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VR content by Genie Music's own idol group SF9
Audio streaming platform Genie Music Corp. held four metaverse concerts for K-pop singer Jamie Park so far this month. At one point during the concerts, up to 300,000 concert goers logged onto watch the metaverse concert dubbed L1STEN.Genie Music, a subsidiary of KT Corp., specializes in the production and distribution of music content. The company collaborated with Haegin Co. to host the concert on the latter’s online game platform PlayTogether. The four concerts were each timed with the Korean, North American, Southeast Asian, and European time zones in mind. During the course of two days, Google Search results for Jamie Park and K-pop skyrocketed more than 1000% in Southeast Asia. In Taiwan, searches related to Genie Music surged 800%. Metaverse concerts are part of Genie Music’s new business plans targeting the global market. “We began hosting metaverse concerts to differentiate ourselves in the already crowded audio streaming industry,” CEO Park Hyun-jin said. “This year onward, we will launch new businesses in metaverse, NFT, and AI-based music production sectors.” Park is a veteran in B2C marketing, having served at the parent company KT’s marketing department for years.Telecommunication and audio streaming markets are similar in that the competitors have to fight each other within the set market boundary. In terms of competing for users’ time, the streaming service providers not only compete against each other but also with any other content providers such as Netflix or Naver Webtoon. “In a market where the pie size is fixed, growth is unlikely unless you can create new services,” Park said. This is why the new CEO is turning to NFTs. The plan is to turn live concert streaming footages, past music ranking, or even related data into tokens to sell. Park said, “Genie Music has a large amount of data that can satisfy music fans' needs.”Artificial intelligence-based music production is set to grow as well. The company will increase the number of background music, sports team anthems, and ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) contents created by AI. The Genie Music AI ASMR service that began last November saw a triple fold jump in usage this month. “With the increasing number of users in their teens and 20s, we will continue to increase the AI ASMR contents,” explained Park. The company is eyeing ways to bring the AI-created music business onto metaverse. By Han-gyeol Seonalways@hankyung.comJee Abbey Lee edited this article.