Goddamn Idol Chapter 194
Album 1
8. Show Biz
I don’t know about the past, but in the modern age, the flow of society ultimately comes down to the flow of money.
Perhaps the reason the demon chose Han Sion was because of an insight that pierced through the era.
[The world is no longer a spinning wheel turned by humans standing before and after death.]
[It is a windmill shaken by those clamoring over the rise and fall of wealth.]
[Yes. Money.]
In that sense, it was only natural for the terrestrial networks to boycott Sedalbaegil for three months and ten days.
To be more precise, there was no way they would do a “total boycott.”
Broadcasting stations weren’t organizations that could be swayed by a single person, and though the music world and the variety world were both lumped under the same entertainment bureau, they were strangely different.
The boycott against Sedalbaegil would probably be limited to music shows.
The reason was truly simple.
It was because of the flow of money created by Sedalbaegil’s recently released second full-length album and their three unit albums.
The more successful those four albums became, the place that earned the most money would be Sedalbaegil.
On top of that, Sedalbaegil was an independent label, structured so that the singers took the vast majority of the pure margin after expenses.
Then where would the second-largest amount of money go?
M-Show.
When M-Show first went all in on Sedalbaegil, people in the industry had tilted their heads.
“Wow, but what did M-Show believe in to bet that boldly?”
“Exactly. They’re running TV ads for an album.”
“I heard they’re also rotating them onto the outdoor billboards M-Show manages whenever they can?”
“Is M-Show struggling that badly these days?”
Of course they knew Sedalbaegil was good.
Of course the album would sell well too.
Naturally, it wouldn’t catch up to the record of their first album, which had surpassed 1.5 million copies, but if a Korean K-pop artist did even a third of that, they were a big shot.
So people didn’t care that M-Show had chosen Sedalbaegil itself; the issue was the scale of the investment.
At this point, it wasn’t an exaggeration to say M-Show was in the same boat as Sedalbaegil.
If the album failed, M-Show’s sales settlement for this quarter would be ruined along with it.
A broadcasting station that poured that much into a single album didn’t deserve to be called a broadcasting station.
Even if M-Show was an unusual station that had risen on content related to singers.
So people thought M-Show was under some kind of pressure unknown to outsiders, and that it had been placed in a bad situation where it had to produce results as quickly as possible by any means necessary.
Because, by common sense, they would never make a bet like this for no reason.
But surprisingly, this situation was beyond common sense.
To be exact, M-Show had secured the most important thing in show business first.
The “show.”
M-Show was the one holding the original footage of Self-Made, which had recorded the highest viewership ratings in the history of idol group content.
They had seen the miracle Sedalbaegil created, and they had seen how their second album was being prepared.
That was why M-Show’s entertainment bureau chief had bet on Han Sion, and Han Sion had steered that bet in a favorable direction.
Of course, there were political reasons behind it as well.
Within M-Show, those who had originally joined hands with Lion Entertainment formed the mainstream, but after the Coming Up Next incident, their influence had weakened considerably.
But it had only weakened, not disappeared, and they were using every opportunity to try to return their line to power.
At that moment, the thing that would deal the most fatal blow to them was “Sedalbaegil’s success.”
After all, if you dug into the root of the Coming Up Next incident, it began with the confrontation between Lion Entertainment and Sedalbaegil.
Self-Made had succeeded too, but that success was exactly as visible as it appeared.
From a company’s standpoint, there are moments when invisible success is more important.
For these reasons, M-Show’s bet was a huge success.
So much so that there was even talk of producing Sedalbaegil’s next concert together.
That was right.
M-Show held a production stake in it.
Of course, Han Sion, who was adept at this sort of thing, hadn’t taken a loss; in a sense, he had given up honor and taken practical benefit.
By this point, from the terrestrial broadcasters’ perspective, it didn’t feel very pleasant.
Drama bureaus and entertainment bureaus not only had bad relations, their natures were also different.
