The Langoliers eat it

All these physics answers! The funnest explanation for a kid is just that music is only there when you're listening to it. If you don't listen, there's no music. When you start listening again, music comes back. Then ask if they can hear the music of the wind.

we hang it on a wall of silence in the room of our imagination

It's still there, it's just in the past now.

If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung Would you hear my voice come through the music? Would you hold it near as it were your own? It's a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken Perhaps they're better left unsung I don't know, don't really care Let there be songs to fill the air Ripple in still water When there is no pebble tossed Nor wind to blow

"And can you please tell me, oh

Where do broken hearts go?
Can they find their way home
Back to the open arms
Of a love that's waiting there?
And if somebody loves you
Won't they always love you?"

Really reminded me of this - the incorrect, useless, but poetic answer could be that it's just like with love. Into the open arms of the music thats waiting there.

It goes into the ears.

If we can try with every day
To make it better as it goes
With any luck then I suppose
The music never ends

Category error.

"Ultimately it increases entropy... let me tell you about the heat death of the universe..."

"No, Mom! I'm still afraid of the False Vacuum monster laying underneath my ground state!"

Heat. Everything ends up as heat.

You absorb it into your soul and it changes you irreversibly forever.

I imagine a physicist would invoke entropy to describe the diffusion of pressure waves and vibration into other forms of energy. Neuroscience might explain the propagation of signals from the cochlea into the brain. A psychologist could hypothesise on the influence of music on our mood and ideas. A philosopher might talk about the influence of music on the way we build our society and how that feeds back into our music. In this way, the music never stops, it continues on as echos rippling through through the universe.

As the waves from ocean, the music crashes on the beaches in your ears

Everyone knows this duh!

Into your heart!

Where does the light go when you flip the switch?

Check your fridge.

It rolls up into the other side of the cassette. Just flip it over.

It gets stuck in my head for 3 to 4 days until something newer comes along and pushes it out.

Sounds move very very fast, faster than a runner or a car, so it goes very very far away.

I'm not a scientist by a long shot, but my understanding is that sound if indeed a wave, carried by a medium (air, water, etc). Upon hitting your eardrum, this wave is converted by your eardrum and your auditory nerve into signals your brain decodes. The remainder of the wave continues though, until it runs out of medium, hits an obstacle (basically another medium) or dissipates. Again, just my layman's understanding!

It goes into your memory. That's why you can remember a song that you heard before.

The Langoliers eat it.