Goddamn Idol Chapter 193
Director Seo Seunghyeon shrugged and said,
“Combined, the three have sold about 350,000 copies.”
That wasn’t even first-week sales.
Today was only the fourth day since physical album sales began.
Of course, that figure probably included preorders as well.
Besides, Director Seo Seunghyeon had only mentioned the sales for Side A, B, and C.
He hadn’t said anything about the second full-length album.
This was a slightly different matter, but not specifying each unit album’s sales was probably his way of being considerate.
If I had to guess, Choe Jaeseong’s album probably wouldn’t have especially high physical sales.
I knew it had gained tremendous popularity, and that the tracks were steadily becoming club staples.
But the desire to purchase it as an album would inevitably be a little lower.
Club tunes, or party tunes—though I wasn’t limiting them solely to that use—were genres that were disadvantaged in the physical album market to begin with.
On the other hand, Bokmyeon Gangdo’s unit album would probably sell quite well.
Until now, Korea hadn’t had many rhythm and blues albums that could compete with those from the genre’s homeland.
It wasn’t because Korean singers lacked skill, or because composers didn’t study.
Blues was originally the most American genre of music, so there were parts of it that were difficult to learn through study alone.
Just as it would be difficult for a Black person to properly express the han of pansori no matter how diligently they studied it.
But I had lived in America for a very long time, and the sensibility itself wasn’t that different for me.
So Bokmyeon Gangdo’s unit album would be loved for a long time, and would be mentioned for at least thirty years.
Until an R&B album that surpassed this one came out.
As for the unit album by me and Onsaemiro, well……
It would do well.
Considering who sang on it.
That was my assessment of the unit albums, and I thought it would be fairly accurate.
But as for the full-length album, I really didn’t know.
It wasn’t that I had no prediction, but I had no basis for saying that prediction was accurate.
Especially since what I wanted this time was to develop the physical album market.
A track you couldn’t hear on streaming sites.
A track you could only hear if you bought the album.
But the unit albums had done so well, and there was the interesting point that those unit albums would come together to form the music of our second full-length album.
The TV ads and building ads that M Show was pushing on a large scale.
On top of that, the online and offline ads we had burned our own money on, and even the outdoor ads fans had hung in subway stations to celebrate the release of our second album……
So many elements had come together that I was confident it wouldn’t flop, but I didn’t know what kind of result we’d gotten.
At Director Seo Seunghyeon’s request, I also hadn’t monitored anything for the past four days.
More than that, I had been busy recording the English version for the American release, directing the members.
While I was thinking that, I Ion suddenly raised his hand high.
“So that means we sold 350,000 copies across four albums in four days, right?”
“Pardon? No. Three albums.”
“Huh?”
“I was excluding the second full-length album.”
I’d wondered what he was talking about, but it turned out that, except for me, the members had been confused.
They thought 350,000 was the combined total for everything.
“Then how much did the full-length album sell?”
“That’s what I was about to tell you…… But I think we’ll have to film a self-produced content video.”
“Self-produced content?”
Director Seo Seunghyeon smiled faintly and connected his phone to the large screen in the dorm living room.
Then he went onto YouTube and played something.
I didn’t know about the other members, but for me, this really was my first time going online in four days.
It wasn’t so much that I had avoided searching the internet because I was worried about malicious comments. It was more that I’d been saving it up like a treasure chest.
I had been busy, and Team Leader Seo Seunghyeon had also asked me not to watch anything because we were going to film a reaction video.
“But what about our reaction video?”
There wasn’t any camera in particular.
Director Seo Seunghyeon shrugged.
“This isn’t a situation where we can film one.”
“Really?”
Just then, Director Seo Seunghyeon played the video on his phone.
It was some man.
He looked like someone I’d seen a lot somewhere, but I couldn’t quite tell who he was.
“Oh? It’s Potency.”
“Potency?”
“He’s a YouTuber. A massive one with over a million subscribers.”
Apparently so.
The video filmed by the man called Potency wasn’t anything special.
He played track four from our second full-length album, then timed it well and played track five from Choe Jaeseong’s album.
After that, he danced some weird little bobbing dance by himself, then played track one from Bokmyeon Gangdo’s album.
I didn’t know whether he had practiced a great deal or whether the video had been edited, but the drums lined up perfectly.
Seeing how the sibilant hiss of the hi-hat matched perfectly, it seemed like he had probably edited it in post.
It wasn’t a turntable, but CD audio, so matching it that precisely would be almost impossible.
But in any case, when the three songs were combined like that, the sound poured out.
He had lowered the volume of the other two tracks considerably, so it wasn’t hard on the ears.
But I didn’t understand why he was showing us this.
“What about this?”
“It’s trending.”
“What is?”
“Playing the unit albums behind the full-length album like this to create new tracks.”
This kind of thing was trending?
Besides, the music that the YouTuber called Potency had combined wasn’t even music I had originally structured as one piece.
In other words, Potency had just taken any three songs and roughly put them together……
“Hm?”
As I was thinking that, something felt strange.
It was true that the volume, sound pressure, and spacing between the sounds hadn’t been adjusted.
But it fit together far too well to say he had simply combined three random songs.
Even though I hadn’t intended it at all.
