It dissipates into the air like butterflies, or a cloud of dust.

Into darkness, my old friend.

I've come to talk with you again.

Because a vision softly creeping

Left its seeds while I was sleeping

And the vision that was planted in my brain Still remains

Within the sound of silence

Oh, and while the king was looking down

The jester stole his thorny crown

The courtroom was adjourned

No verdict was returned

And while Lenin read a book on Marx

A quartet practiced in the park

And we sang dirges in the dark

The day the music died

Tell him about the day that music died

It turns into memories and heat.

It goes out into the world, to be merged alongside all of the other sounds, until it can be recycled as "new" music and you can enjoy it again:-).

Let's assume the kid knows it's a recording. It's still a valid question.

Like where is the recording coming from when the kid asks Alexa to play a song?

I never thought about it, as I don't have kids, but must be a bit harder explaining a global IT-infrastructure than it was for my grandpa to explaining how a VHS works. On a generalised level, that is.

The music stays in your head until your forget it. Music only exists in your head

"Where do you think it goes?"

To retire on a farm upstate, unless my mom lied to me 🤔

into our minds and into our hearts

It goes on until it doesn’t? Seems like there’s a pseudo-scientific philosophical argument that it continues on forever at some quantum level?

They should show their kid this.