Unplugged Album (1)

“To get into the specifics… I think producing an Unplugged album will be closer to an experiment than an attempt to pursue success.”

Go Kyungmin’s words made everyone except Manager Jung Yuyeong question things. An attempt closer to an experiment rather than one aimed at success? Did a band that had only just made its first full-length album really have the leeway for something like that?

However, those doubts did not immediately turn into questions, because Manager Jung Yuyeong’s explanation followed.

“First! As Team Leader Go mentioned earlier, our primary consumer base is people in their teens and twenties! And it isn’t easy for that consumer base to have much purchasing power. So what strategy should we adopt to increase our revenue?”

As she spoke, Manager Jung Yuyeong brought up a PPT presentation. It compared the ‘idol industry’ and the ‘band industry.’

“Idols capitalize on their fan base! Things like ‘gacha.’ We’ve made some use of methods like that ourselves! But I don’t know if everyone realizes this: those methods are effective for ‘album sales,’ but not for ‘concert revenue.’ One person can buy 100 albums, but one person can’t buy 100 tickets or take up admission for 100 people! And that becomes even more true when you start performing in the provinces.”

“That’s why we now have to try to expand our primary consumer base. Idol-style album sales may generate a lot of revenue, but they aren’t a healthy strategy in the long term. Personally, I think the best thing is to make money through concert revenue rather than album revenue. But that’s just my personal opinion, so it isn’t important. Anyway, the reason the Unplugged album is important is…”

Go Kyungmin presented a set of figures. They were YouTube data for the Unplugged performance on ‘Kim Jiyeon’s Music Letter,’ provided by the broadcasting station. He complained that obtaining even this one set of data had been incredibly difficult.

“As you can see, this is our current primary consumer base… You can see it here, right? [Hanging Garden] and [Becoming a Star]. Both videos are mainly watched by consumers in their teens and twenties, but the Unplugged performance version is different. It’s split fifty-fifty. Moreover, with the Unplugged performance, quite a lot of people come in through indirect traffic and stick around, unlike with [Hanging Garden] on our main channel. Looking at things like this…”

“Our conclusion is that the ‘Unplugged’ performance is ‘clearly’ producing effective results in drawing in non-target consumers—in other words, people outside our primary consumer base! With this album, we’re trying to find out whether that was merely a temporary effect caused by terrestrial television, or whether it can become a foothold for expanding our consumer base! That’s how I think you should look at it!”...