Chapter 7

I’d been ‘out on the town’ in Raleigh before, but we’d gone to clubs Victor had known about in the college part of town where every other building was a bar or nightclub. The place Kent had us meet was a level of fancy I’d only ever seen on TV. Lyla called it bougie, a term I’d heard before but never actually been in a place where it would apply. When he’d come by to see us in Wellsville, Kent had mentioned we’d be going out the night after we finished to celebrate, so I’d brought my best clothes, just in case.

My best, unfortunately, wasn’t even close to good enough. I was basically wearing my church clothes again, minus the jacket, and looked like a little kid going to a social function with his parents. The only thing that kept me from getting back in the car and driving away was the fact that the rest of us, except for Kat, looked out of place, too. Seth and Marco, although dressed nicer than I was, still stood out as awkward and low class. Lyla had stuck with the ‘screw it’ attitude that she used everywhere else, and wore the same thing she’d worn to record, except with a little heavier makeup and some extra jewelry. She had enough ‘I don’t care’ vibes that I didn’t think anyone was going to give her a hard time.

Kat was the exception. It was sometimes easy to forget she’d grown up with money. Since she’d ditched the popular crowd, and especially since she started living with Hanna, she’d stopped wearing stylish outfits and switched to the standard t-shirts and jeans like the rest of us wore. Tonight, however, she was in a knee-length ‘little black dress’ that seemed tight enough that I would have thought it’d be hard to walk in if I wasn’t watching her do it.

Besides showing off her figure, something she usually hid with baggy clothes, it also had no sleeves. I regularly forgot how muscular Kat was until I saw her dressed like this.

“Feeling okay?” I said quietly to her, so no one else could hear.

I knew she wore baggy clothes most of the time for a reason. She was uncomfortable any time anyone paid too much attention to her body or made comments that were even remotely sexual. Considering what she had gone through all those years with her father, it wasn’t that surprising. Now that she was out from under his control, dressing in ways that made it hard for people to tell what her body looked like was one of the ways she was able to control her life, which was why I was so surprised when she’d come out dressed like she was.

“Yeah. I just wish people weren’t staring.”

“They’re only staring because you look amazing,” I pointed out.

That at least got a reaction, although not the one I expected or wanted. Even after my talk with her doctor, and making it clear to her multiple times that any romantic relationship between us wouldn’t work while she was still recovering, she’d grown steadily more aggressive in making it clear she was interested in being more than friends. In some ways, maybe it was a good thing, since I’d specifically asked her not to, and she was going against that without falling into panic attacks or the other reactions she sometimes had when she tried to push her own opinions. Of course, it may just be she felt comfortable enough with me that she felt safe to push back, even when doing the opposite of what I asked.

“I’m glad you like it,” she said, hooking her arm through mine. “I could wear it more often, if you wanted.”

“Kat,” I said in a warning tone, pulling my arm out of hers. “We’ve talked about this.”

She just shrugged and kept walking, but her expression made it clear she didn’t feel the least bit bad about pushing things. Instead, she caught up with Hanna, who’d missed the by-play because she was talking to Seth. I couldn’t help but notice the glance she threw over her shoulder to see if I was watching her walk away.

I took a breath and pushed it away. That was something I’d have to deal with another day. We’d finished recording our first album and were walking into one of the nicest places I’d ever been in. I wouldn’t get another chance to experience this moment and didn’t want to waste it worrying about whatever game Kat was trying to play.

The guy by the front door gave the group of us a look up and down like we’d tracked something in behind us. I might not have been in a place this nice before, but I’d definitely seen that expression before. It was all too common when you were poor and happened to bump into the rich. They didn’t mind us doing their work, but they preferred for us to do it without being seen or heard.

“Can I help you?” he asked in a tone that made it clear he wanted to do anything but that.

“There should be a reservation for Charlie Nelson. It might be under MAC Records or Kent Graham.”

It was like a light switch flipped. His frown suddenly turned into a completely fake smile.

“Ahh, yes. I was told you were coming. You’re in one of the private rooms,” he said, gesturing for us to follow him.

He couldn’t help giving our clothes another once over, barely suppressing a sneer. He led us through the restaurant to a set of double doors made of some kind of smoky glass, transparent enough to tell there was something going on inside without actually being able to see what was happening. Inside, the room was painted in a light brown with what I guessed was nice art on the walls and a long table covered with a white table cloth and place settings laid out.

Kent was already inside sitting next to Rowan, both looking comfortable in tailored suits. It was a little weird to see Rowan, who normally dressed in jeans, button-up shirts, a ball cap, and a big chain wearing a dark suit that, to my untrained eye, looked nice.

At least he still had the chain, so it wasn’t completely weird.

