Thirty-one year old Ethan Jaeseok Lee left a good job as a developer at an online gaming company in South Korea to launch a startup, in a country where being an entrepreneur is not considered a wise career choice – yet. Why’d he do it? It began as an earnest attempt to get his favorite band,Coldplay to add Seoul as a tour stop. Two years on, Jaeseok Lee has raised $10m in Series A funding and is set to disrupt the $26bn concert industry with his site, MyMusicTaste.
Jaeseok Lee has been listening to British rock band Coldplay for as long as he can remember. He’s such a devoted follower, Lee used to spend his free time managing Coldplay’s Korean Facebook FB -0.29% and fan pages. Frustrated that Korean fans couldn’t lure big, mainstream artists with the promise of blockbuster ticket sales, Jaeseok Lee came up with a simple way of removing risk for artists, and concert promoters: connect them with fans who can demonstrate demand and show a commitment to buying tickets.
The Seoul-based startup is essentially a crowd-sourcing platform for concerts. More than 500K users around the world (90% of them outside Korea) have organized more than 80 fan-initiated concerts in 32 cities around the world.
Jaeseok Lee says part of the reason Coldplay and other bands have never played Korea, China or Singapore and a number of other places is because the business of concert promotion (which includes ticket sales) is a bit like gambling.
“They don’t know how many tickets will sell and how much fans will pay. Artists already get statistics from social media, but followers don’t equal concert goers.”
So, Jaeseok Lee is putting the power into fans’ hands, encouraging them to use MyMusicTaste to communicate directly with artists. Serious fans willing to fork out the price of a concert ticket, universally around $100, are filtered from more casual listeners through short pricing surveys. Jaeseok Lee believes the platform represents a paradigm shift.
“We’re telling fans – stop wishing, start making. The site enables artists to market themselves, their music and see who and where their audience is. For fans, they can show their interest and desire to pay to see a concert, and for promoters, it’s a measurable way of knowing whether a concert will pay off.”
MyMusicTaste works with artists in two ways. Established artists with an existing fan base use the site to post a few tour dates as they’re putting together an itinerary. The site shows them where their heaviest concentration of fans are based, in order to maximize their time, adding tours to cities where there’s likely to be high turnout.
The second works with local artists. Jaeseok Lee gives an example.
“Take a Korean rock band who are quite popular at home, but are not that popular in Thailand. We can connect relevant Thai artists to stage a collaborative concert in Bangkok or Seoul.”
MyMusicTaste makes revenue selling tickets as well as taking commissions promoting concerts. Jaeseok Lee explains a hybrid model makes it easier to attract promoters.
“We could promote a tour with five stops for an artist and we could sell two cities to promoters. The platform has cash flow, so we can invest in forecasted artists and connect them with a promoter and earn a commission from the booking. We try to target a 30% profit margin of revenue.”
Jaeseok Lee says revenue for 2014 was around $250k. For 2015, he reported $1.5m and expects MyMusicTaste to clear $10m this year. The business has grown from three co-founders, to a team of 25, but success wasn’t overnight. Jaeseok Lee put up $50k of his own money, and took advantage of the Korean government’s recent financial incentives for entrepreneurs and joined a local incubator. Family and friends worried they would go broke. They nearly did, spending a year in survival mode during their Death Valley until they raised a bridge round. With their recent round of $10m in Series A funds, and their revenue trajectory, Jaeseok Lee and his partners are looking to expand into China. But, while he’s happy to have achieved so much, Jaeseok Lee says he, and 50k users are still waiting for Coldplay to come to Korea.
FEB 15, 2016
