'A record label deal?'
Aiden was pretty surprised when he heard that. His mind wandered off to X-Star, where one of the prizes was a label deal with Steven's company, Cyco media. He couldn't get his hands on that, but now he was suddenly being offered one.
'Since when did my life become so convenient?'
"Can I know a bit more about it?"
He asked while trying his best to keep calm. If it were before he had gotten his system, he would have taken the deal just because it was a big chance to move up in his career.
But now, he wanted to be more careful.
"Of course. My company, CMA, keeps an eye on any talent that might pop up, and since we saw you on X-Star, we are very interested in you as an artist. After listening to you live, I have confirmed your voice is truly great, and you have a talent for writing songs."
Amy stopped to examine his face and found it a bit weird that it didn't have many expressions. Usually, unknown artists who have not hit it big would be very excited by an offer like this.
Not minding it, she continued.
"In simple words, we want to invest in you to make an album. We will make you a brand, and in the future, if you work hard, I'm sure you can be a superstar."
Amy said some words that might seem nice to one's ears. But they did nothing more than to make Aiden be on guard. Thinking of something, he asked.
"Can I ask you something?" Then, at Amy's nod, he asked his question. "I'm mostly an actor rather than a singer, so this deal would mean I need to focus on singing, right?"
"Yeah, obviously. Look, Aiden, you are not a teenager anymore. If you were, you would have more time, but currently, you first need to make something of yourself. Listen to my advice and focus on your singing first, and later on, you can transfer to acting. So many people have done that."
That was just telling Aiden that they won't let him focus on his acting career if he signed the deal. After all, any company will think of its profit first rather than what the artist wants.
Still, he had a few other questions too.
"How much are you going to invest in me?"
That was a very straightforward question, and Amy needed to think before replying.
"An average investment in a new artist is generally 500k dollars to 1 million. So you can expect that too."
'That's a lot of money.'
He thought in his mind. If they were willing to invest that much in him, it meant that Amy's company was pretty sure that they would make it back.
Still, he found it a bit strange.
'Never ever trust a big company's contract in Hollywood without reading it five times.'
In his mind, a piece of advice that he had heard a long time ago rang, like it was telling him this deal was a trap and he shouldn't agree to it.
"So, what do you think?"
Amy nudged him to answer, finding his behaviour very strange. Usually, indie artists would be on guard, but they would get very excited after knowing about the investment amount and other incentives.
"Well, I need to think about it. Your offer is very lucrative, but I want to first go through the contract."
At Aiden's words, Amy frowned like she didn't like it. She glanced toward her uncle, but he just had a bleak smile, which meant that he couldn't help her here.
"I will send you the contract. Please give me your email. But remember that you won't get the chance again, so you need to give a reply soon."
There was a bit of sharpness in her words that Aiden decided to ignore. For now, signing with a record label wasn't something he was looking forward to.
At least if it meant working under Amy because she didn't seem like the type who would be good to work with.
'There's a reason why so many popular artists have disputes with their labels.'
He thought of the countless articles and media reports he had read. First of all, he needed to research everything before answering properly.
***
The next day, Aiden woke up early, and after freshening up, he quickly started giving finishing touches to his Melody and MeTube account.
The record label deal offered to him by Amy wasn't really in his mind. He had decided to think about it when Amy emailed him the contract. He first wanted to get the other pending work done.
For MeTube, he already has the video of him performing 'Lonely'. And for Melody, he needed to record a better version of the song in his room.
Thankfully, his neighbours didn't make a lot of noise, and he could finish it in two hours.
But it still took a lot of time to add more final touches to the song. And another one hour to get a cover to go with the song.
Although the song was very nice, the cover didn't look great. It was just a drawing of a man sitting in a cubicle in an office. The entire work looked like a person with no experience had done it, and it was true too.
But Aiden just hoped that his recent popularity in X-Star would help to get the song some views on both Melody and MeTube.
In the next few days, he planned to record 'Life is a story and 'I can't seem to forget' and post them too. He could record the live versions in the bar for MeTube, so it wasn't a lot of work.
'I need to practise for the audition too later. Though, it would have been nice if I knew what sort of character I was auditioning for. Anyway, first l need to upload the song.'
He thought as he uploaded the song on MeTube and Melody. Then, to get some views, he decided to copy the link and promote it on his social media websites.
His Sparrow account now had 7k followers due to him being a part of X-Star, and his Skygram account now has 15k followers. It was a high number for the current him.
'Wait, did my followers increase?'
He thought as he opened his Sparrow account. He didn't recall having these many followers before.
At that moment, his eyes suddenly landed on the trending rankings, and he saw X-Star at number three there. It didn't surprise him a lot, but he noticed something else.
In 9th place, Aiden was trending with over 2k tweets.
"Is it me? Or someone else named Aiden did something?"
He muttered and clicked on it.
***
At that same time, in a meeting room in Los Angeles, Gary, the producer of X-Star, was shouting at his team.
"You all really don't have any brain cells!! Why did you edit it to show Aiden as the main character? Now, everything is messed up!"
He screamed and seemed like he would smash a chair today in anger. However, one of the creative writers of the show quickly tried to lower his anger.
"Sir, the episode was edited before Aiden's elimination, and the ratings have also gone up."
"And they are going to fall down a lot once they realise that Aiden will get eliminated in just the next round! How do you think those fans of his would feel? They are going to stop seeing the show."
No one said anything about those words. Unfortunately, the shooting of the next round, which included a wild card entry, was currently going on, and they have lost any chance to bring Aiden back to the show.
It would actually be fine if the last episode didn't actually focus on Aiden, but the reality was different, and now, they were in a bind.
If they really showed Aiden getting eliminated, there would be a social media campaign against them. After all, teenagers, these days love cancelling things they don't like, sitting in their bedroom.
"Sir, how about we start some false rumours about him to lower his popularity?"
"That won't work. We would lose credibility if it got out. It's a two-edged sword. Moreover, he's currently becoming a trend. His performance of Life is a story has gotten 8 million views on MeTube, and the band performance crossed a million in a day. We need to think of something better and quick!"
Gary said, glaring at his team that he would soon term as incompetent. At that moment, his assistant suddenly got an idea.
"Sir, the best we could right now is to focus on someone like Cameron for the next episode and make Aiden more of a side character? Then, if we can just get someone else's popularity to rise above him, we might be able to save some ratings."
The others nodded at the idea that seemed a better alternative. Gary thought for a bit before accepting it.
"Okay, along with that, remove anything related to Aiden that we are using on social media and focus more on Cameron and Rachel. We need to be prepared to face some tough times in the future."
Although he said that, even Gary didn't know that his days would soon get more challenging. A report by the Gossip Tribunal was posted soon after this meeting ended.
The title of the report was:
[Latest leak from X-Star Season 3: Aiden Silvereye WILL get eliminated in the next round!]
...
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