NBC LX : Late to the K-Pop Wave? Here's a Guide to the Phenomenon Sweeping America

BTS, the biggest band in the world, recently released 'Butter', a strong contender for song of the summer coming off their record-breaking single 'Dynamite.'

In case you haven't been paying attention... K-pop is a really big thing in America. Like...REALLY big. But while it may be new to some in the West, K-pop (Korean pop music) has existed for almost thirty years.

From Netflix dramas to ten-step Korean skincare routines, Americans are enamored with Hallyu — the Korean cultural wave. But while television shows and skincare are popular, nothing compares to K-pop with its catchy hooks, difficult choreography and stunning visuals. How big is Hallyu? As music executive Bernie Cho says in the Youtube documentary K-Pop Evolution, “Korean pop culture is the third-largest [consumer goods] export industry for Korea,” bringing in 9.5 billion in 2018.

BTS, one of the biggest bands in the world, recently released "Butter," a strong contender for song of the summer coming off their record-breaking single "Dynamite." If you’re new to the genre, don’t worry. Here’s a helpful primer:

HISTORY OF K-POP

Prior to the democratization of South Korea in the late 1980s, the government controlled what music citizens had access to. The new government structure ushered in more exposure to western music and culture, influencing a new generation. 

A trio of Seoul natives, Seo Taiji and Boys, made their television debut on a Korean talent show in 1992. The song, "Nan Arayo (I Know)" blended American new jack swing, hip-hop and rock. The judges hated it, giving Seo Taiji and Boys the lowest scores of the night. However, the public loved this American-influenced sound and quickly propelled the single to the top of the charts where it stayed at number one for eighteen weeks and went on to sell 1.7 million copies. 

Seo Taiji and Boys made history not only with their unique sound but also with their lyrical content. They sang about mental health, societal norms and teen angst in a way that resonated with the younger population of Korea. Although the group disbanded in 1996, they paved the way for big studios to develop the genre into what it is today. 

WHO ARE THE MAJOR PLAYERS?

In the nineties, three mega entertainment companies formed to make what industry insiders call “The Big Three” K-pop record labels. SM Entertainment (1995), JYP Entertainment (1997) and YG Entertainment (1998) honed the method of creating idol groups that is still the standard in 2021.

The first idol group formed by SM Entertainment in 1996 was H.O.T., a five-member group composed of singers, dancers and rappers. Their boyish charm, fun choreography and loud fashion resonated with the audience and cemented them as one of the first successful idol groups. S.E.S, A trio of teenage girls with bubbly songs and choreography soon followed.

Today HYBE Entertainment, the home of BTS, is perhaps the biggest player in the game with their recent label acquisitions including Scooter Brauns’ Ithaca Holdings. Bang Si-Hyuk, a former composer for YG Entertainment, founded Big Hit Entertainment in 2005. Until recently, BTS was the only group on the label. Big Hit Entertainment has now rebranded to HYBE Entertainment, home to K-pop elites, BTS, TxT, Enhypen, Seventeen and American superstars Ariana Grande, Justin Beiber and Demi Lovato. 

K-POP BECOMES AN INTERNATIONAL PHENOMENON

While H.O.T. found success in China, BoA crossed over in Japan, and Super Junior became huge in France, it took a bit for K-pop groups to reach the United States. That changed in 2009 when JYP Entertainment marketed Wonder Girls to the American public. The five-member girl group had a distinctly retro look that was more 60s Motown than 2000s K-pop. Wonder Girls went on tour, opening for The Jonas Brothers and gaining a smattering of American fans.

While Wonder Girls exposed a subset of Americans to K-pop, the next decade blew the door open. In 2012 singer Psy became a worldwide phenomenon with "Gangnam Style," a song about the trendy residents of the Gangnam District of Seoul. The humor, costumes and simple dance routine resonated with people all over the world with the music video becoming the first to hit a billion views on YouTube.

Psy was a fun fad in America but the next K-pop act had staying power. Two primetime award show appearances in 2017 exposed millions of Americans to seven young men from Korea about to change the game, starting with their win for Top Social Artist Award at the Billboard Awards. If viewers were curious about BTS at the Billboard Awards, their performance at the 2017 American Music Awards earned them an onslaught of new fans. 

BTS has continued their momentum setting numerous billboard records, selling out stadiums and earning a Grammy nomination. They aren’t the only group finding success in the States. Blackpink made history at Coachella, Monsta X became the first K-pop group to release a full English album that charted on the Billboard 200, and acts like Seventeen and NCT have successfully sold out arenas across the country.

MAKING THE FAN CONNECTION

What sets K-pop apart from other genres is the connection artists have with fans. K-pop groups have built loyal fanbases through constant interaction, relatable lyrics and shows of affection. Fandoms have specific names, lightsticks, and individual organizations within the fan base promoting charitable activities and social justice causes. K-pop fans may often be mislabeled as teeny-boppers or fanatics through the media. But these organized fan bases are the reason K-pop is thriving.

