Rest (10)
It was true that Anyverse was the most successful K-pop platform out there.
But its ceiling was obvious.
For one thing, it had failed to bring in foreign artists beyond K-pop, and several major agencies were still clinging to their own apps.
The reason was simple: they feared that, down the line, control of the entertainment industry might end up in TopTier Entertainment's hands.
But if Continue Capital acquired a 70 percent stake?
Then Anyverse would no longer feel like a subsidiary of TopTier Entertainment so much as a subsidiary of Continue Capital. That alone would make it far easier to strike partnerships with other agencies.
President Park Jin-woong asked me, “Can you guarantee our independence in management?”
I started to say yes, then changed my mind.
“With one exception.”
“What is it?”
“How much are you planning to charge in platform fees?”
“At the moment, we’re planning fifteen percent.”
He watched my face carefully as he continued, “You may think that’s too low to be profitable, but don’t worry. Once we’ve taken the market, we’ll raise the fee.”
In other words, once the platform became a must-have app for artists and fans alike, they intended to start squeezing revenue out of it in earnest.
Using low prices to capture the market before raising fees was a standard move for platform companies.
People might think you could simply stop using it if the price went up, but by then the lock-in effect had already taken hold.
Take delivery apps, for example. Merchants can’t leave because that’s where the customers are, and customers can’t leave because that’s where the merchants are.
“How much are you thinking of raising it by?”
“Up to thirty percent. On top of that, there’d be additional fees for ad placements, promotions, and the like...”
Apparently, he thought I’d be disappointed that the fee was too low, because he launched into an earnest explanation of how they’d raise it and maximize profits.
I cut him off and asked, “Why thirty percent?”
“That’s...”
“Let me guess. Because Enple charges thirty percent, right?”
As Tom Scott, the CEO, had said, the platform fee Enple had started at thirty percent had long since hardened into a kind of golden rule across the industry.
You got thirty percent taken out of the app market, thirty percent taken out of the platform, and another thirty percent taken out by the partner company.
After only three cuts like that, the artist’s share shrank to 34 percent. After four, it dropped to 24 percent.
Hearing that, I could understand why Anyverse hadn’t become a huge success.
“Hah.”
When I let out a sigh, he looked slightly taken aback.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You can’t make money if you think that cheaply.”
“What? What do you mean? Doesn’t everyone charge about that much?”
“Let me tell you something interesting. Legend Games launched the Legend Games Store with the goal of taking on Stream. But even after pouring an absurd amount of money into it, it still trails Stream by nearly a factor of two in market share. And yet Tom Scott still thinks he’s won. Why do you think that is?”
“I-I’m not sure.”
I gave him the answer.
“Because Stream lowered its platform fee from the existing thirty percent to twenty. That benefited a huge number of game companies. CEO Scott even told me himself that if Stream’s fee had been that low from the beginning, they never would have entered the ESD market at all.”
He was just as furious about Enple and Guble taking thirty percent from app-market fees, calling it outright predation.
“If Anyverse succeeds, it won’t be because TopTier did everything right on its own. It’ll be thanks to the efforts of the countless artists who took part in it. And now you want to raise the fees once it succeeds? If you approach it with that kind of mindset, your growth will hit a wall before long. Instead of figuring out how to squeeze a few more dollars out of the agencies, wouldn’t it be better to think about how this platform can actually help artists and fans?”
His face turned red.
“I think that’s a little harsh.”
TopTier Entertainment was the undisputed number one entertainment company in Korea, with a market cap higher than most major conglomerates. It was probably true he’d never had to listen to anyone talk to him like this.
But that was his problem, not mine.
“Why not lower the fee as much as possible instead? I think you could probably take it down to ten percent.”
He pushed back. “If we did that, we’d be running a deficit, not making a profit. Even the Legend Games Store is still operating at a loss, isn’t it?”
“That may be true for now. But through Anyverse, you’ll be able to gather even more fans of Mukids. Then you can sell more albums, more merchandise, and more concert tickets. It’ll also be a huge help when you launch new groups in the future. You’d be able to target the global market from day one. If you bring in as many artists and fans as possible, the profits will follow on their own. Isn’t ten percent of ten billion in sales better than thirty percent of one hundred million?”
Once word got out that Anyverse could maximize profits, plenty of singers would rush to join.
President Park Jin-woong’s expression darkened little by little. He looked angry, maybe even furious.
I ignored whether he was angry or not and went on, “If I didn’t want this to work, I wouldn’t even be having this conversation. In any case, if your plan is just to run a fee racket, then we have no interest in investing.”
After getting lectured by a mere employee(?), he turned to Senior Dongho and asked, “Branch manager, do you feel the same way?”
Senior Dongho nodded.
“I told you from the beginning. Whatever Team Leader Han says is what I mean.”
“......”
After President Park Jin-woong left, Senior Dongho said to me, “He looks angry.”
“Does it matter?”
In the end, CEO Yu Hyun-moo would be the one making the decision anyway.
“Still, you really don’t hesitate to say hard things, do you?”
“They were all things worth saying.”
You couldn’t do business by saying only nice things.
“You don’t need to worry about what other people think. They should be the ones worrying about what you think, not the other way around.”
You only bothered to be careful with someone if you wanted something from them. If you didn’t want anything, there was nothing to worry about.
And this time, too, the ones who wanted cooperation were them, not us.
“The scale of our investments keeps getting bigger. Do you think I can really keep doing well as branch manager?”
“Don’t worry. The position makes the person.”
I had gotten a crash course at headquarters, but as a branch manager I was still lacking in plenty of ways. I was young, and I didn’t have much experience.
If Continue Capital had been an ordinary company, management would have been difficult.
But if you were an absolute top dog from the start, the story changed. At that level, the other side usually bowed their heads and came in on their own.
