Episode 166.
Thanks to Min Huiyeong's strong will, the OST contract was finalized.
The OST
There were five days left until serialization.
Every morning, listening to the song, Min Huiyeong felt her heart pounding.
There had been many attempts to pair songs with webtoons before, and famous singers had participated as well.
But songs that captured the webtoon's color weren't of good quality, and when the songs were good, it was hard to find a strong connection to the webtoon.
So the OST to be included in her webtoon this time would be the first and the best.
"The webtoon community will go crazy, right?"
Thinking that, Min Huiyeong felt, for the first time, that working to meet a deadline was enjoyable.
Five days passed like that, and the serialization day arrived.
As she had predicted, the community went wild.
-Wow, the song is so good!!-T_T_T_T_T I can feel the emotions perfectly. The lyrics are so well written too.
-Aren't these lyrics taken from episodes 12 and 17? The first meeting.-Episode 35's lines are in here too.
-Look at that dedication... dang-Wow, I usually turn off OSTs! From the intro I listened like I was bewitched.
-But doesn't this voice sound familiar?-Yeah yeah yeah, sounds like an established singer
The ripple effect of being the #1 Monday webtoon was tremendous, and for a brief moment, the name even charted near the top of the real-time charts.
Monday webtoons aren't only read on Mondays.
Many people read them on Tuesdays and Sundays as well.
So if it kept trending like this, there would be even better things to come.
But…….
The next day, something astonishing happened.
Another OST had been released for a different webtoon.
OST releases themselves were common, but the problem was that it was as good as
Moreover, though the singer's name was different, the feeling the song gave off was strangely similar.
As if a single composer had written them all.
Even the next day, and the day after that, songs were released.
Mon. Tue. Wed. Thu. Fri.
For five days straight, five songs had gone up.
Absurdly, the reason this fact hadn't spread was because the agencies had kept it secret for a surprise, since the songs were good.
Or authors without agencies had hired them personally.
By this point, the webtoon industry speculated that a company specializing in webtoon OSTs had started word-of-mouth marketing.
But after exactly five songs, they vanished without a trace.
Rumors circulated that they were take scenes, dropouts, or whatnot, but the facts were never revealed.
Someone looked up the copyright holder, but this too was a new composer with no records.
If Han Sion was determined to hide his identity, there was no way to know.
* * *
While I made the OST for the webtoon On Saemiro enjoyed (I composed it; only the lyrics were by On Saemiro), Choe Jaeseong focused on games.
Personally, I had thought game companies wouldn't be interested in OSTs due to the scale of the industry, but Choe Jaeseong chose a refreshing method I had never even considered.
The mobile game Choe Jaeseong enjoyed playing was said to be the most famous game in Korea at present.
The game company was also a major corporation with a very high market cap.
Choe Jaeseong began composing using the game's play sounds.
Ttak-dang
- Ttak-dang-!
He formed a hi-hat with the sound of tapping a shield with a sword.
Deu-deum
- Deu-deum!
He made a kick drum with the sound of hitting a world boss.
Using countless in-game sounds as instruments, he started creating music through gameplay videos.
"Will this become a hot topic?"
"One hundred percent. There are even hidden tips in here."
"Hidden tips?"
"There's a setting that lets you deal extra damage when hitting the world boss, and it seems only the hardcore players know about it. And there's a way to easily summon the thirteenth Golden Goblin boss."
"If that's the case, shouldn't you write an explanation?"
"No no. The players will figure it out as soon as they see it anyway."
Honestly, I'm completely clueless about games, so I didn't really understand what he was saying.
All I'd done before was become an advertisement model for a console game in America, play it, and try making music.
Choe Jaeseong brought the draft version he had made without my help.
"This is my best. Hyung, please help me out."
The Sedalbaegil members surprisingly had no ambition to compose at all.
I would have taught them as much as they wanted, but aside from Choe Jaeseong, they were indifferent.
I had asked them the reason at some point, and they said they had originally planned to learn composition from me.
Just in case I fell into a slump.
But after seeing the past few months, they had given up on that thought.
They said they simply couldn't imagine me falling into a slump.
They weren't wrong.
Even if I fell into a slump due to something unbelievable, I probably had at least a hundred Billboard Hot 100 #1 songs just sitting in my head.
I think I've lived over a hundred years, but in reality, it might be much more than that.
Even thinking at the absolute minimum, my number of regressions must be around the 50th to 60th time, and even if each was only five years, that's 250 years.
So how many Billboard #1 songs would I know?
The members' words made sense.
But Choe Jaeseong had the ambition to compose, and it wasn't to beat me.
It was to convey the clear feeling in his head to me.
Honestly, from my perspective, it was easier when he conveyed it through a song.
"Hmm……."
Listening to the song Choe Jaeseong played, I nodded inwardly without showing any reaction on my face.
He definitely had classical roots.
His way of using notes was slightly at odds with popular music.
But there were also parts where he had tried to make something pleasant to listen to, influenced by me.
"Come here."
"Are you going to show me how you work?"
"Yeah. Say hi to the camera."
"Hello!"
I sat Choe Jaeseong down and fixed the song step by step, explaining everything except mixing.
The reason I excluded mixing was because it was the realm of technique.
