He hit 'publish' at 11:47 PM.

He started typing.

It was December 2008, and Alex’s entire world had been reduced to a 160-gigabyte iPod Classic and a folding chair in the basement of his parents’ house.

He was twenty-two, a recent graduate with a degree in "Media Studies" and no job prospects. The only offer he had was from a dying blog called The Frequency . His assignment: write the definitive retrospective on the Billboard Top 100 songs of 2008. The pay was seventy-five dollars. The deadline was New Year’s Eve.