A streaming listing turned Miquela into a recording act

The persona

By August 2017, the Instagram persona Lil Miquela, operated by the Los Angeles company Brud, had extended beyond an image-based account into a credited recording act. Apple Music's own catalogue lists a single called Not Mine under the artist name 'Miquela,' with metadata dating its publication to 10 August 2017, a two-minute-forty-two-second Hip-Hop/Rap track. A separate metadata reference, Genius, dates the same release to 9 August 2017 and describes it as 'Miquela's first single,' a one-day discrepancy consistent with time-zone differences between platform logs rather than two different releases.

What the documents establish

The Apple Music listing establishes that a real, purchasable single existed under the artist name Miquela, distinct from Lil Miquela's Instagram content, with a catalogue date, duration and genre tag assigned by the platform. Genius's page adds a linked SoundCloud address under the handle 'lilmiquela,' tying the recording identity back to the same operator-controlled account that runs the Instagram persona, and names no performer beyond 'Miquela' on the release. An archived capture of the Instagram account from 30 September 2017, weeks after the single's release, shows the platform's own reported '367.3k Followers, 1,252 Following, 241 Posts,' a single-date snapshot of scale rather than a measure tied to the single's performance.

Character versus company

Neither listing presents 'Not Mine' as a claim made by an independent artist about her own career choices; the persona's music, like her Instagram content, is material released under Brud's operational control, with 'Miquela' functioning as a credited artist name rather than an artist who negotiated her own release. No chart position, sales figure or streaming-count claim for 'Not Mine' is stated in either record reviewed here, so none is asserted in this entry. The Instagram follower count from the same period describes the visual persona's audience, not the single's, and the two should not be conflated as one performance metric.

What to watch

The one-day gap between Apple Music's and Genius's stated release dates has not been resolved by a document available to this drafting pass and should be rechecked against a label-side record if one becomes accessible. Genius is a user-editable metadata reference rather than the recording's rights holder, so its release-date field and 'first single' description are treated here as corroborating, not primary, evidence. Editorially, 'Not Mine' marks a business expansion worth tracking: an Instagram persona gaining a second, monetizable content stream distinct from sponsored posts.

• Which entity is credited as the rights holder or label for 'Not Mine' on the platforms that list it?
• Did Brud ever publicly describe its own reasoning for releasing music under the Miquela name?
• Do any streaming platforms disclose play counts for the single that would support or contradict later claims about its reach?

What the record supports is narrow and dated: a single titled 'Not Mine,' credited to 'Miquela,' entered at least two music platforms' catalogues in early-to-mid August 2017, extending the persona's operator-controlled output from images into a recorded, distributable song.