“The fandom plays a critical role in keeping the idols relevant. Especially in an industry where new groups appear every day, and where many groups are often 'ranked' against each other on performance shows and contests," says K-pop DJ and podcast host Peter Lo. "Fans are the sustaining power who go through great lengths to increase view counts, download figures, social media comments, and album sales to keep idols at the top of the charts.” He added that “labels often orchestrate parasocial relationships that reward fandom behavior which drive chart rankings and album/ticket sales.”

The fans form bonds with their favorite idols through not only music but live stream conversations, fan meetings, reality shows, documentaries and consistent social media content. BTS often takes filmed trips where viewers may see Jungkook, the youngest member, doing laundry while bandmates Suga and Jin make dinner for the group.

THE FUTURE OF K-POP

"Butter" is sure to bring a lot more radio play for BTS this summer, but is K-pop on track to be the biggest genre in the world? Music journalist Tassia Assis says “in terms of popularity I believe it might reach a state like anime and manga have in the West” with passionate fan bases and endless staying power. Some are gambling on larger mainstream success by bringing K-pop to primetime television. Both Hybe and SM Entertainment have recently made deals with Universal Records and MGM Worldwide to produce reality show competitions that will put together American versions of K-pop groups. 

As far as the evolving genre, Lo predicts a content transition. “We'll see more short-form content optimized for short hooks that look good within the video resolution of an iPhone screen. This has already had a profound impact on music production trends — favoring songs which have a sudden genre/mood shift which performs well on short-form content platforms like TikTok,” he said.

With big money and international recognition also comes big business. “I suspect we'll also likely see further consolidation within the K-pop industry.” Lo added, “Hybe is making moves to create a sustaining model for a future without BTS by acquiring many major labels.”

When questioned about K-pop in the American market during a global press conference for their latest release, RM, the leader of BTS, said “K-pop has become less a genre and more like an entire industry.” It's an industry that shows no signs of slowing down.

YOUR BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO K-POP PLAYLIST



https://www.lx.com/culture/entertainment
By Emily Mallon [NBC LX Contributor]

South China Morning Post : K-pop in 2021 – what to expect: the return of Red Velvet and Shinee, Aespa’s continued rise, and synergy between Korean pop and video games

Girl group (G)I-Idle are among several K-pop acts planning to release new music in January, at the start of what will be another big year for Korean pop music. Photo: Getty ImagesThe major labels are likely to launch several new acts this year, some aimed at the rest of Asia rather than Korea, and to pursue links with video gaming

Expect to see bands build on the success of online concerts – with Seventeen and Blackpink coming this month – and fan meet-and-greets launched in 2020

As the new year kicks off, 2021 shows great promise for K-pop built off the potential it showed last year.

Though 2020 was a tough year, it also brought an immense show of strength from Seoul-based pop acts: BTS made history with every other breath they took, while Blackpink and NCT soared to greater heights than ever before.

Established artists showed their worth as soloists, while younger acts asserted their rising power in K-pop with impactful releases. Musically, disco pop made its mark on the K-pop scene and artists sold millions upon millions of albums.

While it is too early to predict 2021’s dominant musical trends, some of the songs of the year might already be on the way.

January is already gearing up to be a big month for K-pop: TVXQ!’s Yunho, Jeong Se-woon, MCND, Victon, Treasure, (G)I-dle, Epik High, Ab6ix, Cravity, Oneus, and Golden Child are just some of the Korean acts that have releases planned for this month.

February is looking exciting too, with Shinee rumoured to be making their long-awaited return that month; the band last released music together in 2018 prior to members enlisting in South Korea’s military to fulfil the country’s mandatory draft.

Though K-pop acts typically don’t share long-term release schedules, individual members of some of the biggest acts are expected to share new solo projects: Blackpink members Lisa and Rosé, who are said to be dropping songs, and BTS member V, who has said he’s working on an upcoming and long-awaited solo mixtape.

Other long-awaited returns include those of Red Velvet, which were on hiatus as a full act last year while member Wendy recovered from a serious injury, and G-Dragon and CL are also expected to make waves with releases.

New girl group Aespa are part of a growing trend of integration between K-pop and video gaming. Photo: SM EntertainmentNew acts especially are are likely to have a big impact on K-pop this year, with last year’s rookies continuing to resonate and come into their own.

Additional buzzworthy groups are set to arrive from the likes of Source Music, which houses GFriend and is a subsidiary of Big Hit Entertainment, the label of BTS, and SM Entertainment, which launched girl group Aespa last year.

There is also talk of JYP Entertainment and YG Entertainment revealing new groups this year, and there are likely to be several K-pop acts targeted not at Korean audiences but at others throughout Asia.

Aespa, a quartet that is marketed as featuring not only the human singers but also virtual counterparts, are part of a growing trend that industry experts expect to see continue in 2021: K-pop’s integration into the world of video games.

