Rebirth 1991: Keep the Fame, I'll Take the Royalties

The Consignment Extortion

The rhythmic, industrial thud of the jewel-case assembly line echoed off the concrete walls of the Sovereign Manufacturing Plant in the San Fernando Valley. It was mid-September of 1992, and the air was thick with the smell of warm polycarbonate and the sheer, intoxicating scent of physical inventory.

Thousands of copies of the ”Creep” single—crisp, perfectly shrink-wrapped compact discs and cassettes—were piling up in heavy cardboard distribution boxes.

Paul Rudd, sweating through a t-shirt that was now permanently stained with assembly grease, dropped a taped box onto a wooden pallet with a groan that rattled his spine. He leaned against the metal conveyor belt, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand.

”Elias,” Paul wheezed, his voice raw. ”We have printed sixty thousand units. The warehouse is literally becoming a fire hazard. We have a physical product, but we have nowhere to put it. The distribution networks are completely blocked!”

Elias van Kempen stood on the metal catwalk above the factory floor, his vintage leather jacket perfectly draped over his shoulders. He was looking down at the growing mountain of inventory, his expression one of absolute, unbothered calculation.

”They are not blocked, Paul. They are merely heavily taxed,” Elias corrected smoothly, his baritone voice carrying over the mechanical din. ”I spoke with the regional purchasing manager for Tower Records this morning. They are willing to stock our inventory in all seventy-five of their West Coast retail locations.”

Paul’s eyes lit up. The exhaustion vanished. ”Tower Records?! Elias, that’s the biggest music retailer in the country! If we get into Tower, we bypass the independent record stores entirely! We’re rich!”

”Do not celebrate prematurely, Paul,” Elias murmured, descending the metal stairs with aristocratic grace. ”The purchasing manager informed me that because Sovereign Media is an independent label without a major distributor, they require a ’Promotional Shelf-Space Fee’ to carry the product.”

”A shelf-space fee? Okay, fine. How much?” Paul asked, bracing himself.

”Fifty thousand dollars,” Elias stated, his dark eyes turning into cold, sociopathic voids. ”Per month. And that merely guarantees the product will be placed in the standard alphabetical bins in the back of the store. If we want End-Cap placement—the highly visible racks at the front of the aisles—they require an additional twenty-five thousand dollars.”

Paul staggered back, clutching his chest. ”Seventy-five thousand dollars a month just to put our CDs on a shelf?! That’s extortion! That’s literally the mafia!”

”It is a retail monopoly, Paul,” Elias said, adjusting his cuffs. ”They control the physical square footage where the consumers spend their money. They believe they have the leverage to dictate the entry fee.”

”So, what do we do?” Paul panicked. ”We can’t pay that! We’ll bleed out before the royalties clear! Do we call Tommy Mottola and beg for a distribution deal?”

Elias looked at Paul as if the actor had just suggested setting the factory on fire.

”We do not beg, Paul. And we certainly do not pay fifty thousand dollars for a piece of wood in a shopping mall,” Elias declared, his aura shifting into pure, predatory dominance. ”If Tower Records believes they control the demand, we simply have to manufacture a reality where the demand controls Tower Records.”

Elias reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a thick wad of cash. He peeled off twenty crisp hundred-dollar bills. Two thousand dollars. The physical pain of parting with the capital flared in his chest, but he ruthlessly suppressed it. It was seed money for a psychological war.

”Call Owen,” Elias commanded, handing the cash to Paul. ”Tell him to go to the UCLA campus. We are going to hire a private army.”

The following morning, the regional headquarters of Tower Records on Sunset Boulevard was operating with its usual, chaotic efficiency.

Greg, the Senior Regional Purchasing Manager, sat in his glass-walled office, sipping a lukewarm coffee and reviewing sales reports. He was a man in his late forties, wearing an expensive, tailored suit, projecting the smug arrogance of a gatekeeper who had just rejected a dozen desperate indie labels before lunch.

He was looking at the ’Creep’ file on his desk. The kid from Sovereign Media had hung up on him yesterday when he quoted the seventy-five-thousand-dollar End-Cap fee. Greg smirked. The kid would call back. They always called back when they realized they couldn’t sell CDs out of their trunks.

Suddenly, Greg’s office phone rang.

He picked it up. ”Greg speaking.”

”Hey, Greg, it’s Mark down at the Sunset strip location,” the store manager’s voice came through the receiver, sounding frantic and breathless. ”Listen, I need you to authorize an emergency purchase order right now. We need the ’Creep’ single. Elias van Kempen. We need at least five hundred units by noon.”

Greg frowned, sitting up. ”Five hundred units? Mark, that’s an unsigned indie track. It’s barely charting on the secondary radio markets. Tell the kids to buy the new Pearl Jam album.”

”I can’t tell them to buy Pearl Jam, Greg!” Mark yelled over the phone. ”I have thirty kids in the store right now screaming for ’Creep’! The phone hasn’t stopped ringing since we opened! Every time I hang up, another teenager calls asking if we have it in stock! They’re getting aggressive! If I don’t get this CD on the shelves, they’re going to tear the store apart!”

