Chapter 44: New knowledge
It had been over a month since Aric released the songs on the Internet. As expected, without any promotion, there were initially no views or listeners. However, considering the vast human population, if a song was good, it wouldn’t remain undiscovered for long.
For a while, there were only around 10 or 15 listens, but even these few garnered him subscribers. About a week ago, the numbers began to change rapidly. Aric was puzzled at first, but then he discovered that somebody had used their songs as background music for a VR video.
When Apis applied for copyright, he was very clever about it. Since it was his first song, he allowed others to use his songs for public use without charge. He needed exposure with his initial songs and didn’t want to be hesitant about it.
That didn’t mean the music label and publishing company wouldn’t charge them, but it would be 50% less. Those who used his songs would understand that he was acting in good faith and doing the best he could as an artist. (The music copyright laws are not something I understand; I can only speculate about the laws that an interstellar company might have.)
The video somehow went viral, featuring the song in a VR fight. In this universe, there were both 2D and 3D videos. While great directors of movies across galaxies preferred 2D videos for their storytelling, they would only make those once they were accomplished in 3D VR movies.
So 3D movies and videos still dominated about 90% of the market, as they were easier for any random person to make. One of these new and upcoming directors filmed a 3D movie filled with action and fantasy, using an LP song in the final climax fight.
The song gained more popularity than the entire movie. This was the breakthrough Aric had been hoping for, and he couldn’t help but thank the director for using his song.
"There are already 500 million listens. Congratulations, you have hit it big with your first album," Apis said as he showed him the total listens. Aric couldn’t help but smile from ear to ear.
"Apis, how much will I get for 500 million listens?" Aric asked.
"50,000 Sora credits, more or less. I can’t track the target audience, but songs that cater to adults tend to receive more money," Apis explained.
"50,000 is good enough," Aric said, content with whatever money he was receiving. Buoyed by his success, Aric didn’t stop there. Now he finally had the incentive to upload more songs. He uploaded tracks from artists like Blue, Justin Timberlake, Akon, Eminem, and others. He had them stored on his memory stick, thanks to the slow 2G internet, and after hours of waiting, he was able to download them.
Instead of going to a café to download them, he opted for the more convenient option of using his colored mobile phone with minimal internet access to get the pirated songs and then transfer them to his memory stick. Once again, he uploaded them to the internet on Echorysia under the same username.