Gamer Superstar

184 184 - Just Accept It

"Are you kidding me?" I asked incredulously as I watched Dark Pistol continue the show on the screen as if nothing had gone wrong.

Looking at the audience camera, I noticed that there were people who were so confused, maybe because they already knew my song and knew that it was supposed to be mine, but the vast majority of the audience didn't know that this was my song because they didn't know me and I wasn't singing this song at the show today.

But when Dark Pistol started to act like this was something normal and nothing was wrong, even the people who thought there was something wrong shook their heads, ignored what had happened and continued to enjoy the show.

Looking at Selena again, I asked just to be sure. "Selena, did they discuss anything with you about copyright? Royalties or anything like that?"

As a singer who grew up singing covers of other artists' songs at gigs, I wasn't particularly upset that they sang my song at her show, since I did the same thing at my gigs.

I also wouldn't be upset if we discussed them recording a cover of my song and releasing it as a cover, since I even found it interesting and could get residual publicity from the popularity of my song skyrocketing by a bigger artist singing it.

The problem is her and her team's apparent lack of communication with me and my team.

"No... they haven't discussed it at all..." Selena huffed angrily as she breathed heavily.

"Bro, they've already released the song and are selling it on their website!" Mark said in shock as he stared at the screen of his phone.

Hearing this, we were surprised and quickly moved closer to Mark to see his phone screen.

"There's a song preview..." He clicked play and we began to hear the song In The End playing, but with the voice of the lead singer of their band and the instruments re-recorded by the other members.

"This is a studio version of the song..." Selena quickly realized and became even angrier.

"If they recorded a studio version, it was planned a long time ago..." Frank commented in shock.

Knock knock A knock came from the dressing room door.

Curious and controlling her anger, Selena opened the door and glared hatefully at the figure on the other side.

On the other side of the door was a smiling man.

"Hello Miss Carter, I think we forgot to discuss the rest of the rights to the song In The End..." The man said as he entered the dressing room.

"Discuss what? You advertise and sell our song as if it were your own without asking permission and only after the announcement do you want to discuss the value?" Selena asked angrily.

"Don't get angry Ms. Carter, how about this, we're willing to pay ten times the price of your show today for the cover rights to the song, what do you think?" The man suggested with a confident smile on his face.

Hearing this, I quickly calculated the amount he was offering and realized that he wanted to buy the cover rights to my song for $50,000.

If I were an ordinary D-list artist, that would probably be more than fair, but he couldn't imagine how much I made on top of my concert fees.

"You want to buy us off with $50,000 after your dishonesty?" Selena replied dismissively. "If you'd talked to us before you pulled this shit, we'd probably have accepted that amount ourselves, but don't even think about getting it now."

"How about $100,000 for the music rights?" He suggested, the smile slowly fading from his face.

Upon hearing this offer, Selena had no intention of accepting it, but just to be sure, she looked at me and when I shook my head dismissively as well, she scoffed and refused again.

"You can shove the $100,000 down that hole and delete our song." Selena told him dismissively.

Seeing this, the smile completely disappeared from the man's face, apparently surprised that a D-rank artist would refuse a much larger payment than he should have received for my song.

"You know, the last time I searched for the rights to 'In The End', I found that the song had only been copyrighted for 3 months... considering that copyrights take between 3 and 8 months to become effective, we can theoretically sing this song for free for up to 5 months before you can get any kind of result from suing us... and in the end, the fine we'll pay for infringing the song's copyright will hardly exceed $150,000. So how about this, you accept my final offer, $150,000 for the cover rights and the marketing of the cover, and we'll call it a day. The man suggested with a smile returning to his face.

Hearing this, I was surprised as I looked at Selena to confirm that this was true.

After hearing his explanation, Selena became even angrier, which made me realize that it might be true.

But one doubt remained in my mind.

"Why are you doing this?" I asked, truly confused.

Dark Pistol was a Peak C Rank band, almost reaching B Rank, a level where they received millions of dollars a month, they could easily buy the rights to many good songs.

Looking at me, the man answered honestly. "Dark Pistol has been stuck at Peak C Rank for over a year, we've tried everything to get the band up to C Rank, but nothing has worked. When we heard their song, we realized it really had the potential to go viral and make the difference the band needed. So we recorded it and prepared the marketing strategy, and now it's all up and running.

Hearing this, we were even more surprised because he sounded very confident.

"But why are you telling them about this now that you've done all this?" Mark asked, still confused.

"Because if you knew before and sang the song on stage in front of the band because you refused the offer, we would have to record a music video somewhere else, we wouldn't be able to start the marketing strategy today, everything would be delayed, a lot more money would be spent, it wasn't worth the risk". The man replied. "Then come on, just take the $150,000 and get it over with."

Thinking about his points, taking the $150,000 deal probably was the best option for me if I thought about it rationally and didn't consider any of the emotions.

But as I looked around the room, I noticed something that could change that completely in my favor.

Dark Pistol was doing all this just to get more popularity out of my music, and didn't care that they would lose some money from me because they would get it back in the future after they climbed to the B rank.

So why didn't I just help them get the popularity they wanted?

As far as I could remember, their MeTube channel had 1 million subscribers, but the amount of views they got from non-music videos was extremely low.

Something I shouldn't have worried about.

So if they wanted so much popularity, I wouldn't mind giving them the popularity they wanted so much.

And seeing the little smile on Jason's face as we exchanged glances was all the confidence I needed.

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