Chapter Forty-Two: A+ Audio

The band members had learned their lesson the hard way. They behaved themselves, rehearsed at Joe Music every day, and went nowhere else.

Half a month later, Song Ya propped his legs on the mixing console and watched rehearsal while contentedly gnawing on a watermelon. He couldn't give one to a white person, but surely he could buy one for himself. They were pretty expensive, too.

He'd been back for half a month, and he'd never before felt so warmly toward the South Side of Chicago. Even though reports of shootings in the news were far more frequent than usual, he was still more comfortable staying here than in New York. That was where he'd experienced his first discrimination since traveling through time. He had to be extra careful about everything he did and said. The feeling could be summed up in two words: mentally exhausting! And to be honest, those two crime-ridden neighborhoods in New York weren't much better than this place.

Apart from supervising rehearsals, he and Eric had nearly mastered mixing. He'd also spent the past few days talking with Delay about synthesizers. There was always a gap between the finished versions of his two apocalypse songs and the backing tracks of the originals. After looking into it, he'd concluded the problem lay in the audio synthesis: synthesizers of the era lacked many of the synthesized sounds in the original backing tracks. Delay was helping him work on a solution.

"Fuck You~ Fuck You~"

"Ahem."

Hayden walked in, faking a cough. "I found an agent for Allie. He'll take care of everything, and the two of you won't have to cross paths again."

Allie... Song Ya had already called her from New York to break up. She'd kept calling his pager and pestering him for a while, but eventually accepted reality. Thanks to Song Ya, she'd gotten a few seconds of close-up screen time in the Thrift Shop music video. When the video became a huge hit, a talent scout really had gone to her school to look for her. She'd turned to Song Ya for help again, so he'd left it to Hayden to sort things out.

"Thanks." He'd already done more than enough for her, so Song Ya didn't feel particularly guilty.

"Thrift Shop came in at number eleven on the Billboard weekly chart in its first week, seventh in its second, then dropped a bit in the third, to number nine..."

Hayden had come to discuss business. "Unless something unexpected happens, single sales will start to decline gradually, too. SBK has restocked once, and according to their calculations, actual sales have already passed a million copies. We don't have the exact figure yet."

"Looks like choosing SBK was absolutely the right decision." Song Ya had been thinking about this income for a long time.

"Yeah." Hayden was excited, too. As Song Ya rose to fame, Hayden's income and standing at William Morris had climbed right along with him. "Besides this income, BMI will start sending payments regularly from now on. And with your second song about to come out, you need to be careful with your finances. You should find an accountant as soon as possible."

BMI regularly tracked how often its members' songs were played in places like for-profit radio stations, shopping malls, bars, and restaurants, then charged fees based on the number of plays. The fee for a single play was very, very small, but it added up over time. As long as he held the copyright, the money would keep coming in. And if a song was used in something like a movie soundtrack, he could negotiate a substantial licensing fee and get a share of that, too.

"An accountant?" Song Ya rubbed his chin.

"William Morris works with plenty of reputable accounting firms. Here in Chicago..." Hayden began his pitch.

"Emmmm..." Song Ya had no intention of relying on Hayden's connections. He didn't want his manager and accountant teaming up to pull the wool over his eyes later. "They're expensive, right?"

"Of course, but you get what you pay for," Hayden replied.

"I'll think about it. What about school? Right now, I just want to move out of the South Side as soon as possible..." Song Ya changed the subject.

"It's still early for school enrollment. Based on your future income, you can raise your budget a little. Why not consider private schools? That would make the search a lot easier." Whenever they talked about schools, Hayden got a headache. It was hard to find anything that met Song Ya's previous budget and requirements.

"Fine..." Song Ya gave him another figure.

After Hayden left, Song Ya found time to visit Goodman.

Goodman's law firm had expanded since Song Ya had last seen him. He'd rented the building across from his old office, which was much more spacious, and even hired an older woman as a secretary.

"An accountant?" Goodman thought it over. "If you think the big firms are too expensive, Chicago has plenty of small ones. Some have only one accountant. They mainly serve the old-money crowd, families who've worked with them for generations. Their history and reputation are no worse than those of the big firms. But there are all sorts in that line of work, and there's a chance you could get swindled. The big firms don't have that concern."

"Can you recommend anyone?" Song Ya asked.

"By the way, you have Chinese ancestry, right?" Goodman suddenly had an idea. "Chinese people are good at math, and a lot of them go into this line of work. Their reputations are better than those of other ethnic groups, too. They're also quieter, and their social circles aren't as complicated as the Jewish community's... But there are downsides. A lot of Chinese accountants in Chinatown have ties to Chinese gangs, and their approach to money can be overly conservative at times, while at other times they're particularly prone to gambling."

Song Ya was intrigued. With Goodman's help, he interviewed several Chinese-American accountants and chose one who shared his surname, Song Asheng. In his fifties, he had a clean record, had long served a local Chinese-American family, and had an excellent reputation. He was also from Ningbo, so he could speak Mandarin with Song Ya.

Not long after Song Ya and Song Asheng settled on a contract, the proceeds from Song Ya's bet with Daniel arrived.

Since vinyl records and CDs cost more than cassettes, three percent of the sales revenue from the first million singles brought Song Ya a little over two hundred thousand dollars. After deducting Hayden's ten percent and Song Asheng's fee, he took home exactly one hundred and eighty thousand.

"Next, I'll have to keep pressing SBK for my first ten-percent royalty payment, too." With everything settled, Song Ya gave the order with a satisfied grin.

"I know, boss. Don't you worry."

Song Asheng was thin, and a monocle—rarely seen these days—sat securely in one eye socket. He put away the documents. "Anything else you need, boss?"

Song Ya enjoyed hearing Song Asheng call him "boss" in his Ningbo accent. "A friend suggested I register an audio company, mainly to manage the copyrights for some audio I've invented. What do you recommend?"

It had been Delay's suggestion. When he saw Song Ya trying to develop new synthesizer sounds, he'd told him he needed to secure the copyrights first.

"For a company like that, it'd be best to register it in Delaware. Taxes, legal matters, all sorts of things are pretty convenient there..." Song Asheng advised.

Song Ya decided to trust the professional. "All right, take care of it. Register it as soon as possible. I'm a minor, so prepare any documents that need a guardian's authorization and give them to me first."

"What should the company be called?" Song Asheng asked.

"Hmm..." Song Ya thought for a moment. "Let's use my nickname, APLUS. A+ Audio. What do you think?"

"Very good, very good. That's a very good name." Song Asheng nodded again and again.