The next day;
At early 6 in the morning, Jun left for MBC Dream Center, which is located in Goyang city in Gyeonggi Province. The city is a part of the Seoul Capital area, making it one of the satellite cities.
From the dorm, it was roughly about 35 kilometers in distance. So, in the early morning when there is light traffic, they easily reached the place in half an hour.
However, his dance crew members have yet to arrive.
Solo artists, who were generally good at live singing, are completely independent if they just need to sing, but if it includes dance choreography, backup dancers are necessary.
Someone performing alone on the stage might look good if it is a pure dance performance but kpop songs like mmmh and Clap couldn't appeal to the audience without people dancing behind the main character.
Jun entered the building along with his manager.
Surprisingly, he found about 30 people in the waiting hall, some finished their pre-recording and some are still waiting for their chance.
Show! Music Core program in this world has different rules compared to the one Jun watched in his past life.
The show will run for 60 minutes. Of the top 50 that will be featured in the show, only the top 15 will get to perform on the stage. The remaining 35 will just be shown information like their group name and their mv name.
As for their performance, it will be pre-recorded on the same day. While everything has to be sung live, a group is allowed to perform more than once if they made mistakes.
The other programs allow the idols to lip-sync and in the case of live singing, the staff would even autotune (like reverb/ pitch correction/ audio clean up, custom vibrato/ erase flat & off keynotes, etc…) And sometimes, the live singing will be drowned by the backtrack.
However, this program is reputed to show the original quality of the idol's vocals. That's why most girl groups or popular boy groups won't promote themselves through this show.
As a result, the groups, which have talent but have less fanbase due to having fewer budgets, will receive more attention from the investors, industry insiders, fans that prefer raw vocals, etc...
Once all the recordings were over, everyone will have to wait until the show timings. The audience will watch the prerecorded ones on the television while the audience sitting at the spectators' panel will get to watch their idols perform live in front of them.
Regarding the voting system, it is divided into five categories. First, the most important category, Digital sales from the past seven days. Just this alone contains a maximum of 5000 points. For every 10 sales, 1 point is awarded.
Then, physical album sales during the past week. It contains a maximum of 2000 points. Each album will net 1 point.
The third category is the youtube video. It only includes the official mv. If there isn't an official mv, then, the performance video can also be taken into account. Every 1000 views will give 1 point to the artist. And there's a maximum of 1000 points allotted to this category.
The fourth category is the live vote. The spectators who were watching the live performance will get to vote for each performance. There will be a total of 200 spectators and each vote will give 5 points to the artist.
And the final category is the viewer panel vote. Every month, MBC will open the registrations for the people to be a part of the viewer panel. After filtering away the bots, they will choose 2000 lucky viewers to be a part of this panel. And these 2000 people will get the opportunity to vote for the artists for four consecutive weeks.
Every 2 votes will net an artist 1 point.
Overall, the maximum points an artist will receive is 10,000 points. And in case of a tie, which usually occurs if two extremely popular groups will release the albums and promote at the same time, the show's management will look at the digital sales of each song. The one with the highest digital sales will get the win.
This is how it has been during the past 5 years.
Jun had researched about it and was fully prepared to give his best. He also guessed that he would receive an Emergency guest on the day of promotions.
And just as he expected, as soon as he entered the waiting hall, he received one. However, the reward is unknown and will depend on the overall ranking.
There's another thing that he was also prepared for. It is the attention of everyone else because he achieved some incredible results right on his debut.
Just like he thought, he felt several pairs of eyes on him as he walked toward an empty chair. However, it wasn't just because of his debut mv, his height and extraordinary appearance played a big hand in grabbing the attention.
The idols standing far away were whispering and the ones nearby got up from their seats and greeted him with a casual bow as a part of Korean etiquette. Jun also bowed again and again to each of them in return before taking the seat in a corner.
Manager Seon looked at him, "I'll go and talk with the staff to find out about the shooting schedule. Once our dance crew and stylist arrive, we will proceed with the rest."
Jun nodded to him and then, took his smartphone out of his pocket to spend time browsing while his manager left the waiting hall.
Without minding his surroundings, Jun became busy with his cellphone, although not for very long. Roughly after five minutes, someone initiated the conversation.
"Sungjun-ssi," An unfamiliar yet familiar voice disturbed him. Jun raised his head to find a man in his early thirties. Jun failed to recognize him but still felt like he was familiar somehow as the latter spoke with a smile, "it's been a while…"
"Ah, Yes," Jun replied hurriedly before activating his inspection skill on the guy to find his identity.
Name: Kang Jae Young
Age: 32
Nationality: South Korean
Position: Manager (Redwings kpop group)
Height: 173 cm
Weight: 65 kg
Blood type: A
Top 3 favorite foods: Beef Steak, Pork BBQ, and Jajangmyeon
Hobbies: browsing the internet
Allergy: Peanut
Cat/Dog person: Dog
***
'Redwings' is a five-member group consisting of Irene, Wendy, Seulgi, Yeri, and Solar.
Jun was acquainted with a couple of them from the moment he became the trainee as their practice rooms were adjacent to each other. As he was older than them, they used to address him as sunbae.
But, now that they debuted earlier than him, the roles are reversed. It would be tough for Jun to address them like that.
"Jae-Young-ssi?" Jun said in a tone filled with uncertainty as he wasn't sure whether the previous owner knew him or not. He was also prepared with a different excuse just in case the other party will say that they only met once.
Thankfully, Manager Kang just smiled and replied, "It looks like you remember my name. Are you doing okay now?"
Jun wasn't ready for that kind of reply. He was taken aback, "Yes, um, thank you…"
At first, Jun thought that he probably was acquainted with him during his trainee days at ZC but then, as Kang Jaeyoung started talking about how he didn't expect to know him when they only met once during his mother's funeral, Jun realized that he misunderstood.
Since he isn't a past acquaintance, Jun lost interest in conversing with him. He got up on his feet. Just as he decided to leave by making an excuse, a group of four popular idols returned from the shooting. It was a mixed group and they were accompanied by a female manager.
Just like with Jun, they too instantly attracted the attention of everyone else present in the room.
Members of the group spotted Jun along with one of their managers. BM picked up his pace a little bit as he reached the two of them.
As Jun reluctantly greeted with a bow while wondering where he had seen this guy who was even taller than him, the latter spoke out in a bit of a loud tone while widening his eyes in surprise, "Han Sung-Jun..."