On top of that, it was actually fairly listenable.
And if I, personally, was calling it fairly listenable, that meant—
-Whoa, what is thisㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-The vibe suddenly got sick as hellㅋㅋㅋ
—to other people, it sounded extremely good.
I rewound the video for a moment to check why this had happened.
The reason wasn’t anything special.
It was simply because I had composed all of them.
I wasn’t a composer with some special theory of composition, and I changed the way I wrote songs depending on the singer, the genre, and the necessity.
That meant every song was supposed to have a different musical grain, but it wasn’t always that simple.
Whatever the case, the composer and singer inevitably seeped into the music.
The ways the composer Han Sion and the singer Sedalbaegil were utilized had similar aspects, and the overall “house” had a similar texture.
What differed was what kind of furniture was arranged inside that house, and how.
In that sense, the person called Potency seemed to have an ear for music.
He had taken three songs with different BPMs and different instrumental textures, played them at just the right timing, and created a sound worth listening to.
Of course, that listenable part was only about twenty seconds long, and if it continued, the drum beats would diverge and the music would start to lag.
Still……
[See! I told you I’m not tone-deaf!]
For now, the YouTuber called Potency looked proud.
“This guy originally started out as a YouTuber doing movie reviews, but he’s good with words, so he became popular with a concept where he reviewed everything in the world.”
Ah, now that I thought about it, where I’d seen that man was in a bottled water review.
The idea of Sedalbaegil drinking bottled water and breathing fresh air in our self-produced content had come from that man drinking bottled water and talking nonsense.
It wasn’t me who had borrowed it. It was Choe Jaeseong’s idea, since he watched the internet often.
“So he does album reviews from time to time too, but a lot of YouTubers he’s close with kept calling him tone-deaf.”
“So that’s why he did this?”
“Yes.”
“But why would something like that trend?”
“Who knows? Does a trend need a reason?”
At Onsaemiro’s words, Director Seo Seunghyeon shrugged, and I agreed with him.
Speaking as someone who had lived in cultural content for a very long time, trends were truly absurd.
This was a place where a video uploaded ten years ago with a hundred views could suddenly be unearthed and become a meme that swept across the entire world.
Still, this did feel a bit out of nowhere……
“Ah.”
I understood.
Why something like that was trending.
In truth, that was just proof of purchase.
It was a unique way of proving that you had bought the physical album and listened to it closely.
With a bit of desire to show off one’s musical talent mixed in.
Verification was a fairly addictive act that satisfied people’s self-esteem.
Wasn’t this a world where people even verified something as obvious as voting?
In other words, during the four days I hadn’t looked at the internet, proving that you had bought Sedalbaegil’s second full-length physical album had become the natural atmosphere.
I understood that Director Seo Seunghyeon wanted to surprise us, but I couldn’t hold back anymore.
“So how many copies did it sell?”
“Should we do up or down?”
“Just tell me.”
Director Seo Seunghyeon, who had been about to joke around, smiled, cleared his throat, and opened his mouth.
“350,000 copies.”
“……!”
350,000 copies.
Side A, B, and C combined had sold 350,000.
In four days, the sales we had brought in with four albums reached 700,000 copies.
And judging by the situation, it seemed most people had bought the unit albums and the full-length album together.
“The first-week tally isn’t even over yet. There are still a few days left.”
“If that’s the case……”
“It looks like you’ll set a new first-week sales record.”
The Sedalbaegil members didn’t know what expression to make, then simply rejoiced.
But somehow, their joy didn’t look that intense.
The members didn’t seem to know why, but I did.
It was because it wasn’t undeserved.
The effort, blood, and sweat they had poured into this album had by no means been small.
No other singers could carry out my direction this completely.
Because when I recorded an album, I became a monster.
But Sedalbaegil had pulled it off, and subconsciously, they had that thought in them.
We deserve to be treated like this.
Considering our efforts, this is only natural.
How long had we shared that joy?
Director Seo Seunghyeon slightly changed his tone and spoke again.
“But where there is joy, there is sorrow. We do have a problem.”
“What is it?”
“It seems the public broadcasters are going to boycott us.”
“What? All the public broadcasters?”
“No. SBN will likely be an exception. PD Seuneomje has risen into SBN’s mainstream. But I think even they’ll be watching the others a bit.”
This was a little unexpected.
Had Choe Daeho somehow exerted his influence?
But for that to be the case, our weight class was surely too big now.
We had sold 700,000 copies in our first week—though, of course, that was across several albums.
“This is because Sedalbaegil’s weight class has gotten too big.”
“Because of M Show?”
“Yes. That’s right.”
There was once a time when the entire nation really did watch nationwide audition programs.
The one that opened that era was a cable network, and that was M Show.
It sounded ridiculous looking back from 2018, but back then, contestants from a cable network audition program couldn’t appear on public broadcasters’ music shows.
Even if their ratings surpassed 10% and they ranked first on music sites, they couldn’t appear on public music shows.
At the time, with issues surrounding general programming channels mixed in, public broadcasters took on the appearance of completely excluding cable.
But times had changed, and now that sort of thing didn’t happen anymore.
And yet, the public broadcasters were going to exclude us again?
That meant……
“This is great.”
“Pardon?”
I liked it very much.