MAJOR TIER CHANGES

^ You can watch the video or read the post - I just found it important to come on here and say what I have to incase anything gets lost in text like tone, emotion, etc! Thanks y'all.

Contents: 

🌵🌵🌵 We Can’t Have Nice Things

🌙🌙🌙 The New Tier Arrangement

💯💯💯 The Benefits Of This Change

☄️☄️☄️ When Will Things Change?

Hey everyone!

So as I said yesterday, we have some tier changes being implemented effective November 1st, so please make sure to be across all this new information.

I thought it'd take a while to get settled on this but I got anxious and just spent the last 24 hours hard focussed LOCKED IN on this, so here we go.

I just want to remind you guys quickly too that if you’re an iOS user, I’d also strongly encourage that you manage your subscriptions through the Patreon website and not your app as the Apple Store will soon be charging up to 40% extra on Patreon memberships managed in-app from November onwards.

🌵🌵🌵

Well, we can’t have nice things it seems!

When I brought in this current tier system ($5 / $5 / $5 / $9.99 / $15), my aim was to enable it to be as option abundant as possible in terms of people being able to pick and choose what they wanted to watch. The $5 Anime, K-Pop and K-Drama tiers were meant for people who only wanted one thing and nothing else and to allow them the freedom to do so. If they wanted anime and dramas, the All-Star tier was the upgrade option. If they wanted k-pop and dramas, again, the all-star tier would give them that too and so on, so forth.

In doing this, I was under the impression that 3 tiers of the same price would just mean everyone equally could pay the same with separate benefits, but Patreon apparently doesn’t work this way. It’s come to my attention that if someone signs up to a tier like the $5 K-Pop tier, and then switches to the $5 Anime tier, Patreon doesn’t charge them another $5 as expected, and instead just makes that tier free to switch to as it sees they are the same price, and gives the user the original & new tier benefits. So essentially, instead of going up to the All-Star tier at $9.99 to provide that and a bit of extra value which is the intended purpose of this layout, people are freely getting access to all content for $5. This is not even limited to one lateral "upgrade" each month, they can do it for all three $5 tiers, technically as many times as they want.

This is pretty shitty for me as a creator as it has hurt the financials of the channel (now by hundreds, going on more than that a month), and whilst this had been brought up as a possibility in the early phases of migrating to this layout, I had it confirmed on the Patreon end that it shouldn’t be an issue moving forward. Recently though, I’ve seen an influx of emails saying people have been “signing up” three times. I tried this and confirmed it for myself that this is actually just people upgrading / crossing into each tier, often within minutes of each other, meaning that some are intentionally abusing this flaw as well. 

What I’m most pressed about here is that 1. it wasn’t fixed after all, and 2. it’s really unfair to those who are on the All-Star tier and have been supporting that way. 

Also, some people have said that Patreon will ask you to "upgrade to unlock" posts on certain tiers and when done either the benefits are incorrect or people need to slide across tiers to potentially get the posts they want which they should originally have anyway. I can't really continue to put my faith in that as a creator and also have things be so unmanageable for people in future.

🌙🌙🌙

So, to combat this and also just to bring a few other things in line with where the channel is at now, what are the tier updates?

Put simply:

• All three $5 Anime, $5 K-Drama and $5 K-Pop tiers will be discontinued.

• The Patreon will switch to a two-tier-only system where it’s just the All-Star tier and the Cosmos tier.

• All K-Pop, Anime and K-Drama content will only be available on the All-Star tier and Cosmos tier moving forward.

• To make the All-Star tier more accessible, the price will be decreased from $9.99 per month to $8 per month indefinitely.

• The Cosmos tier will remain untouched.

• The Patreon will be $8 / $15 only, with $8 getting you over 2000 hours of content on the Patreon with regular continuing K-Pop, Anime and K-Drama shows.

