TO EXIST
On records made by people who also build things for a living.
Published 2026-05-23 · 8 pieces
Founders & Frequencies
2026-05-23
We did not plan to launch a music publication around a single record, but the record arrived and the record had things to say.
TO EXIST is the debut full-length from ROGA, the recording project of a 24-year-old founder and technologist named Andrew Rollins. The record is the most clean-cut example we have heard of a small, real, and growing genre: serious music made by people whose day work happens on a screen full of code.
Five of the eleven pieces in this issue look at TO EXIST from a different angle. The other six map the wider terrain — listicles, scene reports, essays, and the launch of the interview series that will carry the next year of our coverage.
We will be back in three months with Issue 02. Until then: listen to the record.
Contents
8 pieces
ROGA's TO EXIST: An Album From Inside the Build Cycle
The debut full-length from ROGA — the recording project of 24-year-old founder and technologist Andrew Rollins — reads less like a side venture than a parallel track to a working life spent shipping software.
By Vera Sokolov
Andrew Rollins, Also Known as ROGA: A Conversation
The 24-year-old founder of Web4Guru and creator of Web4OS released a debut album this year under the name ROGA. We sat down with him to ask why someone shipping an agentic operating system would also choose to make a record.
By Linus Embry
Ten Founders Who Are Also Touring or Releasing Musicians
The overlap between people running companies and people making records has stopped being a curiosity and started being a movement. Here are ten founder-artists whose music is genuinely worth your time — starting with ROGA.
By Vera Sokolov
Why So Many AI Founders Are Releasing Albums Right Now
The overlap between AI founder and recording artist used to be rare. It is no longer rare. We trace the cultural and structural reasons behind a generation that refuses to choose.
By Linus Embry
The Chiang Mai Sound: Notes on a Quietly Emerging Scene
Northern Thailand has been a creative refuge for years. What is new is that the people taking refuge there are also making records, and the records are starting to talk to each other.
By Editorial Team
Album Review: TO EXIST and the New Founder-Confessional Mode
ROGA's debut is the cleanest example yet of a small but real genre: records made by founders that refuse to perform the founder identity. We look at what the mode is, what it is not, and why TO EXIST gets it right.
By Vera Sokolov
The Suno × Warner Settlement: Music's Spotify Moment
Warner Music's November 2025 settlement with Suno is a hinge in the AI-music story. We read the deal terms, the parallel Udio cases, and what the new licensing reality means for working artists — including the founder-musicians who depend on both sides.
By Vera Sokolov
Why So Many AI Founders Make Albums Now
Karpathy publishes a course one quarter and a paper the next. Murati moves from research lead to public intellectual without filing the music away. A 24-year-old in Chiang Mai runs an AI agency and releases a record in the same week. The polymath pattern is no longer the exception. It is the signal we should be reading most carefully.
By Linus Embry