Greg blinked, utterly bewildered. ”Thirty kids? Are you sure?”

Before he could answer, Greg’s second line lit up. He put Mark on hold and switched over.

”Greg! It’s Sarah from the Westwood store near UCLA,” another manager panicked. ”We are getting swamped! I have a line of college kids out the door demanding the Sovereign Media release! I don’t even have a barcode for it in the system! We are losing thousands of dollars in foot traffic because we don’t have the product!”

Line three lit up. Then line four.

Within thirty minutes, Greg had fielded calls from twelve different store managers across Los Angeles County. The narrative was identical: absolute, unadulterated retail panic. Teenagers were flooding the stores, demanding the track they had heard in the malls and on KROQ, and threatening to boycott Tower Records entirely if they didn’t stock it.

It was a retail phenomenon. It was the birth of a cultural obsession.

It was also entirely, one hundred percent fake.

Three blocks away, in a cramped, un-airconditioned rented conference room above a laundromat, Paul Rudd and Owen Wilson were sweating profusely, acting as field generals for the most absurd military campaign in Hollywood history.

Sitting at folding tables around the room were exactly one hundred UCLA drama students. They were all holding scripts, clutching lists of Tower Records phone numbers, and speaking into cheap, prepaid cell phones and landlines Elias had aggressively negotiated from a desperate telecom provider.

”Alright, people, keep the energy up!” Paul yelled, clapping his hands, fully embracing his role as Executive Assistant. ”Remember your motivation! You are an angsty, misunderstood teenager in the Valley! You heard ’Creep’ while buying jeans at Mervyn’s, and it changed your life! You need this CD to survive!”

A drama student in a flannel shirt nodded seriously, dialing a number. ”Hello, Tower Records? Yeah, do you guys have the new Elias van Kempen single? No? Are you kidding me? Everyone is listening to it! You guys suck! I’m going to Sam Goody!”

The student slammed the phone down.

”Excellent emotional truth, Chad!” Owen Wilson drawled from the corner, eating a slice of cold pizza. ”Very believable outrage. Now, rotate the voices. Try doing a surfer accent next. We need demographic diversity, man.”

Elias van Kempen stood at the front of the room, looking at the chaotic symphony of Astroturfing. He had spent two thousand dollars on student labor, but he had successfully manufactured a million-dollar market panic.

The digital loan shark in his head delivered its daily toll, entirely unbothered by the genius of the operation.

[CHA-CHING!][SYSTEM WARNING: DAILY MAINTENANCE FEE DEDUCTION INITIATED.][DEDUCTING -$50.00 USD FROM LIQUID CASH RESERVE.]

Elias’s liquid cash dropped to $2,115,096.00. He checked his Rolex. It was 1:00 PM.

”The psychological pressure has reached critical mass,” Elias announced, his voice effortlessly silencing the room. ”The regional manager will be forced to secure the inventory or face a mutiny from his store operators. Cease all communications. The trap is sprung.”

By 3:00 PM, the heavy glass doors of the Sovereign Media warehouse on Sunset Boulevard swung open.

Greg, the Senior Regional Purchasing Manager for Tower Records, practically sprinted into the lobby. His expensive suit was wrinkled, his tie was crooked, and he looked like a man who had just survived a multi-car pileup.

Elias was waiting for him, seated behind his modular steel desk in his newly enclosed, acoustic-glass corner office.

Greg burst into the office without knocking. He didn’t offer a polite greeting. He slammed his hands down on Elias’s desk, panting heavily.

”Elias, kau harus memberiku stoknya!” Greg begged, his voice cracking with sheer, unadulterated commercial terror. (Elias, you have to give me the stock!) ”Tokoku di Sunset Boulevard dikepung anak-anak yang mencari lagu ’Creep’! Manajer tokoku mengancam akan berhenti! Beri aku harga grosir standar, aku janji akan menaruhnya di rak biasa.” (My store on Sunset Boulevard is surrounded by kids looking for the song ’Creep’! My store manager is threatening to quit! Give me the standard wholesale price, I promise I will put it on the regular shelves.)

Elias didn’t flinch. He didn’t look triumphant. He slowly reached out, picked up a porcelain cup of coffee, and took a measured, elegant sip.

He mentally engaged the loan shark. He needed the kill shot.

[SYSTEM SHOP ACCESSED.][ACTIVATING: LIDAH PENIPU / MASTER PITCH (DURATION: 5 MINUTES)][COST: -10 CP][CURRENT BALANCE: 50 CP]

[CHA-CHING!]

The skill flooded his vocal cords, layering his words with an inescapable, terrifyingly persuasive logic.

Elias slowly set the coffee cup down. He looked up at the sweating executive, unleashing a smile so profoundly shameless it bordered on the demonic.

