Chapter 405.Coming Back From Exile

Singers have tried a lot of marketing tactics to sell their albums. Though, oftentimes, there would be a whole marketing agency working on ideas to market an album. 

Even then, a lot of the albums coming out would be generic in terms of marketing. 

After all, it was easy to hold onto the popularity of the singer or just make a catchy beat that could go viral instead of thinking of a unique marketing idea. 

This had also worked very well in the past with several hit digital albums. Music was the easiest thing to spread, so just making it catchy and having it used by a lot of people in short videos was enough. 

But Aiden had different things in mind. 

When the idea struck his mind, he played around with it for a moment. Like a lot of members of the team, he was also thinking about collaborations with different artists but he wanted them to be more than just for marketing reasons.

At the same time, he wanted the album to spread through songs. Not due to anything else. 

After collecting his thoughts together, he proposed a theme for his album. 

"Hey, how about we try to collaborate with the top bands of each decade to make songs? Like songs from each era? You said that songs from the 80s and 90s were making a comeback right?"

Aiden looked at his team who looked confused at his proposal. 

"Yeah, they did make a comeback. It's like modernising a tune from the 80s. Even Hollywood is remaking a lot of their old stuff these days, so I guess the music industry is going down the same route."

Wade said and Aiden nodded his head before giving out a smile. He started explaining his idea for the theme of the album. 

"So, my idea is basically not to collaborate with the current famous singers but to make songs with the famous bands and singers of the 80s and 90s then 2000s. Every few years, the top singers shuffle. Some get into different fields while some retire. With the current trend, it would help us and give us a unique touch."

"But that won't help us get more stream numbers or popularity. That sounds noble but I don't know if it will help make the album popular."

One of the members of his team asked that question. It was a young man and everyone waited for Aiden to respond to him. 

He already had the answer ready. 

"Well, you think those bands aren't popular?"

"I mean, there's a reason why they ran out of popularity." The young man replied. 

"They did but their music never did. Even now, those songs. The original ones might not have a respectable number of streams but there's been tons of remixes of those songs. Hollywood movies are incorporating them in a lot of their movies."

In recent years, especially the last decade, a lot of movies in action or comedy genres have taken help of old songs by remixing them in their soundtrack. The funky music had helped elevate a few scenes for Hollywood. 

It was one of the reasons why the old music was coming back to fashion. In a way, it was like a cycle. 

"Even if you say that these bands or singers are a thing of the past, there will still be fans of them around. Or at least people who had been fans of these groups. Nostalgia is a thing."

"Yes, it worked like magic during [Agnas]."

Tom said and everyone around them nodded. They all agreed with the fact that music had lived on even though the identity of their singers hadn't. 

Music was often like that. 

"One more thing is that if the music is good enough, who is singing it wouldn't matter. We all know that in the end, an album sells because of the contents. And an album in the end needs good music."

Like that, the theme of the album has been put into place. 

No one disagreed with Aiden as his points were very clear and sane. He had always strived to do something unique and this was definitely on the lines with that. 

But one more thing was left to discuss. 

"But how will we target a wider demographic country wise? Going for the theme of 'Sound of different eras' might work for America but we were always going to make this album more Global."

Sasha asked and Aiden had also thought about it. 

"Well, that would be handled by a European tour, right? I was always looking forward to going on a tour. Singers gain a lot of fans as they travel around the world. Moreover, we could go for bands that were always popular in countries in Europe. That will help."

"What about Asia?"

"I think we could do a collaboration with an Asian artist next year for that. Let's focus on Europe for now."

Aiden's mind was only focusing on one thing at one time. Asia was in mind as everyone knew that the power was shifting in recent years, both in Hollywood and the music industry. 

Asian artists and movies have started to slowly earn more and more as time went by. And they would surely compete neck to neck with Hollywood one day. 

So, it was a priority to target it when he could. 

But for this album, it was just better to focus on Europe and just making good music. 

***

His team got to work very quickly after the meeting as they needed to work on multiple things. Collaborations were also not going to be easy as they were not trying to work with a current artist but an artist from the past. 

It was hard to reach them and there was no guarantee whether they would agree to it. 

So, the team searched out a lot of artists and marked out a few of them. Popular artists from the 80s, then from the 90s and then from the 2000s. There were lots of groups associated with these eras. Each decade had 30 famous bands and singers overall. 

Some fizzled out in a few years while others ruled for a decade. 

It was tough to get these singers to collaborate simply for the reason that a lot of the bands have disbanded and others have retired. It was very tough to get the disbanded bands together and Aiden wasn't going to try either. 

​ After all, a lot of the bands would disband due to fights and won't want to work with each other again. 

Aiden was not confident to solve differences that have lasted decades. So, his team was mostly looking for bands that were in good touch or were still active in some form. 

Other than that, a marketing team was set up to push out the album. At least get the first word out that Aiden was working on something. 

For this, Sasha asked Aiden to post a photo of him with a guitar and some papers around the room to make it look like he was working on something. 

That photo was edited a bit before being posted on his social media. 

<I'm working on something new these days. Stay tuned.>

With that caption, it was done and just tens minutes later, the comments on the post exploded. Aiden had no idea that a lot of his fans were actually looking forward to another song from him. 

[I'm from Ohio, mf: So, does this mean what I think it means? Or it's just an ad or something along those lines because I would be very angry if it's an ad. I freaking want another Aiden song.]

[Skyneves: Aiden is finally back! I was extremely worried he had made a complete shift to acting. As a fan who founded the fan group due to his singing, this is the best news I have gotten in the day.]

[Hairy Allen: I never knew Aiden sings. I looked at the comments here and damn, he used to be a well known singer. I never got into the music side of him before but guess, this is my cue.]

[Send Dudes: I really hope this is an album rather than just one song. It's been so long and I'm tired of listening to old songs by Aiden. He doesn't realise how much talent he has when it comes to singing.]

[Newbie MeTuber: Hey, can anyone subscribe to my MeTube channel? My dad never came back after going to buy milk and I have to feed my sick mom. I play <Dancing Dragons> by the way.]

[Hollywood Insider: Shut up kid! Go beg somewhere else. This is the moment of a guy coming back from his exile to do great things. Let me silently be a part of it.]

Not only his fans, even others in the industry noticed it. A lot of celebrities who were following him, the people he has collaborated with before. 

And most specifically, people who considered him a rival.