💯💯💯

Regarding benefits, I feel this change is the most future-proof, and also the most logical and simple. Allow me to explain:

In switching to a two tier system, there is no confusion about what is where, and also the price is pretty straightforward. Across the currently 5 tiers we have now, the $5 tiers have access to generally everything, but animated movies, k-movies and soon to be Western shows were all spread across different tiers etc. In combining everything, the only discrepancy to be made between the $8 and $15 tiers will be that the higher one is if you’d like to support me even more with the added bonus of some concerts and some special end of year show k-pop streams.

Other than that, all shows - whether they be animes, dramas, western shows, movies, k-pop group specific reality or variety, k-pop survival shows, or even other k-variety shows will ALL be on the $8 tier. We also have all other k-pop / music content like live stage marathons, album listens, blocked reactions, poll voting, early access before YouTube sees some shows and much more. It’s just EVERYTHING. Pretty simple, right?

“But Lok, what if I don’t want to watch K-Pop? Or K-Dramas? Or Anime?” Well then the best part of having everything in one place is that you can also pick and choose what you do and don’t want to watch. My YouTube channel is already exactly like this anyway, so these things being aligned as well too makes a lot of sense. No one out here is curating their Patreon feed like it’s Pinterest or whatever (unless you are…?) but the tiers don’t need to be separated in order for you to exercise your freedom of choice in what you want to watch.

As far as other ideas are concerned, I’d thought about leaving a $5 tier, but no matter how I looked at this, it was unfair to a certain group of people. If I made the anime and drama homies go up and kept the k-pop folks on $5 only, then people would feel hard done by. If I joined the anime and drama tiers to a $5 tier and only made the k-pop folks go up, then people would feel hard done by. I want things to be as fair, transparent and as easy to understand as possible for everyone, hence the route we took. I worked through 9 different tier options and also got numerous opinions from both fellow creators, members of the community, my partner, my partner and even my parents. This was the fairest, most logical, most aligned with the channel, most accessible, most future-proof and most financially viable option.

As a last little tail-ender to this change, what two tiers will do for simplifying how I share content as well will be a lot easier. I don’t run multiple YouTube channels, and for good reason. They’re hard to focus on and there is a psychological element to this where you always think you have “channels to feed”. The same applies here for the tier system we’ve been operating under and whilst its had its positives, on my end its led to a real imbalance in what I share and film. Working to have 3 tiers “fed” has led to a general decline across the board in terms of the amount of variety I can share content wise, and basically has felt like I’m operating at sub-par performance across all things.

K-Pop has remained relatively fed with certain groups only, anime has been afloat but hard to get ahead on, and dramas are dead in the water half the time because there are less people on the tier endnote enough energy to go around. Bringing everything back to just one tier and working out something that’s going to scratch all itches at once for me and you is far easier than having 3 different content strategies for each tier + then worrying about whether or not the all-star homies are getting the even spread or not. With two tiers I feel like I can focus a lot more on just what are we watching, when, how much, and how much fun are we having? And that’s it!

☄️☄️☄️

When will things change? 

The tier price decrease for the All-Star tier from $9.99 USD to $8 USD will be made effective immediately. Each existing member on this tier will receive an e-mail from Patreon confirming what the price change is and also when it will take effect as we are on monthly subscription billing. 

The K-Drama Only Tier, The Anime Only Tier and the K-Pop Only Tier will be unpublished and deleted on October 31st, so please make sure that you either change to the All-Star tier or cancel before that date because the tiers you’re subbed to will no longer exist and there will be no more benefits available on them past the 2nd of November.

Oh and anyone seen doing this little 1,2 switcheroo funny business this month now that I'm privvy to it and after this post will not be refunded and just banned instead 😀

If you have any questions, let me know! Apologies for the long post guys, but it’s an important one, so hopefully you can understand!

I also have a new content archive which I’m working on with the mods in anticipation of this tier change so hopefully you guys can look forward to navigating content a lot easier too!

Thanks for the love and vibes always. 

Lok