To reach my level of mixing, you don't need talent or inspiration—only experience.
About three hours passed like that.
"Done. Shall we play it?"
The work was finished.
Hearing the song I played back, Choe Jaeseong's face contorted.
"Why'd your face twist like that?"
"No, this is a scam."
"A scam? Are you going to tell I-on hyung on me?"
"I-on hyung would say this is a scam too. Is this really the song I made?"
"The main melody is the same."
"Ugh."
"Play that game in front of me again. It's basically finished, but I want to see if there are a few sounds we could add."
But the sound I wanted wasn't in the game, so I had Choe Jaeseong act it out.
Lying down playing a phone game, then dropping it on his face and screaming.
"Ah!"
"Use more accurate pronunciation."
"Ah!"
"More like 'Ahaah!' than 'Ah!'"
"What is that?"
"It exists. You'll get it if you keep trying."
In exactly three days, we completed what we wanted, and Choe Jaeseong wrote lyrics that game players could relate to and even recorded it.
Then he uploaded the video to YouTube and the game's fan cafe.
The reactions were……. -LOL LOL LOL LOL no but the lyrics are hilarious LOL-Ha, the potion part is agreed lol-Totally agreed, that auto-potion is surprisingly inefficient.
-But why does the damage on the world boss look like that? Looking at the gear, he doesn't seem like a ranker but he's dealing ranker-level damage?
-Huh?
-How did he summon that Golden Goblin boss? There's no scroll in his item slot?
-This is a hidden tip: drop the gem you get from the previous phase on the six-pointed star and keep picking it up and dropping it, and the Golden Goblin boss appears.
-Huh? Really?-Yeah yeah yeah, because in the lore he's the next phase boss.
-Omg, amazing.
-But why is the song so good LOL It was incredible.
It immediately took #1 on game-related trending, and took #3 on all video trending within 24 hours.
All YouTubers related to the game mentioned the video Choe Jaeseong made, and even a one-hour infinite loop video appeared.
And then the game company contacted them.
"Huh?"
What Choe Jaeseong had wanted was for the game company to use his video or song for internet promotion.
Because even that would be enough to receive a sufficient guarantee.
But absurdly, the game company wanted to use Choe Jaeseong's video for a proper advertisement.
They planned to try it on Korean TV commercials first, and if the response was good, go worldwide.
However, the song would be sung by a different celebrity.
Because they thought Choe Jaeseong was unknown.
But in the end, Choe Jaeseong got to sing it.
"Ah, then this is……."
"Yes. It's a project from the variety show we're filming."
"Wow, so having talent really is all it takes. The marketing department went crazy because of the video. Our game has been saddled with an image of pushing heavy monetization lately, and they said this was perfect."
"That's not an image, that's the patch direction……."
Choe Jaeseong, an actual player, tried to grumble, but Yi I-on blocked him appropriately.
Like that, Choe Jaeseong received separate advertising appearance fees and composition fees.
The advertising appearance fee used Sedalbaegil's fame, so it wasn't included in the self-made earnings, while the composition fee and video usage fee were counted as earnings.
Around then, there was a meeting with PD Gang Seoku.
"Hmm……."
"What's wrong?"
"I'm surprised you're earning money so much better than I thought."
"Really?"
"Yes. I thought you'd earn much less than this. There are still forty days left."
But what Gang Seoku was forgetting was that I hadn't done any activities yet.
A few more days passed like that.
Gu Taehwan and Yi I-on participated in a competition, and saying they were too lazy to do special makeup, they put on masks and did busking.
Their team name was
The reason they weren't caught was because Yi I-on took all the intro parts, and Gu Taehwan sang the highlights.
Until now, Gu Taehwan had never taken the high note parts in Sedalbaegil's songs, and Yi I-on had never taken the intro parts.
They were so into the Masked Robbers concept that they went around wearing strange chains and accessories.
But if they were real masked robbers, wouldn't they try to erase their individuality as much as possible?
On Saemiro seemed to be peeking at the webtoon side again, but it didn't work out well.
The planning itself was good, but music also needs scarcity.
Since five songs had already been released at once, webtoon agencies weren't investing big money anymore.
Choe Jaeseong started making game videos and uploading them to YouTube.
The revenue from views seemed quite substantial, but I wasn't sure if this counted as money earned from music.
Ah, he also went to composition competitions and won some prize money.
So the money we earned in two months was.
"Wow!"
"Jackpot."
It was 18 million won.
Honestly, we earned more, but after seeing us earn money, PD Gang Seoku started controlling production costs extremely strictly.
He even included all the payments made to create the webtoon OST as production costs.
He even calculated appropriate rental fees for using the Sedalbaegil studio we already had.
Well, he wasn't wrong, but it kind of stung when he suddenly did that.
He visibly trembled in fear that production costs might come out too high.
But…….
Now it was my turn.
"Everyone, gather around."
"Why?"
"Stop everything you're doing and start on these two projects."
"What are they?"
The best big shot I knew of—one where connections and fame were useless, and that could be done with nothing but skill.
"You want us to do this?"
The members were surprised, and I nodded.
"We can do it."
Because I was confident.
A month flew by like an arrow…….
When we finished all the missions, the long-awaited first broadcast day arrived.