Livingston signed to a major before he turned eighteen, then walked away to build his own. His 2024 debut album A Hometown Odyssey proved the bet, selling out a 27-date international headline tour and passing 100 million Spotify streams, all on his own imprint.
Leaving the majors to build his own
Signed to Elektra Records in early 2020 off the viral debut single Fairytale, Livingston later left the major-label system to found Big Up Entertainment, licensed through Republic Records. It is the classic modern move: use the major to build a base, then take ownership once the audience is real.
The album that justified it
A Hometown Odyssey was the payoff. A concept-minded, cinematic pop record, it connected hard enough to sell out rooms across two continents and cross nine figures in streams, numbers that made the independence look less like a risk and more like a plan.
He used the major label as a launchpad, not a home, and then proved he never needed to stay.
The 250-song pandemic
The independence was earned in volume. An early demo reached Elektra in 2019 and Livingston signed before his 18th birthday off the strength of his viral debut single Fairytale, which went viral on TikTok within days of its February 2020 release. Then came the work that built the album: during the early pandemic he wrote an estimated 250 songs and lost more than 100 pounds, eventually narrowing that mountain of material toward A Hometown Odyssey. Leaving Elektra to found Big Up Entertainment was not a leap into the unknown. It was a bet placed by someone who had already proven he could out-work almost anyone, and the sold-out 27-date tour was the receipt.
On his own terms
Livingston's arc lands as one of the cleaner independence stories in modern pop. The tour sold out. The streams cleared 100 million. And the person who owns the masters is the artist who made them. A Hometown Odyssey is the sound of a young artist betting on himself and collecting.