G-Dragon of BigBang is expected to release a solo project in 2020. Photo: YG Entertainment“If I was good at predicting, [2021 will see] more creative and commercial confluence between K-pop and esports,” Bernie Cho, head of the distribution label DFSB Kollective, told the Post when asked what he thinks the biggest K-pop trend of 2021 will be.

Though K-pop is immensely popular, and South Korean film had a major year in 2020 with Oscar winner Parasite, South Korea’s most lucrative creative export is esports.

The trend of integrating Korean pop with video games isn’t new; K-pop stars are often involved in promoting video games, and Aespa was preceded by the 2018 arrival of League of Legends ’ virtual girl group K/DA, which is often voiced by female K-pop stars.

Big Hit Entertainment has worked with Netmarble, one of South Korea’s biggest tech companies, on several BTS-oriented games.

The League of Legends World Championships 2019. League of Legends started the integration of K-pop with video games with the arrival of virtual female band K/DA, whose songs were often voiced by K-pop stars. Photo: HandoutCho says to expect a lot more of this sort of thing: SM Entertainment recently announced a partnership with the South Korean esports organisation T1 with the apparent aim of taking the K-pop training system into the world of esports, while earlier last year Blackpink’s music was featured in the popular game PUBG Mobile, and BTS featured T1 players in some of their videos during which the band competed with the esports icons.

More collaborations of this sort are expected, as gaming has a sizeable audience for K-pop to tap into and vice versa.

Another trend we can expect to see grow is the biggest one in music today: TikTok. Many K-pop acts launched accounts on the short-video platform last year, and challenged fans to different dance challenges.

Several songs, such as Zico’s Any Song and Rain’s Gang, went viral on the platform, and companies appear to be scouting talent who are active on the app: new NCT member Shotaro was a dancer on TikTok ahead of his debut with the group last year.

This year all eyes will be on Big Hit Entertainment, which had a successful initial public offering of shares last year but whose stock price has been unstable since then.

The company, which managed only BTS and one other artist for a long time, has expanded rapidly, launching Tomorrow X Together in 2019 and investing in other K-pop companies such as Source and Pledis Entertainment, which is home to Seventeen and Nu’est.

It teamed up for a joint venture with CJ ENM, which led to the formation of popular new boy band Enhypen last year and will debut a Japan-oriented act this year.

Although Big Hit has grown rapidly and has numerous IPs under its auspices and plans for more, it has to show shareholders that the company is a stable investment.

Wendy’s return to Red Velvet after her recovery from a serious injury is expected to see the female group release some new music in 2021. Photo: @ladadiwendy/TwitterOther companies will also have to compete with Big Hit now that its stable of K-pop acts includes several of the bestselling one; as well as BTS, Seventeen and Gfriend are major players. This gives Big Hit a lot of power in the industry.

Because of the continuing impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, K-pop in 2021 is still a bit up in the air: touring cannot be planned until the state of the world normalises to the point where artists can travel safely and people can be in venues together in a way that takes no risks.

Digital engagement is expected to go even further after 2020 saw K-pop innovate with numerous online concerts and various events to connect fans and artists across the internet. Seventeen and Blackpink kick things off online with concerts later this month.

Every year brings new excitement, records, and upsets to the world of K-pop, and 2021 is gearing up to be a big one.

For more great stories on Korean entertainment, artist profiles and the latest news, visit K-post, SCMP's K-pop hub.

https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/k-pop/news
By Tamar Herman

Featured Commentator : Bernie Cho [DFSB Kollective]

The Washington Post : When race, fandom and pop music dollars collide

Mark Wang for The Washington PostK-Pop owes its start to Black music. Now the global music phenomenon is being pressed by some fans to support Black Lives Matter.

Alexandra Reid never felt like she belonged.

As one of the first Black Korean pop music artists, she struggled to fit in, to be seen as more than a gimmick, as a “real stride for K-pop.” In the two years Reid was based in Seoul, signed to the girl group BP Rania, she says she felt like a “fish out of water,” with no translator, no guidance on how to do basic things like order food or turn on the air conditioner and no warning of how she might be perceived by South Koreans, like when a taxi driver screamed at her and refused to drive her home. She made only limited live appearances.

Her sense of isolation as a Black artist within the genre is emblematic of the growing pains of K-pop, as the multibillion-dollar industry is pressed to respond to the demands of the Black Lives Matter movement and overcome the missteps of the past.

“Their music is Black-inspired,” Reid says. “It’s one thing to talk, and it’s another thing to literally put your money where your mouth is.”

Diverse, international fans who have been key to the genre’s success by pushing albums on social media are now harnessing their power in support of Black Lives Matter, staging online protests, hijacking hashtags like #WhiteLivesMatter, spamming a Dallas police app looking to identify protesters and even reserving rally seats in Tulsa meant for President Trump’s supporters.

If Black lives don't matter, then neither do Black dollars, clout, or bodies that fill your US shows.

