{"id":132845,"date":"2025-08-09T22:41:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-09T22:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/132845\/"},"modified":"2025-08-09T22:41:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-09T22:41:10","slug":"how-openwav-wants-to-revolutionize-the-music-merch-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/132845\/","title":{"rendered":"How OpenWav Wants to Revolutionize the Music Merch Business"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tOver the past month and a half, K-pop veteran Kevin Woo\u2019s career has skyrocketed thanks to the unexpected global takeover of Netflix\u2019s KPop Demon Hunters<\/a>.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tWoo\u2019s 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\u2019s 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 <\/a>he\u2019s on alone have pushed Woo\u2019s monthly listener count on Spotify from just over 10,000 a few months ago to over 28 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI loved the songs and knew they were great, but we didn\u2019t know it was going to be anything like this,\u201d Woo tells THR.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNow, Woo is looking to turn this unexpected moment of virality into a larger moment for the rest of his career, and he\u2019s hoping to do it through a new, do-everything fan engagement app called OpenWav.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tLast week, Woo sold about 2,500 tickets on OpenWav for a pop-up event in downtown L.A. timed to KCON,<\/a> where he cosplayed as Mystery Saja and hosted a flashmob to the Demon Hunters track \u201cSoda Pop\u201d 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 \u201ca healthy five figures\u201d in revenue, a representative for the app says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAs Woo says, it\u2019s a more realistic alternative to relying on streaming income, which remains paltry for all but the biggest acts in the business.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s really hard to make a living just off of music<\/a>; a lot of musicians have side hustles just to pay their rent, it\u2019s incredibly difficult to monetize just off of streams,\u201d Woo tells The Hollywood Reporter over Zoom. \u201cBut there\u2019s a fan base that I\u2019ve 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOpenWav 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tMa created OpenWav hoping it can give smaller acts a break from the streaming economy, calling the current dynamic \u201cbroken.\u201d 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 \u201cone thousand true fans,\u201d 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cKevin\u2019s the perfect artist to show this thesis, that a thousand fans can mean a sustainable career to build off of,\u201d Ma says. \u201cBack 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\u2019s before what you pay for distribution, to your management. Do the math.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOpenWav 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 fan base.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s 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,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 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 drop-shipping platform where artists can sell merchandise without taking on inventory. In the app, artists can design a basic mock-up for shirts, phone cases and more; list them on their OpenWav shops right after; after which the merchandise is made to order and shipped from the factories.<\/p>\n

\n\tWoo himself calls that model \u201ca testament to urgency\u201d that comes with being an independent artist. \u201cI\u2019ve got this momentum with this film in my career and I\u2019m able to act immediately, and I think Jaeson and OpenWav have understood that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tMa hopes OpenWav can empower artists to keep their independence and control over their careers, saying that \u201cthe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s a philosophy Woo is embracing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe 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,\u201d Woo says. \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ll 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over the past month and a half, K-pop veteran Kevin Woo\u2019s career has skyrocketed thanks to the unexpected…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":132846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[171,30075,975,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-132845","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-kpop-demon-hunters","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115001221943654386","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}