Over the past month and a half, K-Pop veteran Kevin Woo’s career has skyrocketed thanks to the unexpected global takeover of Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters.
Woo’s been in K-pop for much of his life, starting with the boy band U-KISS back in 2008 before starting a solo career in 2018, but he’s having the biggest moment of his career today, after providing the singing voice for one of the characters in the film, Mystery Saja. Demon Hunters has drawn him over 100,000 new followers online, he says, and the soundtrack songs he’s on alone have pushed Woo’s monthly listener count on Spotify from just over 10,000 a few months ago to over 28 million.
“I loved the songs and knew they were great, but we didn’t know it was going to be anything like this,” Woo tells THR.
Now, Woo is looking to turn this unexpected moment of virality into a larger moment for the rest of his career, and he’s hoping to do it through a new, do-everything fan engagement app called OpenWav.
Last week, Woo sold about 2,500 tickets on OpenWav for a popup event in downtown L.A. timed to KCON, where he cosplayed as Mystery Saja and hosted a flashmob to the Demon Hunters track “Soda Pop” with over 2,000 fans in attendance. He started selling them in the app about a week earlier (most were free except for about 100 $50 VIP tickets) and through OpenWav, he also designed, listed and sold about 3,000 pieces of limited edition merchandise in the three days following the event. The whole experience netted him “a healthy five figures” in revenue, a representative for the app says.
As Woo says, it’s a more realistic alternative to relying on streaming income, which remains paltry for all but the biggest acts in the business.
“It’s really hard to make a living just off of music; a lot of musicians have side hustles just to pay their rent, it’s incredibly difficult to monetize just off of streams,” Woo tells The Hollywood Reporter over Zoom. “But there’s a fanbase that I’ve already built, and this is the time for me to take ownership of my music and events. OpenWav was willing to collaborate with me for that.”
OpenWav was co-founded by longtime music-tech entrepreneur Jaeson Ma, a co-founder of the record label 88Rising. OpenWav officially launched in June, and rapper Wyclef Jean serves as Chief Music Officer. The app has received backing from the likes of Warner Music Group, the CAA-backed Connect Ventures and Goodwater Capital, among others.
Ma created OpenWav hoping it can give smaller acts a break from the streaming economy, calling the current dynamic “broken.” Rather than competing with the 100,000 songs uploaded every day on Spotify with the hopes of getting hundreds of millions of streams, Ma says the more sustainable option is finding “one thousand true fans,” the ones who will actually buy in not just on music but with merch and tickets. Ma is one of many who are growing more focused on these so-called “superfans,” as the industry has identified that as an area of potential growth now that streaming is becoming increasingly saturated.
“Kevin’s the perfect artist to show this thesis, that a thousand fans can mean a sustainable career to build off of,” Ma says. “Back in March, we did a beta drop, Kevin had less than 10,000 monthly listeners. He had maybe 100 superfans on OpenWav. Two merch drops did over $20,000 in sales. It takes a million streams for a few thousand dollars, and that’s before what you pay for distribution, to your management. Do the math.”
OpenWav takes a 20 percent cut of revenue on the service, while the artists keep the rest. Ma likens OpenWav to WeChat, the Chinese super-app where its users can do everything from send messages to pay their bills. Fan engagement, Ma says, is fragmented, and he hopes drawing fans to one spot where they can listen to music, talk directly with the artist and buy products will make it easier for artists to build and monetize from their fanbase.
“There’s no other place where you can do all this in one space, and it can be overwhelming for artists to manage fans across so many different platforms,” he says.
The biggest selling point for artists, though, could be for merch. Ma spent the past year and a half securing partnerships with factories overseas to develop a dropshipping platform where artists can sell merchandise without taking on inventory. In the app, artists can design a basic mockup for shirts, phone cases and more, list them on their OpenWav shops right after, and the merchandise is made to order and shipped from the factories.
Woo himself calls that model “a testament to urgency” that comes with being an independent artist. “I’ve got this momentum with this film in my career and I’m able to act immediately, and I think Jaeson and OpenWav have understood that.”
Ma hopes OpenWav can empower artists to keep their independence and control over their careers, saying that “the message we keep telling independent artists is that you can own your music, your masters, your data, and that starts with owning the connection to your fans.”
It’s a philosophy Woo is embracing.
“The strategy I have now is still me being the forefront and the captain of my own ship and taking what I need to get my music out there,” Woo says. “I don’t think I’ll ever go back to a traditional label, where they have full ownership of my career. I feel like I need to have the full say and control, and things like this help.”