Please copy and reply to me using the hashtags #SMBLACKOUT #SMUseYourPlatform @SMTOWNGLOBAL @carolinemusic @CapitolRecords

— blacknetizen 💎 (@blacknetizen) June 12, 2020

They are also trying to force K-pop into its own reckoning, pushing artists and music companies to take a stand for racial justice, and shining a light on the complicated history of a genre that is based on Black culture. K-pop’s past is rife with cases of stars wearing cornrows and braids as well as blackface.

When artists and labels are silent on Black Lives Matter, said K-pop fan Davonna Gilpin, they are “complicit in our suffering.”

After “profiting so much off of Black culture,” Gilpin said, “how are you guys new to this conversation when we have been trying to have this conversation with you for years and you just never wanted to engage?"

So Gilpin petitioned SM Entertainment, one of the biggest labels in K-pop, to take a stand for Black Lives Matter online with the hashtag #SMBLACKOUT. A week later it did, saying the label stood with its Black collaborators, friends and fans.

“I felt like with [the] Black Lives Matter movement, it was time for them to step up and say something. Especially because, all these groups or artists tour here, so they are very aware of how much of their American fan base is Black,” Gilpin said.

Eric Perry, a student at the University of Maryland who is in a K-pop dance crew, says only now are Black K-pop fans being heard. (Photo by Eric Perry)But it’s not always easy — especially when fellow fans aren’t supportive, said K-pop fan Eric Perry.Fellow K-pop fans would “make our problem seem invalid,” said Perry, a 23-year-old African American student at the University of Maryland who belongs to a K-pop dance crew. “Slowly but surely, the conversation is opening up more. … However, I still feel like more work has to be done.”

Blackpink fans chose to pay their respects to #BlackLivesMatter” instead of promoting “Sour Candy,” a collaboration with Lady Gaga that came out days after George Floyd’s death. But while their online petitions made headlines, the popular girl group’s single still debuted at No. 33 on the Billboard Hot 100, Blackpink’s first Top 40 hit.

As a result, the genre’s few Black artists have also grown more vocal. About a week after Floyd’s death, Reid joined other Black K-pop YouTube stars for a Black Lives Matter fundraiser, raising over $5,000 in a couple of hours.

Reid said she felt disappointed when her former label DR Music Entertainment did not issue a statement about the protests.

“It feels like if you cared about the diversity, then I would hope that you would take a stand at this time,” she said.

Philip YJ Yoon, executive director of DR Music Entertainment, acknowledged the challenges for Reid and other Black artists trying to break into K-pop and said he supported the Black Lives Matter movement.

“I can see online there are some people who call our company a racist company. If we were a whole bunch of racists, we would never hold auditions for foreign trainees. Also, I don’t think foreign trainees would dare to try joining our company,” said Yoon, who is reintroducing Reid’s former group BP Rania as Black Pearl with Senegalese singer Fatou Samba. “We have had difficulties, but we know our company is one of a few companies that can do this because we are very open to cultural differences and put most effort to fix any problems.”

Other artists who started in K-pop, like CL of 2NE1 and Jay Park of 2PM, also expressed their support for BLM.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by CL (@chaelincl)

“Me being inspired by Black culture, aside me having Black homies, aside just as a man and a human being … to think what if that was my dad, or uncle or homie makes me sick to my stomach,” said Park, who donated $10,000 to Black Lives Matter. A Washington native, the R&B and hip-hop artist was the first Asian American artist to sign with Jay-Z’s label Roc Nation.
 

After their fans flooded hashtags with #BlackARMYsequality and #BlackARMYsMatter, supergroup BTS and their label, Big Hit Entertainment, donated $1 million to Black Lives Matter.

“We realized we had a lot of power in our fandom and a lot of energy that wanted to focus on doing good,” said Erika Overton, a 40-year-old Black American who does outreach and communications for BTS fan collective One In An Army, which coordinated a campaign to match the group’s donation.


The label for K-pop group BTS said June 7 that the band donated $1 million to Black Lives Matter. BTS had tweeted support of U.S. protests on June 4. (Video: Reuters)

Keeping K-Pop Accountable

Unlike some other fandoms, K-pop followers are relatively diverse, said Ashley Hinck, assistant professor in communications at Xavier University, who studies fandom and social activism. There are no reliable surveys, but industry experts say a large share of attendees at last year’s KCON fan convention and concert series were Asian and Hispanic, with much smaller shares White or Black.

It is tough to break out the number of American fans, but they make up a respectable percentage after Asian countries and Brazil, according to the music data analytics tool Chartmetric. American viewers made up around 13 percent of the 33 million YouTube subscribers of BTS.

This American fan base has been instrumental in gaining mainstream acceptance for the genre. When the Video Music Awards shut out BTS from the pop category last year, relegating them to a separate K-pop category, BTS fans launched an online campaign. This year, BTS was included in pop, which they won.

Korean American rappers are also putting pressure on the industry to change.

“It’s personal to me because I want my kid to live in a world where people aren’t judged or discriminated against due to his skin color,” said Tiger JK, who grew up in Los Angeles and is considered one of the forefathers of Korean hip-hop and is married to a Korean-Black rapper. “I’ve experienced discrimination myself growing up in the States.”

