章節 42: Album - Clothes
September 21, 2011. Monday. Ironstone East Ouigab.
His passport application was finally approved and would expect the passport to arrive by the end of September. What excited him on the other hand is what he received today.
The copyright certificate of his first album, "18" finally arrived in his mailbox. The copyright registration for songs took almost a month unlike copyright registration for books that only took around two weeks. There are a lot more songs being made therefore much longer processing time.
Tayaw is planning on releasing the album through music streaming platforms like ITunes and Stoppify. He has no problem uploading his stuff on Stoppify directly but his problem is ITunes. Only artists who have released at least one well-sold album can publish songs directly on ITunes so he has to make use of an aggregator accredited by ITunes to publish his songs on his behalf. Thankfully, he already found an aggregator that does not take any royalties and only takes fees each year.
He opened his laptop and went to TuneNation's website to upload his work, provide his bank account, and pay. He registered under the stage name "Yawat" based on a play on letters of his name.
TuneNation charges a base of 100BGC per year to sell songs on music platforms and collect earned money from those platforms on their subscriber's behalf. For an additional fee of 150BGC per year, TuneNation can handle various royalties like mechanical, performance, print, and sync royalties and collect what a subscriber's songs earn from those. TuneNation thankfully, does not take any percentage of royalty.
If everything goes well with TuneNation, then his first album will be for sale on music streaming platforms by the first week of October.
Even though ITunes will end ten years later, it is still pays the best out of all the music platforms aside from actual record shops. ITunes will sell songs for 30% cut of the sales.
After visiting TuneNation's website, he closed his laptop and went to his bathroom for a shower. He is planning to go out to shop for some clothes. The clothes are not intended for his daily use, but clothes he will use in public performances. He does not want to be recognized for now. He is also planning on making his YouTube channel to cover songs and promoting his original songs at the same time.
It was already lunch time when he drove to central East Ouigab and to go to lunch at a branch of his beloved Grillique restaurant. While eating, he's trying to imagine what type of style would contrast with his simple style of long sleeve shirts and well-fitted jeans.
His eyes then was caught by a man who appears to be in his 40s walking out of the restaurant's entrance and disappeared outside quickly. Even though it's only a short glimpse, with Tayaw's enhanced brain and eyes, he was able to memorize the man's clothes.
The man was wearing a Cuban shirt, black slack-jeans, brown loafers, and a straw colored boater hat. Tayaw liked the style and decided to adapt it in public appearances and in his YouTube videos.
After lunch, he headed to East Ouigab's largest apparel store and started looking. For shirts, Tayaw bought a couple of dark colored Hawaiian shirts, Cuban shirts, and short sleeved Guayabera shirts of varying lighter colors. He was going to change his style but he will not forgo his like of darker shade of colors so he bought those types of shirts in black, brown, dark red and blue colors as well.
For pants, Tayaw bought a couple of straight cut pairs of jeans of varying colors of the lighter shade; white jeans, khaki colored jeans, light brown jeans, sky blue jeans, light pink jeans. Even though he didn't like wearing them, they would go well with the shirts he bought. He bought jeans because he doesn't like the folded creases found in slack jeans that the man in the restaurant he saw wore.
For the shoes, he bought loafers and casual dress shoes in varying shades of brown.
He actually found it difficult to find boater hats so he had to drive around East Ouigab until he found an exclusive store of a hat making company. Looking at the hats, he actually fell in-love with them. He was strictly a beanie guy even in his past life, but the beautifully crafted hats in the store have slowly seduced him.
After an hour in the store, he walked out with a couple of boater hats, trilby hats, and bowler hats in various shades of brown. He will use the boater hats for the looser Hawaiian shirts, and the trilby and bowler hats for the more fitting Cuban shirts and guayabera shirts.
After buying the shoes, he still found something lacking. He realized that he also has something to partially cover his face, so he decided to buy some sunglasses. He wanted to find those sunglasses that have that vintage / antique look on them so he opted for those huge aviator sunglasses. After looking around for a while, he finally found a store that sells aviator sunglasses bought a few pairs with varying darkness of lenses.
After the shopping spree that totaled 9,000 BGC, he went to look for a well-lit parking lot and parked his car. He took out a sky-blue and white striped Cuban shirt, white jeans, a light brown pair of leather shoes, a light brown boater hat, and a pair of aviator sunglasses out of their packages, and hastily wore them inside the car. He then got out of the car and did some final touches and looked at himself through the truck's side mirror.
