There’s a moment that happens in almost every photo pit. The lights drop, the crowd surges forward, cameras rise in unison, and for a brief stretch of time, a handful of strangers are asked to share the same few feet of space while capturing something fleeting. You learn very quickly that talent alone won’t carry you here. Awareness will. Most of the time, that window is small. Three songs, fifteen minutes, sometimes even less.

It started with a whisper. A tiny idea. A quiet moment where we decided to try something ourselves, this time with our full chests. We didn’t know where it would go. We just knew we wanted to build something with intention. SoundCheck began small and digital. Our first interview lived in a Word document. Our first artist was someone we already knew and believed in.

There was a time when genres held real power. They were the industry’s filing system, the listener’s compass, the cultural shorthand for who you were and what you stood for. If you said you were into rock, people made assumptions about your personality. If you said you loved pop, people assumed something entirely different. Genres carried weight, identity, and meaning.