But the challenge is to instigate real change, beyond statements and donations, in an industry that has been averse to politics.

“Unlike in the West where music artists often express their political views, for most K-pop acts, they are extremely cautious about singing or talking about topical political issues as they have traditionally been considered off-limits, taboo subjects,” said Bernie Cho, president of DFSB Kollective, an agency that specializes in the export of Korean music. “The risks are too high because the negative backlash of being on the ‘wrong’ side of a sensitive political issue can lead to swift and severe repercussions. It leads to bans, boycotts and canceled careers.”

K-Pop's Roots

American pop with its foundation in Black music first found its way to South Korea during the Korean War in the 1950s, said Michelle Cho, assistant professor of popular culture in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto.

Korean musicians eventually started learning American pop music to entertain U.S. service people. And in creating their own version of pop, especially hip-hop, they started integrating everything together with the Korean language. Their process of creating idols is also akin to the Motown method of training singers.

“The innovativeness of K-pop is that it is able to incorporate so many different genres and put them together, often in the same song,” Cho said. “The way that that happens is through a kind of like collage, where they’re basically blending every trend that global pop music is using right now … including EDM [electronic dance music] and a lot of Latin pop.”

For some fans, like Reid and Gilpin, that produces more relatable pop music than Disney or “American Idol,” Cho said.

“There’s an element of innocent whimsy and indulgence that Western pop lost ages ago,” said Natalie White, a Black music video game and film composer, whose viral K-pop covers on YouTube led to appearing on South Korean television. “Plus, it’s sensory overload — bright colors, high drama, intense dancing and pretty faces.”

Growing Pains

But in growing the genre, the tributes to Black music have occasionally veered into racial insensitivity, said Christian Oh, who founded an Asian talent show in Washington, D.C., called Kollaboration DC and taught classes on ethnic studies and social media at the University of Maryland.

In a video from the ’90s, the founder of one of the biggest K-pop labels, J.Y. Park of JYP Entertainment, sang with backup dancers in blackface.

In 2013, when Big Bang rapper G-Dragon posted an Instagram photo wearing a hoodie in blackface, many interpreted the selfie as a reference to Trayvon Martin. His rep later apologized, saying it was a “huge misunderstanding.”

And in May, BTS member Suga provoked online backlash by sampling a speech by cult leader Jim Jones, who led more than 900 followers, including many Black women, in a mass suicide in 1978. In a statement, BTS’s label said the band “lacked the understanding of the historical and social situations relating to the sample,” apologizing to “those who have been hurt or felt uncomfortable.” The track was deleted and a revised version was rereleased.

The relationship between Black and Korean communities has been complicated, said Oh, one fraught with misunderstanding and outright racism, based on stereotypes from movies like “Boyz n the Hood” and the 1992 Los Angeles riots when Korean stores in Black neighborhoods were targeted and African American teenager Latasha Harlins was killed by a Korean storekeeper.

As a result, it has been challenging for Black artists to find a place in K-pop.

K-pop vocalist Shervonne Brown wanted to be a part of the industry so badly that she tried out for one of the biggest labels in the genre, even when the first audition explicitly stated Asian contestants only. (Photo by Todd Wheeler)

It was a passion and dream, said dedicated K-pop fan Shervonne Brown, who tried auditioning for one of the biggest K-pop labels, JYP Entertainment, in New York in 2009, despite its rule, which stated that contestants had to be Asian. While judges were impressed she could sing in Korean, she never received a callback. The next year, she said, that rule was dropped, so she tried again.

“K-pop is becoming extremely international and welcoming a lot of fans from everywhere,” said Brown, a 28-year-old vocalist from Arlington, Va., who used to be managed by Oh. “It would be smart to have a more diverse team within the company so they can point out what is wrong and what is right. Because when you only have one perspective, it’s very difficult to be able to do things like that.”

Making Black Lives Matter for K-Pop

So despite growing demands for change from K-pop fans, it remains to be seen whether there will be concrete action among labels and artists beyond statements and donations.

“It’s not clear that that’s going to go any further than making a few statements,” said Claire Jean Kim, professor of political science and Asian American Studies at the University of California at Irvine. “The fans themselves have gone past that, but will that become organized into some kind of coherent political force, pursuing a particular left agenda, a racially progressive agenda? That remains to be seen.”

Real change would have to be at the company level, not just with fans, to “lay off cultural appropriation, educate themselves and be more sensitive with the imagery they choose to present themselves to the world,” said White. “If you like what we do creatively, hire us, or find ways to promote, invest in the communities that inspire you.”

Because Black Lives Matter for K-pop has come to mean not only respecting the background of customers but also of their music.

