Joseph Hwang
* This article is based on the "2023 Music Industry White Paper" published by the Korea Creative Content Agency, part of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism of the Republic of Korea.
As a music product, concerts are an ultra short-term rental of real estate (concert venues). Here, real estate refers to a space of a distance and size where audiences can visually see the artist and hear the music without difficulty. This is because the space available for spectatorship creates a minimum saleability. Therefore, a concert's success is determined first by the size of the venue, and then by the artist's ability to fill the audiences in the venue. Concert revenue is proportional to the size of the venue and the audience mobilization rate. In the end, the success of a concert boils down to the artist's power to sell tickets.
While concert venues, which determine audience capacity, are within the control of concert producers. But the power of concert ticket sales is not. If concert producers understand this distinction, the possibility of failure can be prevented or mitigated.
So, let's check out the concert director and the producer. Their roles and tasks are different. First, the concert director is the person who organizes the concert as a whole. A concert director is more of an artist, with some administrative functions thrown in. The director plans and creates the storytelling of the concert, and suggests how it should be presented. The director utilizes all available methods and resources to plan and produce a concert. For example, the director organizes the stage, lighting, video, equipment, special effects, and music to make the concert a work of art. Almost all these things are relevant to creative tasks.
Concert producers, on the other hand, are more administrators and doers. They are responsible for creating the concert budget, managing the schedule, disbursing expenses, and securing sponsorships. They additionally hire production staff, handle taxes, and communicate with artist management companies. They organize and manage concert ticket sales and secure the resources necessary to plan and produce the show. They also work with legal contracts.
The environment for producing K-pop performances is becoming more complex as the industry grows. First of all, there are more employees for concerts. This is because the concerts have become bigger, and the environment and conditions need to accommodate more audiences.
Directing a concert is all about controlling the artists and dancers on stage according to a cue sheet, and refining the details in rehearsal to complement the original cue sheet and cue notes. As the number of K-pop groups grows, there are more things to control and more employees to hire. Performers, stage sets and equipment, lighting, LED walls, video clips, special effects, sound equipment, cameras and operators, electrical installations, security personnel, bodyguards, and more - the list of elements to prepare, plan, and control becomes more complex and being sophisticated passing time.
Recently, as the K-pop market has grown, small-scale overseas concerts have become increasingly popular. Here by small-scale concerts, we mean those with an audience of 2,000 people. In the past, it was not profitable for either the artist or the local organizer to hold a concert with an audience of 2,000 people overseas. As a result, overseas K-pop concerts were limited to big artists who could attract large audiences, but today the situation has changed.
Smaller K-pop venues with less than 2,000 seats are now possible in the Americas and Europe, and demand is growing. The World Tours, once reserved for the biggest artists, is now possible for new K-pop groups that have just made their debut, as long as they have a strong fan base.
In particular, one of the phenomena that has emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic is the emergence of online performances by K-pop groups as a new concert format. Online performances can be combined with offline performances to create a hybrid format that can break free from space limitations and attract a wider audience. As mentioned earlier, the revenue of a concert is proportional to the size of the space, and online performances can be free from this physical constraint. This new possibility creates unprecedented opportunities for concert producers. They can estimate the size of their audience, set a budget for how much they need to produce the concert and make leveraged investments that allow them to borrow capital from other investors to produce the show. It's a way to break the traditional production and box office formula.
Online performances are more broadcast-style and require more production planning than an on-stage atmosphere. Online live-streaming services can exponentially increase the number of people attending an artist's concert by making payment systems with lower costs if having a large fan base. K-pop stars also need to prepare for the emerging VR market.
However, there is a caveat for K-pop concert organizers. Overseas performances have different labor costs than in Korea. In South Korea, labor costs are charged per project, while overseas they are charged per date. Unlike domestic concerts, overseas concerts tend to have a higher mobilization rate of audiences on weekdays. The culture of going to the theater on weekdays is more established than in South Korea. Therefore, overseas concerts have a short preparation period, including weekdays, so efficient time management is essential for concert production. This point should be taken into consideration.
* References and quotations:
https://welcon.kocca.kr/ko/info/trend/1953646
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