Faqeng

The Secret Mission:

As a company, we are a group of people. People have different opinions, and sometimes we argue. When we do make a final decision, we have to know all the pros and cons, the advantages and disadvantages. Every decision we make, we have to have more than one reason in doing so.

One important goal of MC s. Labs is to give disbanded groups and previous idols a platform.

The reason why HDnG’s music is Youtube exclusive is simple. If you look at the some major Korean channels:

Stone Music Youtube 1thek Youtube Rhybeat Youtube Ogam Youtube Danal Youtube Supersoundbugs Youtube Genie Youtube

If your country is not locked to see only certain videos, you will see on every single channel, many music videos do not reach 1 million views. In fact, you can find many around 1k views. HDnG’s views are extremely little, but the fact that the Secret Lore Room video (~500 views) has the same amount of views as some music videos is unbelievable.

One can say that the reason is because those MVs are not from groups, but soloists. However, carefully looking through the soloists, one can find that there are ex-idols. If you know the industry, some are also ex-trainees from known companies.

This means one thing: it is extremely difficult for many ex-idol or ex-trainee to continue their dreams. If they are not re-signed to a major label, or, they were mistreated by a label, their future path is full of challenges.

Many of these idols, in their previous groups, have MVs that are in the 8 digit range (10million+). Also, their talents in singing, dancing, and rapping did not disappear.

One key reason why MCsL has decided for HDnG to be Youtube-exclusive is to create a platform. Our current priority is not in earning money from HDnG concerts, albums, merchandise. Our first priority is a Youtube channel that can reach 1 million consistent views without advertisements.

Why? We need to convince these ex-idols that if they choose to trust MC s. Labs, ~1 million fans will have a chance to see their talents again.

However, there is an important challenge:

What if the songs are not good (ballads, or sound like b-sides)? What if there is no choreography? What if there is no group choreography? What if the MV is not interesting?

MC s. Labs is committed to trying our best for ex-idols. We hope that each song has a beat drop, a choreography, and an interesting MV. This means there is a second challenge: money.

This is a key reason for the shadow concept. The shadow concept is a risky, but necessary decision if we wish to survive for the long term. Music videos are extremely costly - even in the second or third generation, music videos could be over 3 million USD in budget.

Firstly, the shadow concept is designed to lower audience expectations for a high budget MV. No one likes to follow a group, and start to see MV become lower-budget every comeback. HDnG is debuting with the lowest budget MV possible, so that when an ex-idol chooses to debut with us, it is almost automatic that their MV will be higher-quality and more exciting than HDnG’s. If people can accept HDnG’s MV and still support it even with its low budget, ex-idols will have greater confidence that their MV will be supported even without million dollars in budget.

Secondly, the shadow concept is designed to make “group” concepts possible. It is unlikely that an entire group can re-debut with MC s. Labs. We will work hard to make it happen - but, each individual member might be under different conditions from their previous company. Yet, if any ex-idols are able to work together as a group, we want to make that as easy as possible. With the shadow concept, they do not have to travel and train with MC s. Labs - we can go to them.

If you have done video-editing, one of the most difficult parts is lighting, and “believable lighting”. Lighting makes something look real, fake, expensive, or cheap. The shadow concept is designed to remove lighting inconsistency as a problem. Because of the shadow concept, MC s. Labs will be able to film idols in completely different areas of Korea (or even outside of Korea), and then combine them together for an MV. The shadow concept also help us with any budget issues for having unified hair, makeup, clothing, and set. We are trying everything we can to make ex-idol’s redebut easier.

Side-challenge: we noticed a problem early on in the choreography process. The shadow concept makes everyone look like a bad dancer. There are no facial expressions. There is almost zero movement of the clothes and hands. Essentially, any movement choreographed in front of the body is invisible. More than half of movements cannot be seen in a shadow concept. We are still working on how we can fix this problem.

There are very clear challenges that ex-companies pose to ex-idols. Ex-companies do not want ex-idols to compete with new groups. Everyone can see this if they look closely: ex-idols are not allowed to use their old group names (ie. Beast and Highlight). Ex-idols are almost completely removed from appearances on variety and promotional shows. When ex-idols make an appearance again, oftentimes it has to be a different image (mother, father, wife, new actress…)

If someone looks closely at HDnG’s activities, there are many unusual details. In short, almost all activities of MC s. Labs and HDnG currently has links to this goal of redebuting ex-idols.

The name HDnG is about the idea of “hidden musicians” who have a difficult time being seen by the world Our Tiktok is used to share many small groups or disbanded groups Our Tiktok is also used to study how the Artifiicial Intelligence promotes certain groups over others Our promotion process is focussed on online fans that express support towards small groups Our entire promotion process is focused internationally - because many of these ex-idols face additional barriers in Korean promotions. We need to create an environment that is free from hateful fans that call these ex-idols failures The HDnG teaser is designed to tell apart which viewers are Korean with our use of hanja and the pronunciation. If they are Korean but do not leave a comment, maybe they will not leave hateful comments towards ex-idols either. GoldenAge’s “project is a website for people to watch disbanded group’s videos without being bothered by the view count on the bottom of the video HDnG’s social accounts were almost all disposable: staff left comments to differentiate human and bot accounts, and finding out which geographic region is HDnG stuck into by different platforms. They exist to test future promotions for ex-idols.

At the end of the day, we don’t expect ex-idols to have trust in us. Many have been betrayed. Some have hidden themselves in basements, unwilling to face a society that now sees them as failures. It is natural if they do not trust in what we say.

So, we are not here to tell them that we have a plan for them. We are here to just do the plan.

When we talk to them, we don’t want to explain.

We hope by that time, we can say, very simply: there are one million people on Youtube looking forward to new MV from idols like you, can you tell us how to be your partner?

MC s. Labs and HDnG are working hard for that day to come.

Final thoughts: Does HDnG know?

The four members not only know, but they have so many thoughts and put in effort to help us. However, HDnG is not disposable to us. If the ex-idols can have success with MC s. Labs, then we are sure we can continue HDnG’s success.

If you have a disbanded group or trainee you love, hopefully, MCsL’s plan will succeed one day for the ex-idol you love. We hope that we are creating a community. In this community, one million music lovers give everyone a chance as long as they are good at singing, dancing, or rapping. There are no labels of being a failure.

They don’t need to believe us. We will show them by doing it.