“As K-pop has evolved into a more multilingual, multicultural and multinational genre with growing global appeal, there is less cultural tolerance for cultural ignorance in the local music industry,” said Cho, president of an agency that specializes in the export of Korean music. “Regardless if it’s on the record or off the cuff, trying too hard to be cool, cute or funny by saying or doing something racially ignorant, racially insensitive or racially intolerant is an instant formula for failure for K-pop artists."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business
By Marian Chia-Ming Liu

Featured Commentator : Bernie Cho [DFSB Kollective]

Musically : What can the global music industry learn from K-Pop and South Korea?

_JStone / Shutterstock.comK-pop is the genre that ate the world whole. Acts like BTS, Blackpink, Twice and TVXQ are not just some of the biggest acts within the genre – they are some of the biggest acts in the world. There is a lot that other artists can learn from how K-pop markets itself, how its acts engage with their fans and why trans-media marketing underscores everything they do. We speak to those within the K-pop world to better understand how it works and what everyone else can learn from the pop trail it has blazed.

In 2020, BTS and Blackpink are, arguably, the biggest boy band and biggest girl group on the planet and K-pop is the number one image associated with South Korea, according to the recent Overseas Korean Wave Survey. In business terms, musical exports were worth $578m to South Korea in 2019, while BTS recently broke the record for the highest-earning online concert, banking upwards of $18m in ticket sales for their Bang Bang Con: The Live Show. 

Musically, the impact of K-pop has been growing rapidly, to the extent that collaborating with K-pop stars has become an essential part of the big pop album rollout. K-pop’s astonishing rise has been one of both artistry and sharp music industry marketing. But what, if anything, can the wider music industry learn from K-pop?

That “if anything” is important. Danny Lee, the chief agent at Asian Agent (a company that focuses on “bridging culture between the East and West via music and content”), says that K-pop artist campaigns “cannot just simply be ‘copied’”. 

“The fan community and business culture between the East and the West are quite different, so the planning and execution in comparison will provide separate results,” he says. 

One of the main differences between the music businesses in South Korea and the West comes down to the attitude of the artists themselves. Tamar Herman, a K-pop columnist for Billboard, says that South Korean artists don’t face as big a stigma around the idea of music as a career as many Western acts. 

“In the West in general, we tend to vilify the commodification of the music industry; and in South Korea that’s not really a concern,” she says. “There’s no concern that a K-pop group is too produced, that it’s too commercialised. This is their job, this is their career and there is artistry attached to it. Because of that, it makes things easier: they can do a lot of advertisements, they can do a lot of merchandising and a lot of concerts where merchandising is important.”


There are also important structural differences between the music businesses in South Korea and the West, as Bernie Cho, owner/founder of Seoul-based artist and label services agency DFSB Kollective, explains. “The fully integrated, full-stack business model in South Korea – where artist management companies also wear record label and talent agency hats – works extremely well in Latin America and parts of Western Europe,” Cho says. “In the US, you rarely see this type of streamlined, synergised setup.” 

This one-stop-shop approach – with many management companies also owning stakes in local DSPs, as SM Entertainment does with Flo – enables South Korean music companies to “move, drive, and pivot quicker than separate companies would be able to”, Cho adds, which helps to explain why the traditional major labels are not as dominant in many of the major Asian music markets as they are elsewhere.

TRANS-MEDIA MARKETING AND CREATING A NARRATIVE UNIVERSE

Being involved in so many aspects of an artist’s career also means that South Korean music companies can take a wider view of an artist’s development when it comes to marketing, rather than focusing solidly on the next record release. 

Lee Song Im, director of international business operations at Event Market, says that increasing numbers of K-pop companies are using trans-media marketing methods for their acts. 

“Trans-media marketing involves multiplatform storytelling, where instead of releasing albums with one-off concepts and themes, the marketing team develops one overarching theme and storyline around the artist and then delivers different pieces of narrative that build on top of one another, through various medium like an album, music video and game,” she says. 

Shin Cho, senior international marketing manager and head of K-pop and J-pop at Warner Music, also emphasises the importance of storytelling. 

“K-pop marketing focuses on building a community of superfans and turning them into advocates and influencers for the artist,” he says. “When K-pop acts such as AB6IX and CIX are put together, great care is taken to ensure that all the members have a clear storyline and they each complement the others. It’s like putting together a jigsaw.” 

Building stories around artists is nothing new for the Western music industry. But Lee compares the practice in South Korea to the way that comic book publisher Marvel has built up its Marvel Universe, going way beyond individual characters. “With trans-media marketing, besides simply listening to their favourite artists’ music, K-pop fans now have a storyline and characters to follow and the artists become a part of their lifestyle,” she says. 

The result, according to Lee, is “more stimulated and engaged fans”. 

“With increasingly sophisticated fans who are constantly on a lookout for new content around their stars, I believe artists who can extend their stories and messages beyond the sounds will be able to build a powerful rapport with their fans that lasts,” she says.

THE POWER OF FANDOM MARKETING

In many ways, this “powerful rapport” already exists between K-pop fans and their musical idols. South Korean fans are well known for their willingness to spend money on music, something the K-pop industry capitalises on by selling albums in multiple editions to appeal to the collector and completist instinct in fans. But fans also help promote their favourite K-pop acts, according to Jeon Duck Jung, vice chairman of the Korea Entertainment Producer’s Association. 

