Though these critiques purport to take on the music industry as it is today, they are essentially evergreen. Arcade Fire’s dystopian vision might as well have been soundtracked by Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall.” The most famous label-versus-artist sagas in history—Tom Petty, Prince, Nine Inch Nails, and so on—are, well, historical. Today’s state of affairs, though, has modern peculiarities. The industry’s profits have rebounded to a level that some doubted they would return to after the CD bubble burst in the early 2000s. Yet many artists feel more squeezed than ever, and the reasons for cynicism are more complicated than they were before. The villain is not only the exec asking for a signature on the dotted line.

There’s at least one cultural product that’s starting to nail what a modern music-industry satire should look like: Atlanta on FX. In its first season, Donald Glover’s auteurist comedy was only glancingly about the career of the newbie rapper Paper Boi (a.k.a. Alfred) and his manager, Earn. But Season 2 has built a mordant, multi-front parody of what it’s like for a young talent who’s building buzz. Paper Boi is subjected to a series of small humiliations—not by one all-powerful corporate boss (at least so far), but from a range of culture vultures that include fans, rivals, and technological gatekeepers. The problem isn’t Everything Now. It’s everything, now.

Paper Boi begins as a mixtape rapper, putting out songs that seem to, first, catch on in the Atlanta neighborhoods that he comes from. In Season 1, this means his local environment is transformed: While there are perks, such as being served special chicken at restaurants, the main symptom of fame is his inability to leave the house unmolested. It takes 10 episodes for his success to manifest as a wad of cash. Season 2 intensifies that paradox. Money is distant. The costs of becoming a cultural product are close by. And the internet makes that worse.

In the new season’s second episode, Al and Earn visit a tech company that’s unmistakably a send-up of Spotify or Pandora, right down to the office’s playful-crisp millennial aesthetic and the “you’re listening to” bumpers that Paper Boi is asked to record to punctuate a playlist. It’s a ripe target, given the state of the industry. Streaming platforms and social media have driven music’s recent upturn in revenues. But the platforms themselves aren’t yet profitable, and instead are propped up by venture capital and industry alliances. Artists, meanwhile, complain about the pennies they get from thousands of streams. Often forgotten in the equation—and tellingly left off-screen thus far on Atlanta—are the Everything Now–style behemoth labels and their parents, which silently take the bulk of the money.

And so, something is off—hollow, desperate, Potemkin village–like—about Atlanta’s streaming service. The employees are friendly and eager to monetize Paper Boi’s music, but the experience is entirely awkward, with each scene a small symphony of disconnection. An exec who goes by the joke rap nickname 35 Savage is unable to find a way to play Paper Boi’s new song, thanks to the lack of a CD player in the office (during the downtime caused by technical difficulty, another employee starts to pitch his own music). Later, Paper Boi walks off stage, frustrated, during an in-office performance. His music is meant for and comes out of a certain context, and that context does not involve a blasé office drone eating a banana while watching him.