Chartmetric : The 'How Music Charts' Podcast < Secrets of K-Pop and the Korean Music Industry With Bernie Cho [Pt 1/2] >

DFSB Kollective President Bernie Cho has 20+ years in the Asian entertainment industry. In this two-part episode of How Music Charts, Bernie pulls the curtain back on K-Pop and the Korean music industry.

Bernie Cho is a music executive with more than 21 years of culture creation in the Asian music, television, and pop culture industries. As President of DFSB Kollective, a Seoul-based independent artist and label services agency that specializes in providing digital media, marketing, and distribution solutions to 600+ Korean Pop music artists, DFSB collaborates with artists and their management to devise customized strategies that directly connect them to their local and global fans. Since 2009, the agency has successfully produced numerous K-Pop concerts and showcases around the world, in addition to securing No. 1 chart debuts for various K-Pop albums in North America, Asia-Pacific, and Europe.

As one of the first and foremost K-Pop music exporters, DFSB Kollective and its artists have been featured speakers and/or performers at top international music industry events including CMJ, CMW, SXSW, Coachella, The Great Escape, Glastonbury, Summer Sonic, Music Matters, MusicBiz, and MIDEM. Bernie himself has been involved with the startup of six TV channels, two concert series, and one film festival.

A true executive all-rounder, Bernie served as the Head of MTV Korea’s Digital Media Production team and worked for nearly two decades in the Korean music and TV industries as a Creative Planner, Program Producer, and Show Host. He earned a Bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College in Government/Asian Studies, attended the UCLA Executive Entertainment & Media Program, and graduated from the Foundation Film Program at Vancouver Film School.

Though Bernie has no relation to Chartmetric’s CEO Sung Cho, Bernie is an Advisor for several US and Korean music tech startups, including Chartmetric.

On the "full-stack business model" the Korean music agencies have and how similar it is to the computer technology sector:

"For those of you who are tech heads ... the most desired person that you want to hire in a tech company is the full stack developer ... and what that means is somebody who knows all the different parts of the development chain from concept to completion ... and they're a one-stop-shop ... and the full stack business model ... carries over into the K-Pop business culture because these Korean music companies ... they're a music label, they're a talent management company, and they're essentially a talent agency as well. So these are three different disciplines in the Western music markets."

Cho goes into the industry style's origin story, which is also endemic in other regions like Latin America:

"Many of the major labels ... really up until recently, were more concerned and interested in having Western acts succeed in Asia. The idea of Asian acts succeeding in the West was not really on their agenda, on their radar, or on their roadmap ... and so for a lot of Korean and Asian executives, there were [also] no [international] talent agencies to look to and lean on ... and so these Korean music management companies evolved into becoming the record label and becoming the talent agency."

For many Westerners, sizing the K-Pop industry is a hard thing to wrap one's head around, but Cho elaborates:

"People want to know how big the K-Pop industry is — it's huge.... If we look at the top Korean music companies — SM Entertainment, Big Hit Entertainment, JYP Entertainment, and YG Entertainment — each of these companies make more money annually than the top urban music label in the US, the top Latin music label in the US, and the top country music label in the US.... These top four Korean music companies generate more revenue than the music markets of all the countries in Southeast Asia, South Asia, and East Asia (with the exception of Japan and China), so the fact that individual companies generate more money than individual music markets speaks volumes."

In evidence of Chartmetric's concept of global "trigger cities" helping artists go viral outside of the traditional Western gate-keeping cities via streaming apps:

"You guys coined the phrase “trigger cities”.... We see this in our monthly royalty accounting reports and we get this confirmed by digital agencies who work with TikTok influencers. Cities that most people would not even think of as being sort of the ground zeroes and the hotbeds of what will make a song go viral not just locally or regionally but more importantly globally. And those cities include those in the Philippines, Indonesia, and of all places Mexico City.... When you look at analytics ... the reality is ... 90 percent of the YouTube views for K-Pop music videos are from outside of Korea.... We get royalty checks from Africa, the Middle East, Russia."

Having said that, Cho's experience reveals how E-sports and gaming constitutes a business that dwarfs even K-Pop:

"As big as K-Pop is, E-sports ... is even bigger. Of all the Korean pop culture exports, video games is actually number one.... It's basically 7.5 times bigger than music, TV, and movie exports combined. E-sports and video games are hands down the number one export of Korea.... I worked at MTV ages ago, and it was embarrassing that these Pro E-sports League channels were crushing MTV in the ratings."

Bernie Cho alludes to the digital influence of Seoul-based 1Million Dance Studio, here with choreography to Fitz and the Tantrums' 2016 "Handclap" (48M YouTube views as of September 2020).

Besides the obvious influence of short-form video platforms like TikTok and Triller, Cho also cites YouTube dance studio channels like Seoul's 1Million Dance Studio as major influencers that K-Pop fans flock to for the best choreography:

"1million dance studio is known to be the go-to choreographers for a lot of K-Pop artists.... [They are the] Platinum standard when it comes to K-Pop dance moves that a lot of kids are always looking to copy.... Those videos go viral.... they rack up not just millions ... hundreds of millions of views.... They've got more juice than DJs and VJs and TV producers in terms of breaking songs."