“K-pop’s other unique marketing strategy is fandom marketing,” he explains. “In addition to basic marketing, K-pop artists constantly interact and communicate with their fans through various channels and fan activities to retain and expand their fandom.” 

Rather than promoting the “rock star fantasy”, K-pop artists focus on actively communicating with their fans all over the world using social media, while simultaneously showcasing their more relatable sides by appearing on TV and via live video streaming. Their fans respond in kind. 

“Fans these days recreate their favourite K-pop stars’ content to their liking [e.g. as memes] and share them with other fans, which results in multiple consumption of the same content,” Jeon says, citing cover videos and fan-made music videos as examples.

BREAKING THROUGH THE LANGUAGE BARRIER

Another hugely important way in which K-pop fans help out their idols is by translating and transcribing videos and other content, thereby helping artists to expand into foreign markets. 

“When I got into K-pop as a fan in 2008, at that time it was all fan translation,” says Herman. “There was very little English language content coming from these South Korean companies. Now if you go to some music videos, they will have the lyrics translated into five or ten different languages the minute the song is up. They’re really trying to reach a foreign audience.” 

Leaving such an important task to fans might seem rather risky behaviour for a South Korean music industry known for its micromanagement, but Herman explains that many music companies often oversee translation themselves. At the same time, fan translation has worked extremely well for BTS, who Herman says have “an army of translators” on social media.


“They have huge Twitter followers and they are known for translating the lyrics and also for translating the conversations that BTS have on social media,” she says. “BTS’s fandom has really perfected it. I have heard that they have group chats among the translators to determine what is going to be on at any given time to make sure nobody misses anything. They discuss the phrasing […] They have huge audiences: some of these tweets will get seen by hundreds of thousands of eyes, if not millions of eyes.” 

BTS tapped explicitly into this earlier in the year with the Learn Korean With BTS linguistic platform for fans outside of South Korea to get to grips with their mother tongue. 

It runs on Weverse (the app created by Big Hit Entertainment that specialises in hosting multimedia content and artist-to-fan communications) and fans can access three-minute language tutorials from the group. There are 30 in total and the band members are there to guide first-time speakers through it all. The lessons draw on existing footage from Run BTS! (the band’s reality show) as well as YouTube-only shows such as Bangtan Bombs and BTS Episodes. 

It has a proper academic foundation as Professor Heo Yong from the Department of Korean Education at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies and researchers from the Korea Language Contents Institute were involved in its creation.

THE SNS GOLD STANDARD

BTS have also mastered another vitally important part of the music marketing jigsaw, with the band known for their extensive use of social media. “Top K-pop music companies have been smart and savvy in mapping out successful social media strategies,” says Bernie Cho. 

“En route to collecting an impressive trove of certified gold records, BTS has pretty much become the new SNS [Social Networking Service] gold standard when it comes to intimate interactivity with international fans. The virtual connection between the fans and the band feels very close and very real.” 

Of course, social media is important for almost any musical act in the 20th century; but South Korean bands have, on the whole, managed to parlay this into a very structured and effective platform for fan communication.


Herman says that there are various ways in which K-pop acts use social media, including a small number who barely touch it. “Some artists spend time chatting with fans,” she says. “There is this thing called a ‘menpa’, which stands for ‘mention party’. That is when an artist will say ‘I am here to chat’ and will respond to different fans. Fans will ask questions, compliment them or send them memes – and they engage with them. Some artists generally are engaging and some artists do timed engagement each day – so you have a look into the window of their career.” 

This openness extends not just to classic social media like Twitter and Instagram: BTS are active on Weverse; while SM Entertainment acts such as Exo use the company’s community-based app Lysn. 

Herman says that K-pop fans do, for the large part, understand that they are not actual friends of their favourite artists, but she believes there is “a thinning of the barrier between the artist and the fan because these artists are engaging”.


“It is unclear to everyone involved how much of it is PR, how much of it is the artists themselves, how much of it is pre-timed and how much of it is preplanned,” she adds. “It feels a lot of the time like something really natural and really earnest.”

MAKING FREE PAY AND THE K-POP RABBIT HOLE

Another crucial part of the K-pop marketing strategy is the release of vast amounts of content, largely – but not exclusively – for free. This, alongside social media, can help fans to feel like they have a real insight into their idols, helping to sustain K-pop’s own Marvel Universe. 

Video is key to this – both the formal promotional clips that labels commission and the more spontaneous, off-the-cuff content that fills bands’ social media. “In South Korea, music videos are not only essential but also epic marketing tools,” says Bernie Cho. “K-pop in many ways is music your eyes can hear and your ears can see, thanks to the power of music videos. Not much gets lost in translation because whatever you might not understand lyrically gets interpreted visually.” 

