K-Pop is getting some more global attention, and this time from “Monocle on Bloomberg“. Founded by Tyler Brûlé, the hour-long weekly show delivers some of the most interesting stories around the globe for a cosmopolitan audience. Its tagline? ”A briefing for global affairs, business, culture & design.”
In this week’s Monocle on Bloomberg, they prefaced their coverage of kpop, saying, “In the global soft power stakes, Korea’s pop music industry is the country’s most potent weapon.”
Top 3 Overseas K-Pop Sites (AllKPop/Soompi/PopSeoul) vs Top 2 Korean Music Portals in Korea (MNet/MelOn) : SOURCE (Alexa.com) as of February 21, 2011Bernie Cho, head of the DFSB Kollective, an agency that assists Korean artists with marketing and branding, was interviewed by Monocle. He commented, “It’s not just about the numbers, but where we’re getting those numbers. The top three kpop blog sites, fan sites, in English, they generate more web traffic than Korean music portals, in Korean, in Korea…When you look at the top stars, the bulk of their traffic is not coming from Korea.”
MTV Asia’s VP agreed, saying that Korean music was popular in most of the markets they were in.
VIPs will probably take special delight in Monocle’s interview of GD and TOP, and its coverage of their Youtube debut (an industry first).
“Music is no longer the business. If anything, it’s become a business card. If it becomes popular, it leads to other opportunities – that is where they make money.”
SOURCE : AllKPop.com (SarahSusiePak)
Monocle On Bloomberg (Episode 5): http://www.monocle.com/monocle-on-bloomberg/#