Rich. That was his assessment of what he looked like. Because of his brown Polynesian complexion, he would be mistaken as a rich South American terrateniente with his outfit and the sunglasses that hide his eyes. The shirt hugged his figure and exposed his well-toned forearms so it made him look more attractive.
He actually likes how he looks with the clothes. It's just that he prefers darker clothes with simpler designs to blend in with the crowd. He finds bright colored clothes very eye-catching so he tends to avoid wearing them. With his future as a musician in stage and in the internet however, he found it unavoidable to gather attention so while performing in front of a crowd or a camera, it's not a bad idea to wear good bright clothes. When he goes to the streets, he will wear his usual style of a beanie, baggy long sleeve shirts, jeans, and rubber shoes. Such contrast can help in keeping his privacy.
He then got back in the car and drove back to Ironstone without changing back to his regular clothes. After parking his car in the garage, he decided to go inside the house first to fetch a garbage bag so that he can pick all the things he bought all at once.
Entering through the front door, he found all of the band mates in the living room doing their homework. Ike spotted him first and burst out laughing. "YO! WHAT THE F*CK ARE YOU WEARING MAN?! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA" Ike exclaimed as he pointed at Tayaw.
"You look like a drug lord." Ramil said while giggling. "He looks cool though?" Hoon said. "He looks a lot more matured." Jenna said as she walked forward to touch Tayaw's clothes, "Ooh. Nice fabric." "Man. You finally look like how much you're worth." Inson was nodding as he examined Tayaw's clothes. Bay-an just fell on his back on the living room couch, wheezing in laughter.
"Hey. Is it that funny?" Tayaw asked Ike. "No. It's just a surpris- WHOAH! You're ripped!" Ike exclaimed again as he noticed Tayaw's broad shoulders, toned arms, and flat stomach. "Come to think of it, you always wore those baggy sweatshirts. Why don't you show off your body more?" Jenna asked, this time, blatantly patting and groping Tayaw's body. "Do you like them that much? Alright, alright, that's enough." Tayaw said and he knocked on Jenna's forehead and went to the kitchen for a glass of water.
"Hey. Your hat, they look expensive. Like handmade expensive." Bay-an said, his eyes glued on Tayaw's boater hat. "They are. I have more, wanna borrow? You have to look good on it though." Tayaw offered. "Thanks. By the way, why are you dressed like this?" Bay-an thanked and asked something that didn't occur to the other members.
"Oh. I want to wear this for gigs and Youtube." Tayaw replied. "You have a YouTube channel?" Inson raised his eyebrows at that. "No. I'm planning on making one to promote my original songs. I want to have some sort of disguise." Tayaw explained. "Will we be in it?" Ike asked. "You will. I'm planning on recording all the cover songs we've played so far." Tayaw explained simply. Since the Percussives' first gig at the ROH Factory, they started performing twice a month. An amount of gigs Tayaw found the band can handle comfortably.
"Oh! That's cool!" Jenna said, already imagining how she would dress on the videos. "I get it. I have to disguise myself as well." Ramil nodded. "Why?" Ike asked simply. "I don't know. I'm not that type who posts his face publicly. I wouldn't even have a Facebook account if I didn't find the chat function in it useful. Having a sort of disguise would make me feel less uncomfortable." Ramil explained. "So, you don't want to appear on the videos?" Ike asked again. "I want to. I just want to be seen as a saxophone player, not as myself." Ramil explained. "I don't get it…" Ike said in confusion.
"Anyways. I'm the only one filming for now. I have to research which songs can be uploaded." Tayaw said. YouTube have some sort of contract with many music publishers regarding cover songs. Instead of the covering artist paying for the song's mechanical license and sync license fees, Youtube will automatically share the ad money earned from the cover videos to the music publisher. Therefore, Tayaw has to make sure that the songs they will upload are owned by music publishers who have an agreement with YouTube, or else he will be hit by copyright strikes.
He is also planning on uploading covers on BeatsCloud. He will have to spend obtaining mechanical licenses for the songs he will cover. It's not expensive to use a service for obtaining licenses in the first place, so it wouldn't feel the expense.
"By the way. Your prelims exams are still about a month for now. I'm thinking about something we could do as a band." Tayaw said to the group.
"What is it?" Jenna asked.
"I will have to let you experience busking one of these days." Tayaw said to the shock of the group.
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