”Rak biasa adalah untuk musisi yang bisa digantikan, Greg,” Elias murmured, his baritone voice a dark, velvet hammer that completely crushed Greg’s desperate plea. (Regular shelves are for replaceable musicians, Greg.) ”Kau tidak sedang membeli stok; kau memohon untuk menyelamatkan reputasi tokomu dari amukan demografis.” (You are not buying stock; you are begging to save your store’s reputation from a demographic rampage.)

Greg swallowed hard, a massive sweatdrop rolling down his temple. The kid was right. He wasn’t negotiating from a position of strength anymore. He was begging.

”I... I can waive the promotional fee,” Greg stammered, frantically trying to salvage his dignity. ”No fifty thousand dollars. I’ll put it on the end-caps for free. Just sell me the units at standard wholesale. Four dollars a CD.”

”I am not a wholesaler, Greg. I am a predator,” Elias corrected flawlessly, pulling a pre-drafted contract from his desk drawer. He slid the heavy, watermarked paper across the steel surface.

”Aku akan memberikan inventaris fisik ini tanpa biaya di muka,” Elias stated, dictating the terms of his surrender. (I will provide this physical inventory with no upfront cost.) ”Namun, sebagai gantinya, CD ini akan mengambil alih seluruh pajangan depan (End-Cap) tokomu selama tiga puluh hari, dan Sovereign Media akan mengambil delapan puluh persen dari harga eceran.” (However, in exchange, this CD will take over all of your front end-cap displays for thirty days, and Sovereign Media will take eighty percent of the retail price.)

Greg stared at the contract, his brain physically rejecting the math. Eighty percent?! It was a massacre! The standard industry split was roughly thirty percent to the label, seventy to the retailer. Elias wasn’t just demanding the lion’s share; he was demanding the entire carcass.

”Eighty percent?!” Greg shrieked, his voice echoing off the glass partitions. ”Are you insane?! That leaves us with pennies! We’d be losing money on the operational overhead just to ring the register!”

”Kau pada dasarnya bekerja sebagai kasirku bulan ini,” Elias smiled, confirming the nightmare. (You are basically working as my cashier this month.) ”You aren’t making a profit on my CD, Greg. You are using my CD to ensure that the thousands of teenagers flooding into your stores don’t walk across the street to Sam Goody. You are paying me an eighty percent premium for foot traffic.”

Elias leaned forward, resting his forearms on the desk, his dark eyes locking onto Greg with absolute, unyielding dominance.

”Sign the consignment agreement,” Elias ordered softly. ”Or I will call my logistics team, and I will personally deliver fifty thousand units to every independent record store in Los Angeles by sunset. Tower Records will be the only chain in the country that doesn’t stock the anthem of a generation. Your CEO will fire you before breakfast tomorrow.”

Greg looked at the contract. He looked at the terrifying sixteen-year-old boy in the leather jacket.

He was beaten. He had tried to extort a toll booth fee from a tank, and he had been entirely flattened.

With a tragic, pathetic whimper of a man whose corporate ego had been fully annihilated, Greg pulled a gold pen from his suit pocket. His hand shook violently as he scrawled his signature across the bottom of the Consignment Agreement, legally binding Tower Records to the most predatory retail split in modern history.

”You’re a monster,” Greg hissed, tossing the pen onto the desk. ”You’re a bloodsucking parasite.”

”I am a fiduciary, Greg,” Elias corrected smoothly, pulling the contract back and slipping it into his ledger. ”The delivery trucks are waiting at the loading dock. You may commence loading.”

Greg turned on his heel and stumbled out of the office, looking like a man walking to his own execution.

Paul Rudd, who had been hiding outside the glass door, slowly opened it and peeked inside. He looked at Elias with a mixture of absolute horror and profound, worshipful reverence.

”Elias... you just forced Tower Records to give us their premium shelf space for free, and you took eighty percent of the revenue,” Paul whispered, genuinely terrified. ”You just robbed the biggest retail chain in the country.”

”I did not rob them, Paul. I merely optimized their supply chain,” Elias said, standing up and walking toward the factory floor.

Deep within his mind, the system erupted in a golden symphony of triumph.

[CHA-CHING!][SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: THE CONSIGNMENT EXTORTION HACK EXECUTED WITH MAXIMUM ASTROTURFING SOCIOPATHY!][EVALUATION: YOU HIRED COLLEGE STUDENTS TO FAKE A CULTURAL PHENOMENON, THEN USED THE RESULTING PANIC TO BLEED A RETAIL MONOPOLY DRY. YOUR SHAMELESSNESS IS A WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION. THE SYSTEM BOWS.][REWARD: +15 SHAMELESS POINTS (CP) DEPOSITED.]

Elias felt the warm surge of digital capital. His CP balance hit 75. He was heavily armed.

He walked out onto the loading dock of the warehouse.

Dozens of Sovereign Media delivery vans—rented cheaply and driven by more underpaid college students—were backing up to the bay doors. Thousands of boxes of the ”Creep” single were being loaded, destined for the prime, unmissable front displays of every major record store on the West Coast.

He had bypassed the radio. He had bypassed the major labels. And now, he had conquered the physical storefronts.

The Pop Dictators didn’t stand a chance.