That made me think back on the old days.
“Standing here like this makes me think of the days when I used to go around visiting companies and meeting with IR people.”
“Ah! That was fun.”
Senior Dongho had gone out of his way to visit agencies just to see idols.
One report could send a stock price soaring or crashing, so when a securities analyst showed up, people usually treated him very well.
Later on, though, the staff got so fed up they actually started telling him to stop coming.
“Remember when we went out saying we were off to visit a company, but we got caught skipping out by the department head and had to write apology letters together?”
I hadn’t been planning to ditch work from the start. It had just been so hot that we’d stopped by a jjimjilbang, a Korean bathhouse, to wash up and rest for a bit, only to end up flopping down and falling asleep.
Senior Dongho tilted his head. “Did that happen?”
Ah. Had that only happened in the first timeline?
I brushed it off vaguely. “Anyway, that’s what happened.”
We had stuck together like glue for three whole years before the Primus Fund blew up, so there had been all sorts of things like that.
Now that I thought about it, they were all memories.
It was a little sad that I was the only one still carrying those memories now.
“Ah! You are going to the concert, right?”
“Well...”
I was about to say no, but then I suddenly remembered the conversation I’d had with Jiyu.
“Do you have tickets?”
“Of course. I’ve got some on hand.”
Senior Dongho proudly pulled out the tickets and showed them off.
“Do you know how much these would go for if I sold them right now?”
“How much?”
“Since they’re royal seats, I’d probably get five thousand dollars apiece.”
I was shocked.
“Five hundred, not five thousand?”
“That’s the face value. On the resale market, they’ve gone up more than tenfold.”
SoFi Stadium, where the LA K-pop Festival was being held, was packed with people.
All around the venue, events were being held as well.
Dozens of booths had been set up to promote Korean culture and tourism, and the food trucks were selling all kinds of fusion Korean dishes.
Off to one side, there was even an event to select K-pop cover dance teams. Amateur groups of all kinds climbed onto a makeshift stage and showed off what they could do.
Jackson had come here with his young daughter and son.
After his divorce, he had raised the children on his own, and both of them were devoted K-pop fans.
When they heard that the largest K-pop festival in LA was going to be held here, they had been saving their allowance and taking part-time jobs for months.
He had been so busy working that he hadn’t even had time to play with them properly. Since it was also his son’s birthday, he’d planned to go to the concert and make some good family memories.
And then, finally, the day tickets went on sale arrived.
Jackson had assumed that if he clicked the moment sales opened, he could buy tickets without much trouble. But that was a gross underestimate of K-pop’s popularity.
The instant ticket sales began, the reservation site collapsed, and the waiting queue shot up to five hundred thousand. After waiting for what felt like forever, he finally got through the line, only to find that every seat had already sold out.
Later, when he read the news, he saw that three million people around the world had logged on at the same time just to buy tickets.
Even though he hadn’t gotten any, Jackson didn’t want to disappoint the kids, so he took them to the concert venue anyway.
He had seen an announcement saying that tickets canceled because of flight delays or other circumstances would be sold on a first-come, first-served basis at the venue.
But when he actually arrived early with the children, he couldn’t help being stunned.
The on-site sales line was already stretched out for ages, and even the waiting list was closed. Apparently, fans had been camping out for days just to grab any canceled tickets that became available.
His son, who had even brought a placard to cheer for his favorite singer, hung his head.
“Dad, we’re not going to see the concert?”
“Uh, well...”
As Jackson stood there at a loss, a man approached him.
“Excuse me, do you need tickets?”
“I do, but...”
“Ah! I happen to have a few extra tickets on me. Would you like to buy them?”
At that, Jackson’s face lit up.
“How much are they?”
“One thousand dollars each.”
“......”
As far as he knew, the cheapest ticket had been eighty-eight dollars.
And now it was a thousand dollars?
At that price, three tickets were basically a month’s living expenses.
“C-could you maybe lower the price a little...?”
The scalper snorted. “Come on! People are desperate to buy them even at this price. If you don’t want them, move along. What are you trying to see a concert for when you don’t even have the money?”
Michel, the eldest daughter who knew exactly how hard things were at home, said, “It’s okay, Dad. We don’t have to see the concert. Let’s just eat something good and hang out. It’s already fun just being here.”
But little Koby burst into tears.
“Waaah! I told the other kids I was going to see a concert on my birthday!”
Seeing his daughter forcing a smile even though she was disappointed, and his son crying in heartbreak, Jackson decided he had to do something, even if it was only for the children.
“I’ll take them.”
The scalper grinned. “How many do you need?”
“Two, please.”
As the scalper reached into his pocket to hand over the tickets, a young Asian man came up to them.
“Oh! Are you selling those tickets right now?”
“That’s right.”
“How much each?”
“A thousand dollars.”
“How many do you have in total?”
“Eleven.”
The young man smiled. “Perfect. That’s exactly how many I need. I’ll pay fifteen hundred dollars per ticket, so sell me all of them.”
The scalper’s face brightened.
“You got the money?”
“Of course. I’ll pay cash right here.”
The young man flashed a wallet stuffed with hundred-dollar bills.
“Okay. Then I’ll sell them all.”
Jackson looked flustered. “No, I said I’d buy them first. What kind of thing is that?”
The scalper answered shamelessly, “Then you can pay fifteen hundred too.”
“......”
Jackson had nothing to say.
“Could you show me the tickets first?”
“Here you go.”
“Just a moment.”
After checking the tickets, the young man called someone and said, “Section A, K22, 23, 24, 25; Section D, J17, 18, 19, 20; and Section F, G36, 37, 38. I’ve confirmed the scalper sale, so please cancel the reservations. And come over here right away. This is...”