Content from a drama bureau was individual.
Even if they launched nothing but dramas with utterly disastrous ratings for two years straight, if they launched a single drama with 30% viewership, the game was over.
Because a drama bureau was evaluated by individual dramas.
In contrast, an entertainment bureau was a long-distance race.
Unlike the drama bureau’s content production units, made up of directors and writers, an entertainment bureau itself was one production unit.
Once a flagship program emerged, the countless junior PDs and junior writers who branched out from it shared that experience, and it became the entertainment bureau’s asset again.
In the past, this boundary had been so severe that even mentioning another broadcaster’s name on air was taboo.
Then, around the mid-2000s, they began referring to them by pronouns like M Company, S Company, and K Company, and by the mid-2010s, they began using their exact names.
So the reason the terrestrial broadcasters were boycotting Sedalbaegil wasn’t because they “truly hated them.”
As Han Sion had noticed, it wasn’t an area where Choi Daeho could have made a move either.
A broadcaster’s boycott was push-and-pull, and pettiness.
Let us in on the business you’re doing too.
We have this much power as well, so don’t come at us too arrogantly.
That was about the extent of it.
From Sedalbaegil’s perspective, the solution was extremely simple too.
They just had to do something together with the entertainment bureaus of the three terrestrial networks.
In other words, when they looked back a few years later at the history this album had written, their names needed to be there too.
Not just M-Show’s name alone.
This was the industry’s prediction that the album’s success would be that tremendous, and perhaps also a bottom-fishing prediction that Sedalbaegil might be at its cheapest right now.
Because if it really became a big hit, there might not be another chance next time.
But there was something the broadcasters didn’t know.
Han Sion was a regressor.
* * *
“You like it?”
“Yes.”
“No, why?”
At Director Seo Seunghyeon’s words, I shrugged.
“It feels like an opportunity has come.”
“An opportunity? What kind of opportunity?”
But I didn’t answer any further.
It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Director Seo Seunghyeon, but that didn’t mean I trusted him down to the bone either.
I don’t suspect people rashly.
That isn’t because I believe in the doctrine that human nature is good, or because I think people are born with goodwill.
It’s because humans can become evil at any time, and they can also become good at any time.
Among the people I had met over countless regressions, there was no such thing as a one-dimensional person.
Everyone was two-sided.
A helper who aided me even at the cost of sacrificing himself in our first meeting could, in the next life, become someone who wouldn’t want to yield even one dollar to me.
So what I had to do was steer the situation so that Director Seo Seunghyeon maintained his current state.
I didn’t know how it would be in the next life, but in this life, he would share glory with us.
Depending on the success of the second album, I was also considering stock options.
Only then, even if a world where I disappeared came, would the Sedalbaegil members live well.
To be honest, none of our members had any business sense.
If there was someone with even the slightest promise, it would be Choi Jaeseong, maybe?
Gu Taehwan was quick-witted, but he didn’t know how to make good use of that quick wit, so he was actually the type who could easily be toyed with by seasoned businessmen.
“I’ll make a more detailed plan for this and tell you later.”
“No, why?”
“Because it’s obvious you’ll oppose it.”
“You’re not thinking of making enemies of the terrestrial networks, are you?”
“Come on, it’s not like I’m going through puberty.”
After saying that, I changed the topic of conversation.
I had no intention of explaining in detail, but the reason I brought it up here was because I didn’t want Director Seo Seunghyeon to feel ignored later on.
“Now then, let’s talk about our second album. It’ll sell more, right?”
“We have to make it sell more.”
And so, we discussed the sales strategy for the second album.
The main point of focus was the timing of the digital release.
Originally, the music was scheduled to be released next week, but I wasn’t sure if that was the right decision.
A trend I couldn’t understand—though rationally, I did understand it—had swept in.
A strange form of proof was becoming popular among people, where they bought our physical album and played it together.
