The cost vs. catalogue thing gets overlooked way too much. Like yeah, legal platforms have a lot to fix, but how are they supposed to compete with literally everything being free? And creators are the ones stuck in the middle. I'm a contracted Tapas Premium author, so this whole thing is pretty personal for me. I've been keeping up with everything you've written about it, and it's been really interesting to read your take on all this.
I believe the original founder of Tapas mentioned that the company was profitable prior to Kakao takeover. After that it became more of a service problem because Tapas soon put more focus on bringing more materials from Korean but did it at much slower pace then the pirates. Webtoon took the same turn too. For every new series they translated is free advertising for the piracy sites that have more episodes. For 1, they could have easily outcompete the piracy sites if their translation game were better. And 2, if they had put more focus on original english titles like they were before, official native readers would find no reason to read it on pirate sites. However, I do agree that if the company fail to make an economic viable environment for their creators and readers, then there would not be anything to pirate from at all.
My opinion is that, these company have been putting too much bet on IP licensing with ridiculous success odds instead of expanding on vertical integration for more contrallable outcome when they already have massive audiences as one of their primary assets. Since the birth of webtoon, the companies have never gone beyond charging readers for episodes and buying up other platforms for more IP grabs, the lottery tickets to licensing deals, completely ignoring the tangible long tails.
Yeah, the original English titles part is a big one. Tapas already had this whole community of creators and readers, and Kakao barely seemed interested in it. Barely promoting non-Korean stories, overlooking promising Community titles, treating marketing and social media like an afterthought...
And the piracy situation? Actively going after pirated Korean titles while doing next to nothing about English originals showing up on those exact same sites. So yeah, they already had a whole community, original stories, and an audience right there. And somehow they managed to neglect all three.
The cost vs. catalogue thing gets overlooked way too much. Like yeah, legal platforms have a lot to fix, but how are they supposed to compete with literally everything being free? And creators are the ones stuck in the middle. I'm a contracted Tapas Premium author, so this whole thing is pretty personal for me. I've been keeping up with everything you've written about it, and it's been really interesting to read your take on all this.
I believe the original founder of Tapas mentioned that the company was profitable prior to Kakao takeover. After that it became more of a service problem because Tapas soon put more focus on bringing more materials from Korean but did it at much slower pace then the pirates. Webtoon took the same turn too. For every new series they translated is free advertising for the piracy sites that have more episodes. For 1, they could have easily outcompete the piracy sites if their translation game were better. And 2, if they had put more focus on original english titles like they were before, official native readers would find no reason to read it on pirate sites. However, I do agree that if the company fail to make an economic viable environment for their creators and readers, then there would not be anything to pirate from at all.
My opinion is that, these company have been putting too much bet on IP licensing with ridiculous success odds instead of expanding on vertical integration for more contrallable outcome when they already have massive audiences as one of their primary assets. Since the birth of webtoon, the companies have never gone beyond charging readers for episodes and buying up other platforms for more IP grabs, the lottery tickets to licensing deals, completely ignoring the tangible long tails.
Yeah, the original English titles part is a big one. Tapas already had this whole community of creators and readers, and Kakao barely seemed interested in it. Barely promoting non-Korean stories, overlooking promising Community titles, treating marketing and social media like an afterthought...
And the piracy situation? Actively going after pirated Korean titles while doing next to nothing about English originals showing up on those exact same sites. So yeah, they already had a whole community, original stories, and an audience right there. And somehow they managed to neglect all three.