8 Research x Buying Talents x Social Media

As I got home, I kept thinking of the plans I had for the rest of the day. First was to check how the music industry in this world was and if the songs from my previous world existed. Ryusuke and the band didn't seem to know On Top of the World or Imagine Dragons altogether, which made me doubt that they did.

Once at our residence, I thanked mom for picking me up and went to my room as quickly as I could. I picked an outfit I quite liked. I was a simple combination of a Chinese style linen shirt and also linen harem pants with a pair of comfortable black loafers. Both the shirt and the pants were creamy beige so they contrasted with the loafers. Overall, I thought it looked good.

Before putting my clothes on I took a bath, as I hadn't taken one after P.E. The feeling of comfort the cold water brought to me was amazing. It seemed that my stats also made it easier for me to recover from exhaustion, since it hadn't even been an hour and I was already feeling better.

Back in my room I turned on my PC and began my research on the music industry. It didn't matter which artist I searched, there were no results. As I had guessed, this world didn't have any of the songs that I wanted to bring over. On the other hand, bands like Beck and Black Stones existed. There were also many idol groups and solo artists all around, like Miku Izayoi or μ's. A variety of bands and singers that I knew from anime openings also existed, ranging between Uverworld, One Ok Rock and Radwimps to LiSA, Eir Aoi or Kenshi Yonezu.

As I wouldn't be stealing music from anime Japanese source, I was extremely elated. I would bring a lot of songs to this world and pave my way up the social ladder with the biggest platform on hand: DueTube. Yeah, apparently its name changed in this world. Besides that the capital G was Noogle and our dear picture uploading app was called Pictagram. That aside, I would be uploading my "originals" to DueTube while promoting myself through Pictagram, that way I would grow a lot.

People love attention, even if it isn't they themselves that picked it. As such, I created an account on all sites using a picture my sister took after I left the hospital and searched for a video of me singing today in the cafeteria. After scrolling through a couple of videos for around half an hour, I found it. The video had around a hundred thousand views already and it was literally titled "This crazy guy began singing in the middle of the lunch break!"

After laughing at the clickbaity title, I wrote a comment promoting myself shamelessly. I just said that I was the one who sang in the video and told them to check my profile image if they didn't believe me and, besides that, I also promoted my Pictagram. I had uploaded a few selfies I took with this outfit and a full body one I asked my sister to take for me. I could swear that she looked at me hungrily while taking the picture, but still decided to ignore it.

"*sigh* Shameless self-promotion done... next step, recording a song"

As I said those words, I left my room.

*

Two hours later I was back in my room with a new camera, a guitar, a keyboard, and a microphone. The good side of having been neglected is that now I got pretty much anything I wanted, though I didn't abuse it. This was the first time I had asked for something, besides my phone which was the latest model.

After I set everything up and connected the mic and camera to my PC, I did what I needed to do now. I asked the System to search for a Guitar and Piano Talents. As it turned out, I had earned quite a bit of Popularity Coins in my time at the school from all three major events. Entering the classroom, singing in the cafeteria and my heart-felt speech during P.E.

[Guitar and Piano Talents both cost PC 1000. Host currently has PC 3500. Buy the Talents?]

'Yup, just buy them Sys'

[Talents bought, integrating with the Host]

Again I felt the feeling from the time I increased my Singing Talent, which I would do again now. I wanted my first video to leave a mark of quality, and so I would try and do everything the best I could.

'How many PP did I earn today, Sys?'

[Exactly 10000, Host]

'Is it enough to increase all three of the talents to rank three?'

[That would be (Professional) and it would cost a total of 3500 PP per Talent, with the exception of Singing which would cost only 2000 as it already is (Experienced) in rank]

I made some calculations and realized I had just enough points. Thankfully I had more than enough points to increase them all and even had 1500 left for later.

'Increase them Sys'

[Talents increased. Singing from (Experienced) to (Professional), Guitar from (Experienced) to (Professional) and Piano from (Experienced) to (Professional)]

Once again, I could feel the knowledge flow into my brain from nowhere. I suddenly felt like I could play most riffs on a guitar and even serenade nature, though I knew that it was just the sudden high that was felt after learning how to do something new.

Now with the capability to do what I wanted, I turned the camera on and began recording. First was a short introduction for the channel. Something simple and easy to take in.

"Hey everyone! I'm Alan Bennet and I'm a music enthusiast and amateur singer and songwriter..." I went on to explain what this channel was about and how regularly they could expect a new song from me, which was around one new song every two weeks and two covers every other week. I also promoted my Pictagram account.

Since it would greatly help me grow, I asked every contact I had besides my family to promote me if they wanted. I also sent them the link to my DueTube channel so they could link it, and boy did it work. When people learned that I had made a channel of my own, they flocked to subscribe. Two hours after creating the channel I already had the entire school subscribed, which was around a thousand students. I did go to a big school now that I thought about it. My Pictagram followers also went up by the same number, and a lot of people that had seen the video of me singing where also promoting me, so I grew a lot.

Now was time for the hard part: picking a song, producing it from the ground and publishing it. I began brainstorming for ideas while I hummed and sang bits and pieces of different songs, but then I heard a knock on my door. When I opened it, my biggest helper and future manager had arrived. Not that I knew that.

"What are you doing?"