Stay tuned for Part 2!



In part 2 of our conversation with Bernie Cho, we tackle glocalization, transmedia marketing, a post-TikTok world, and yes, Donald Trump’s Triller account.

In Part 1 of our conversation with DFSB Kollective President and Korean music industry expert Bernie Cho, we learned about K-Pop's full-stack business model and the hot city matrix. In part 2, we tackle glocalization, transmedia marketing, a post-TikTok world, and yes, Donald Trump’s Triller account.

Sound like a lot of jargon? Let's brush up.

• Full-stack business model: Unlike the á la carte style of the Western music industry, the Korean music industry operates more like a full-stack developer at a tech company. In other words, the Korean music company is more likely to be a one-stop shop: record label, artist management, and talent agency.
• Hot city matrix: Much like our own concept of trigger cities, the hot city matrix includes cities that aren't necessarily industry hotspots like New York City, Los Angeles, and London. As we've seen, markets in Southeast Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and even Russia can account for some of the most dynamic music consumption trends worldwide.
• Glocalization: The internet has undoubtedly connected people on a global scale that was previously unimaginable. Perhaps counterintuitively, rather than resulting in sweeping uniformity, it's brought out the particularities of cultures and communities worldwide. If you're familiar with marketing, think microtargeting.
• Transmedia marketing: Bringing narrative arcs to music marketing and A&R. In other words, thinking about the long-term development of an artist's brand as you would about the protagonist in your favorite Netflix series.
• A post-TikTok world: Donald Trump made Sunday, Sept. 20, the last day for TikTok app downloads in the United States. But TikTok isn't the only short-form video app in the game....
• Donald Trump's Triller account: Enough said.

Now that we have a grasp on some big picture concepts from Part 1 and Part 2, let's drill down to some of the more granular points that Bernie makes in Part 2.

The 4 Key Elements of Glocalization in Korean Music

1) Bilingual Metadata: Having Korean and English titles side-by-side makes Korean music simple to find, simple to access, and simple to discover.

2) Multicultural and Multilingual: Some of the most popular K-Pop groups incorporate English lyrics and non-Korean members, making K-Pop less and less exclusively Korean and more and more global.

3) Social Media: Korean artists used homegrown solutions and went big on international platforms, and Koreans were very early adopters of these international platforms, and that has increased the viability and success of K-Pop going global.

4) Collaborations: Both creative and also commercial. High-profile music collaborations between international superstars and top Korean artists have helped grow K-Pop globally, but so have commercial relationships between major labels and independent Korean music companies.


How Transmedia Marketing Helps Fans Develop Artists

Transmedia marketing helps K-Pop fans connect with an artist on a whole other level, making them active participants in the narrative arc of an artist's story and brand. According to Bernie, fans almost vicariously collaborate with labels in terms of A&R and the development of artists, because they feel like they have some stake in the success of those artists from the early stages to stadium stages.

What these fans do is above and beyond anything I've seen in Western markets. It's not just clicking a like and posting a comment.... It almost feels like [the artists] have put themselves in a Truman Show type situation.... The artists are communicating often directly with their fans, and so the fans feel a close connection that you don't see often necessarily with Western acts. The other thing is what these fan clubs do to promote and market the success of their favorite acts. In some ways they've kind of almost benched music labels' marketing and promotion departments, because they do all of the heavy lifting.... These fan clubs will actually pay for huge billboards ... to celebrate a milestone or celebrate a birthday.... Some of them have literally bought out entire city skylines to do massive birthday celebrations for their favorite artists.

K-Pop Activism and the TikTok Ban

Donald Trump's TikTok ban is arguably more about K-Pop stans leveraging the short-form video app to disrupt his Tulsa, Oklahoma, rally in June 2020 than it is about legitimate privacy concerns.

As Bernie elucidates, there are complicated historical reasons for Korean artists abstaining from activism, but the #blacklivesmatter movement brought to bear the influence of K-Pop fandom on social media.

Given the fact that now K-Pop has become global, it's not surprising that those who happen to like K-Pop happen to often be multicultural, people of color, who happen to be open-minded to other cultures.... It feels if anything relevant and real to K-Pop fans.... I think for a lot of artists, the Black Lives Matter movement and fighting racism, I don't think — and I hope others don't think — is a political issue. It's a human rights issue. You can't argue with that. Politics, always arguments. With human rights, it's pretty straight forward.

https://hmc.chartmetric.com/k-pop-korean-music-industry-bernie-cho-part-1/
By Jason Joven

https://hmc.chartmetric.com/k-pop-korean-music-industry-bernie-cho-part-2/
By Rutger Ansley Rosenborg

MusicTech Start-Up Advisor : Bernie Cho [DFSB Kollective/SparkLabs]
Podcast Featured Commentator : Bernie Cho [DFSB Kollective]