“Charlie. You made it,” Kent said, standing up to shake my hand.

I still felt a little self-conscious about how he always addressed me first every time we met him, especially with the off-hand comments Marco had been making, but I mostly wanted to just get through tonight so we could focus on the tour.

“Yeah. This place is really nice.”

“I know. The chef does this paella that you have to try. It’s astonishing. I listened to a rough cut of the record a few hours ago, and I gotta say, I think it is going to do well,” he said, indicating I should sit in the chair next to him and across from Rowan.

Hanna came around and sat next to Rowan. She was really focused on finding out more about the industry, so any time Rowan or Kent had something to say about the business, she always made sure to put herself in the conversation. Not that I minded.

“I’ve looked at some of the stuff you gave Mom, but I’m still unclear about what a record ‘doing well’ looks like.”

“They do family-style here, so I already ordered a bunch of food for the table. For those of you not underage, feel free to order something to drink and enjoy the food,” he said to everyone at the table before turning his attention back to me. “I think that’s because it’s a hard question to answer. Had you asked me seven years ago, the answer would have been very different than the one I give you today.”

“What’s changed?”

“The Internet. I mean, yeah, it’s been around for a while, but in the last ten years streaming has really started to take over. At first, it was just an add-on for record sales, but these days if you add up all the different streaming platforms it’s almost eight percent of our annual revenue. Sure, older people still go out and buy a CD, but for anyone under thirty, it’s all about streaming. Of course, I don’t have to tell you that.”

While I knew what he was talking about, I didn’t want to point out that until very recently I hadn’t really had streaming. Dad could barely keep a cell phone plan alive long enough for us to use the internet, and being on the move all the time meant we couldn’t get it in a more traditional way.

Of course, since moving to Wellsville, I’d made up for that by a large margin, so I guess he wasn’t wrong. When not working on stuff, doing homework, or just hanging out with Hanna and Kat, we listened to a lot of music on streaming. Partly because we’d convinced ourselves we were doing ‘industry research,’ but mostly because we liked it.

Instead of pointing any of that out, though, I just nodded.

“So when you say regional, that just means where you’re advertising, not where it’s going to be sold. Right?”

“Pretty much. There’s some advertising on streaming platforms that we geo-target, but believe it or not, radio is still one of our biggest marketing tools.”

“What about social media, like the dancing apps? I see a lot of new music getting played on them, people making them into sounds or whatever.”

“That is a place where we’ve started putting in a lot of effort,” Kent said, looking slightly impressed. “At first, it kind of happened on its own. People would find a song on streaming and upload it to one of the dance apps, and our marketing guys got the bright idea of putting pieces of our new stuff on the app directly. I’ll be honest, I didn’t think much of it, but when one of these sounds goes viral, we see a serious uptick on streaming services and even physical sales. We haven’t gone all-in like some of the other labels, but we’re starting to invest in it. The hard part is getting a song to go viral.”

Rowan had kind of touched on this earlier, but it hadn’t really been the point of that conversation. I didn’t really look at those apps much, but Hanna and Kat loved them, so I’d watched a few things they’d shown me. It seemed so random; I couldn’t imagine something manufactured would really stick. People my age and up to ten years or so older, who seemed like the main user base for these things based on who was making videos, were pretty savvy when it came to marketing.

“You can do that? From what I’ve seen, based on who’s making videos at least, most of the users are people my age up to, like, ten years older. Our generation is pretty immune to being advertised to,” I said.

He gave me a look I recognized, since Chef, Mr. French and my mother all gave it to me from time to time, where they found my naïveté funny.

“I hate to tell you, but you guys aren’t all that immune to being advertised to. Sure, the really blatant stuff maybe, but if we get an influencer to push one of our albums, your generation buys it up in droves.”

“So is that what you’re doing, paying people to make viral videos with new songs?”

“Sometimes. If it’s one of the big artists, we make sure they have some requirements for assisting in marketing, which sometimes means radio spots but now also means having an account on these apps and making a few videos about their newest release. But yeah, for a big release we’ll pay a few influencers to make videos with a song we’re pushing. But, like I said, we’re not to the point of doing that widely, yet. It’s mostly the focus of our main office ad team, which works on the big names.”

“I get it. I was just curious,” I said.

He’d already explained what kinds of marketing they were planning on doing, and that had not been included, so I knew what to expect. I just hadn’t really thought much about this end of the industry, and found it interesting.

“What if the artist tried to do it themselves?”

“Like I said, in a lot of cases we mandate that in contracts, but even if we don’t we really suggest you go for it. Beyond increasing your sales, it helps build a following, which will give you larger crowds for your concerts and make it more likely the label will invest in you more.”