time in a longggg time and to me, that’s the most important part!!!

[Eddie Gonzalez @bansky]

Idk man the initial YouTube kid going down memory lane on YouTube on the biggest stage possible kinda fire

[kashvi @kashvi]

thinking about what the internet was like when justin bieber uploaded that first cover. youtube was three years old. twitter was two. instagram didn’t exist yet. tiktok wouldn’t exist for another decade. there were no “creators.” there was no creator economy. there was no algorithm feeding you a personalized slurry of content engineered to keep you scrolling for eleven more seconds. there was jus a website where people put videos, and sometimes those videos reached everyone and changed the creators life. this performance is a memorial for the internet we lost.

[nick crompton @nickcromp]

Can’t believe I’m posting for the first time since leaving Team 10 to comment on Justin’s Coachella set lol…

Anyone calling it lazy is missing the business.

He sold his publishing and artist royalties to Hipgnosis in 2023. UMG owns the master recordings. Every minute he spends performing the old catalog is a minute he's putting in work for other people's royalty checks.

Playing the YouTube videos costs him nothing. No band, no backup singers, little production. Fans still get records like Baby, Sorry, Beauty and a Beat, and Never Say Never. All the nostalgia, none of the overhead. He saved his actual performance for Swag, which is the era he owns.

He also got discovered uploading videos to YouTube as a kid. A laptop on the main stage is the most intimate, on-brand, and authentic thing he could've done.

And he's in a completely new chapter doing it the way he wants. No Scooter, new team, new business structure. Full control for the first time in his career.

If you didn't like it, you're just not a Belieber 🤷🏼‍♂️

[🕸️ @recreatings]

unironically, this is more genuine and worth ur money than any other artist that’s performing

[dior ✞ @deeore5]

ppl be like "bear with me" and they don’t even have a bear with them

[🥱 @SilkysBurner]

“Ohhhh you Pushing 30” chillin in my bed fuck niggas, yeahhhh go to war 😂😂😂😂😂😂