Herman explains that BTS, for example, are always “doing live streams, making videos that show behind the scenes” and even producing their own video clips. “If there’s a song that fans particularly like, maybe the band members will film their own video and one of them will edit it,” she says. “They will share dance practice videos where you can see them [being] not as polished as usual. And that is on top of social media and formal content.” 

To add to this mélange, K-pop fans also produce a vast amount of content, a practice largely encouraged by the South Korean music industry. “People call it the K-pop rabbit hole,” says Herman. “There is so much coming out, so many different acts out there and so much fan-produced content that, even if you are just absorbing the formal content, it still is too much to watch for pretty much any given artist.”

LIGHTS, CAMERA, REACTION

One of the keystones of K-pop fan content – and one that has yet to really translate to Western acts – is the reaction video, whereby K-pop fans film themselves reacting to bands’ new videos and upload the results to YouTube. “There is a whole YouTuber industry based around this,” Herman says. 

This may seem, on the face of it, like a rather reductive way in which to interact with an artist’s music, but the results are frequently rather profound. 

“People want to know what other people are thinking and so reactions give them insight,” says Herman. 

“Maybe somebody catches something that they’re not catching. Maybe somebody had a thought that they didn’t think of. Some people have turned it into almost being an East-meets-West explainer: ‘Well, that means this, this is a pun, this is a socio-political in-joke that maybe you are not picking up from a translation…’”


On the whole, the K-pop industry is fairly relaxed about fan content. Takedowns do still happen, from time to time, but on the whole, the South Korean music business takes a practical attitude towards UGC. “South Korean music companies usually encourage rather than discourage user-generated content on social media,” says Bernie Cho. “It’s an integral part of the K-pop marketing machine because they are able to not only monitor fans’ appreciation but also to monetise fans’ interpretation of their favourite K-pop choruses and dance moves.” 

Clearly, then, there remain important differences between the music industry in South Korea and the music industry in the West, even if some of the classic K-pop marketing tricks have already started to be adopted globally, notably the practice of collaborating with a local artist to extend your reach. 

“In the past, such tie-ups were done to help the K-pop artists promote themselves in the overseas market they were trying to enter,” says Jeon. “Today, many international acts approach K-pop artists for collaboration as they increasingly view this as an effective way of global marketing.” 

And yet Jeon believes that it is premature to say that the global music industry is copying K-pop marketing. “K-pop marketing may have an influence on overseas artists, but likewise global music also has a huge influence on the way K-pop is marketed internationally,” he says. “It is exciting to watch each side accept and embrace each other’s music and marketing strategies. Who knows if this will create an entirely new genre or culture.” 

The best idea for the Western music industry, then, may be not so much to copy K-pop marketing as to take inspiration from it as a base. 

“As much as it is impossible to copy K-pop marketing 100%, copying will only result in the artist’s loss of his or her own musical character,” Jeon and Lee say in a joint statement. 

“Instead, global music marketers should explore strategies that can best bring out and promote the artist’s authenticity and musical world. Just as how K-pop is now recognised as a music genre on its own, it is important to keep the international music industry diversified, to ensure a continued development of the global music scene.

https://musically.com
By MusicAlly

Featured Commentator : Bernie Cho [DFSB Kollective]

Paper Magazine [Internet Culture] : Here Are Quarantine Trends From Around the World

South Korea : Dalgona Coffee, 16th Century Zombie Thrillers & AR-Infused K-Pop Concerts

"Next to drive-thru virus testing centers, Korea's most ingenious innovation during the coronavirus outbreak may be the breakout viral video recipe for Dalgona coffee, which has become a super-spreading hashtag across social media communities around the world," says Seoul-based music industry executive Bernie Cho. The insanely popular fluffy, whipped coffee that looks a lot like butterscotch pudding has taken over Instagram, YouTube and TikTok since the lockdown began. And, for Koreans looking for a new show to binge while they sip their brew, Cho says one popular program is Kingdom, a "fictional 16th century zombie thriller about the political turmoil caused by a pandemic pandemonium spreading across the Korean peninsula." Released on January 20 — the same day South Korea announced the first reported case of COVID-19 as Cho points out — the series, whether in a case of "art imitating life or life imitating art" has "struck a nerve with audiences." Not to be outdone, the country's biggest entertainment juggernaut – K-Pop – has also attracted a huge audience tuning in from home. "The biggest music company in Korea (SM Entertainment) and the biggest online platform in Korea (Naver) recently banded together to launch a brand-new live music streaming service called 'Beyond Live,'" Cho says. "Unlike other live music streaming events hosted at home and offered for free, 'Beyond Live' backs up its bravado by real-time streaming AR-infused K-Pop concerts that feel like epic music videos performed live and by charging upwards of $30 USD for the international, interactive, immersive experience. With over 75,000 online fans from 100+ countries tuning into K-Pop boy band SuperM, 'Beyond Live' is bending the curve on the battered live concert business."

https://www.papermag.com
By Abby Schreiber

Featured Commentator : Bernie Cho [DFSB Kollective]