Sunday, November 20, 2011

Are you prepared? Part 6: Idol Fandom

I blogged about this the other day....
and I forgot about it

I miss the date line by a week
and I forgot to blog yesterday cause I was watching movie

So double post day
Something about what I blog earlier

Idol Fandom
____________________________________________________________________
What is Idol Fandom?
I shall answer this with another question...
Are you a fan of someone?
Be it singers, actors or your friends

Being part of the fans is also known as Fandom
I believe most of us are fans of someone

However in today topic we shall just focus on Fans of Idol
Idol Fandom

Why do we have Idol Fandom?
No matter how good or how bad an idol is, there is always someone supporting them.
Those are the fans who are willing to pay to keep their idol around.

When a lot of these fans start to come together and form club, a Fandom is created.

This Fandom exist with the purpose of letting their idol know how much they love the idol.
And try to keep the idol in the industry as long as possible. At the same time try to convince other people to become part of this Fandom.
I call this the spread of love
SIC - Sharing Is Caring

What the effect of Idol Fandom?
CRAZY OVER YOUR IDOL!
Woot~!

You know you are in serious trouble when you are surfing net with 50% of the time looking up at your idol.

And you have the urge to buy something about the idol to show your support
You want to meet them in person
You just want to show your support in some way

How do you prepare for Idol Fandom?
This part will be talking about how to prepare yourself for Fandom
and what can you do even if you are not a fan


Let talk about preparing yourself first.

This is the easiest, all you need is money....
TONS OF IT!

Since most of us already have idols
Select the one who is most active still to date
Do a google search
Download everything about that idol
Buy things related to that idol

When you feel that you have good enough knowledge about that idol
It is time to surf some fan club forum
Join that forum, get all latest gossip and you might even learn new things about that idol
Join some event by the fan club
Eventually one of the event will be meeting that idol in person
It is be in form of concert, airport waiting or event private event for fan club especially if it is an official fan club.

The pro about joining Fan club are:
More and faster insider news
More events
More love as everyone is a fan of the same person
Reduce the need of searching news online
For official fan club, you might get advance ticket sales sometimes even cheaper tickets

But there are down side too:
Fans normally are from all over the world, it might be hard to communicate
For example, a Chinese idol fan club normally only available in China or Taiwan.
Meaning the forum will be writing in Chinese, if you want to reply you have to reply in Chinese
Not fun.
Official Fan Club normally requires subscription. Meaning you have to pay
Not fun too.
There is a need to be active.
Especially when there is a limited number of advance tickets sales
If you just join and not interact, most likely you will not be pick for these tickets
So if you are an anti-social Otaku, you are best not to join fan club for these tickets

Next what can a person who is not a fan do?

You might think why the heck do a non-fan have to prepare for...
But if you did read what I wrote above you will realise one thing
A real fan will spend money on their idol

Get the catch?
It is great money earning opportunity!!!

Don't believe me?
There is actually a lot of people doing this already

Few years back Jay Chou had a concert in Singapore
His tickets sold out during an advance sale for certainly credit card holders
Fan club didn't even get to buy these advance ticket

I know what you are thinking, his ticket sold out because his is SUPER popular
That might be true
But the news reported something about this sale

There was a guy who bought a whole row of tickets
Just 1 guy
he bought one whole row
What did he do with the tickets?

He sold them to the fans
At a mark up price of over 100%
The ticket he bought was about $150
and he sold them at $300 - $400+

Fans bought from him disregarding the price, as all they want was to meet their idol

This is how a person who is not a fan can do something to this Fandom

Let talk about more recent concert sales
SNSD concert ticket was sold out in 5min
Something happened, you see people selling tickets at a mark up price

The most ridiculous mark up I ever seen is Arashi ticket sale
The selling price for a ticket is US$50
Guess what is the mark up price?

US$100? US$200? US$500? US$800?
Well the answer is it went up to US$1200
AND YES someone brought that ticket
The auction price was at the range of $700 - $1000+
and people buy it
why?
Cause the love and want to see their idol

Think about how much money you can earn from these fans

But of course there is a reason I say there is a need for preparation
You need to know where are the fan club forum
The tickets black market
And some knowledge about that idol
Lastly, knowledge about the ticket

First 3 points are clear
But the last point might not be that clear.

Why do you need to know about the ticket?
Idol's company know that a lot people are earning through these resales
And they want to stop it.
Yes, they did sell the ticket but if the seat in not filled during the concert
What will people and the media think about that idol?
It will cause reputation damage to the idol
So some company in Japan have come out with a plan to stop these resales

Let's take AKB48, they have Stage show everyday in Japan
Yes everyday.
But they supply of tickets are never enough
You actually have to go through a ballot to get their tickets

As you can see... Winning that ballot will sure going to get you a lot of money
especially when there is birthday celebration for one of the member that day.
So AKB company come up with this.
Tickets with name printed on it

Yes, your name one the ticket and it is checked before you enter for the performance
If you are a foreign bring your passport for identification

You might be thinking What The Hell!?
Name on ticket?

But to fan, it is call personalization.
I am a fan, and this ticket is a proof of my support
It even have my name on it

With this, resale ticket can't be used as you don't have the person name
So if you want to earn some money
Please remember to do some background check first.

Disclaimer, this are just a brunch of crap. So if you lost money trying to copy those who earned it is not my fault

Extreme cases of Idol Fandom
Now I taught you how to become be part of the Fandom
I shall show some no-no example of Fandom
You can love your idol
But please don't cross the line and become an extreme case
Below are example I found online

1. Naming your kid after the idol
Not cool at all...
Dun ever call your son Justin Bieber
It is not cool and he will definitely be laugh in school

2. Thinking your child's father is the idol
Once again this is not cool...
And you will get sue for it
Just like how Justin Bieber sue a woman for accusing him as the father

3. Worshiping your idol
Yes, I understand you love your idol
But thinking that they are god?
That is too extreme

4. Spending everything you have on idol
A fact for you AKB48 single sales in Japan is over 1million in just 1 week
They broke the 32 years CD sales record by having continuous 1millions sales
Yes they are popular
But not everyone will actually buy their CD
So why such great sales?

Too bad the video on youtube was removed
I shall explain what happened

There is this guy who is a shopkeeper
He spend 20million yen on AKB so far
That is about US$250000
And he only buy CD in batch of 1000
You know what? He is part of a group of fans who does the same thing too

This is the kind of extreme, fan are willing to go for their idol

There are a lot more example you can find online if you are free to look up on them

Conclusion on Idol Fandom
Overall it is not a bad thing to be part of a Fandom
It is something you will enjoy as you like it
Just don't go to the extreme part of Fandom

I am myself in part of AKB fandom, even do fansub for their show
That is how I show my support to my idols by spreading this love to more people
Just like how I enjoy AKB concert the other time
I hope more people will go with me, share the love
But no one is willing pay for idol who is not a fan of.

But I hope from this post, you will actually change your mind to go for idol concert and try it out
Not as a fan
But as someone who see opportunity in this Fandom and earn some money from it
And just maybe someday you might just be another fan of an idol too

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