I finished watching Project 7 and casually followed Starlight Boys’ conclusion, and I thought it was interesting how fans’ wealth plays into voting results and how survivals shows will capitalize on that in the future.
And this isn’t about fanbases buying promotional ads or expensive voting incentive lotteries, but for Project 7 (among many others like it), people were buying loads of prepaid sims so that they could make Weverse accounts for voting. The shows aren’t making money from fans that do this, but it’s probably the most used “tried and true” strategy for mass voting.
Starlight Boys brought back paid votes that directly benefit the company, this time with microtransactions instead of codes on the back of a sponsored product. Free votes intentionally being limited so people feel more obligated to ensure that their faves make it by buying microtransaction votes, all of which are unlimited and count more towards their total.
Starlight Boys’ system is mainly used in China but now since it’s set a precedent as a “major” survival that’s done this in K-POP, it makes me wonder if you all can see Mnet pulling something like this in their future survival shows.
I feel like once Mnet popularizes something as the main trendsetter for idol survival shows, it’s bound to be normalized across other networks. With apps and interactions already normalizing microtransactions like Bubble, pay-by-the-minute fancalls, among others, what’s stopping K-POP from embracing paid survival show votes?
submitted by /u/alrightandsit
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