Inside that, there was definitely also the pride of, “You guys still haven’t heard this, right?”
But the moment the music was released on streaming platforms, that feeling would disappear.
However, if we delayed the digital release even further, there were many things that weighed on my mind.
I didn’t know which pie was bigger: the pie created by that trend, or the pie created by releasing the music digitally.
“I’ll look into that. We’ll run some research.”
“Please do.”
“Ah, and HR Corporation contacted us…”
Some time passed like that, and the meeting ended.
As Director Seo Seunghyeon left the conference room, he tapped on his smartphone where only I could see.
A moment later, a message arrived.
[If there’s anything you need to get agreement from the members on, you should do it quickly.]
[Quickly?]
[Isn’t the reason you said the boycott is actually good because of the evaluation of the unit albums?]
I wondered what he meant, then realized Director Seo Seunghyeon’s misunderstanding.
This was something we had discussed with M-Show not long ago: whether to structure music show performances around the units plus the second album, or around the second album alone.
If we included all the units, the broadcast volume would become too large, but leaving them out felt wrong because they were so popular.
But what M-Show couldn’t say here was Choi Jaeseong.
Choi Jaeseong’s unit album didn’t fit with Sedalbaegil’s full-length album.
In other words, the texture was too different.
Choi Jaeseong’s album was synth pop, but its usage was closer to a party tune, while the full album was quite far from a party tune.
And that was only natural, because Choi Jaeseong’s album was made by taking a line I had used intensely in the main album and changing it into something exciting.
Intensity and excitement were completely different domains.
So M-Show couldn’t say it outright, but they wanted to make the stage with the units excluding Choi Jaeseong. I refused that.
Because there was no need to do that.
However, unlike M-Show, there was a high chance the terrestrial networks would force it, and Director Seo Seunghyeon had misunderstood that this was why I had pretended to be calm.
But this was a one-hundred-percent misunderstanding.
I wasn’t very interested in the stages for the unit albums.
If Choi Jaeseong said he wanted to do it, I would make sure he did it no matter what, and if Choi Jaeseong said he didn’t want to, I would make sure he didn’t.
“What are you doing?”
As I was thinking that, the Sedalbaegil members tilted their heads.
“Let’s go, Sion.”
“Sit down for a moment. I have something to say.”
Lee Ion, who had quietly taken a seat, suddenly said something truly unexpected.
“Are you dating?”
“What?”
“I mean, you’ve been fiddling with your phone so hard since earlier. You don’t usually do that.”
“If I date, the album won’t sell. Dating is forbidden for everyone until we sell 200 million copies.”
“…”
The members seemed a little flustered, but they didn’t say anything.
Since I was about to bring up something important, I set the mood and opened my mouth.
“You remember when I said earlier that this was actually good, right?”
“The terrestrial boycott?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have something in mind?”
But something was a little strange.
The terrestrial networks were boycotting us, so why were the members this calm?
“Is everyone okay with it? You’re all too calm.”
“What’s the problem? We made a good album. We’ve made a lot of money too, and we should find a better way to communicate with fans than music shows.”
Of course, Choi Jaeseong added that since fans loved winning first place on music shows so much, it couldn’t be perfectly replaced.
“But why is it actually good?”
At Gu Taehwan’s question, I shrugged.
Originally, I had planned to wait a bit until the COVID era.
That would be a time when show business underwent a drastic change, and the power of individual singers would become just as strong as entertainment companies.
Because due to COVID, personal broadcasts and personal content would gain tremendous power, and many opportunities would arise as well.
But it seemed there was no need for that.
“I’m thinking of making people line up.”
“Line up? What line?”
“Between Choi Daeho and us.”
“What?”
Choi Daeho had raised the white flag to me, but I had no intention of ending the war with that.
I had been hit, so I had to pay him back.
If I didn’t, I would be looked down on in this industry.
That was right.
To me, this boycott was an opportunity for revenge.