In 2012, the world got its first taste of Korean culture with the hit "Gangnam Style". With its catchy rhythm, repetitive chorus, and funny dance, the music video put everybody on their feet, and has since amassed over 2 billion views on YouTube.
If you're wondering where "Gangnam Style" came from, let me tell you: it came from the super-smart and highly lucrative K-Pop industry.
K-Pop is a music genre that incorporates several styles, including hip-hop, electronic, jazz, dubstep, and pop. This is what makes the genre so appealing to people with different musical tastes.
But K-Pop won't stop. In the last few years, we have watched this industry take over, step by step, the biggest music markets in the world. Each year, we discover more K-Pop hits on international playlists and more and more we hear names like BTS, BLACKPINK, EXO, and RED VELVET on media outlets like BBC and BILLBOARD.
All of this has been happening because of K-Pop fans, mostly between the ages of 13 to 25, who are some of the most loyal and passionate fans the music industry has ever seen, rivaling or even surpassing artists like Justin Bieber, One Direction, and Demi Lovato.
But is K-Pop a new genre? Actually, no. K-Pop has been around since the end of the 90s. So why is K-Pop getting bigger and bigger now? Every decade, new artists rise to the top of the charts. After One Direction broke up, we had some successful artists, but none appealed to teenage fans as much as the previous generation artists did.
The market had a lack of artists with young appeal. The K-Pop industry, with so much fresh content and great music, gained strength and has been conquering fans worldwide day after day.
We know the power of teenage fans, and it's huge. Both online and offline, teenage audiences have a passion, fanaticism, and, most importantly, an online reach we've never seen before.
With a young audience, the K-Pop industry has based its strategies on making teenage fans fall in love with the idols in a blink of an eye. The idols, as they are called, go through years of intensive training where they learn how to sing, dance, behave in public, and act in interviews. They learn how to be entertainers, and their personalities are created strategically so that the public can identify with them immediately.
The strategies used by the K-Pop industry have proved to be accurate. In 2018, K-Pop had export revenue of 60.5 million dollars just for the United States. In 2019, that number grew to 235 million dollars.
According to research, there are four main reasons that make K-Pop so attractive: the music production method, which creates catchy and danceable songs; the exceptional commitment to high-quality performances and content, including the audiovisual aesthetics; the development of commercial idols with ideal personalities; and the dedicated fan base and strong social media presence.
The K-Pop characteristics includes fresh songs with repetitive catchy chorus, the climax-oriented dramaturgy with dancing beats accompanied by vibrant rap parts.
In 2011 British scientist did a research in order to find out hit songs properties, using algorithms and Artificial Intelligence, the research found 23 different elements classified as: music duration, danceability, energy, beat, and others.
Danceability has become more and more important over time, while rhythm has become rudimental. Binary rhythms gain much more space.
The research also proved that hit songs contain repeated phrases and melodies, which helps stick the song unconsciously on the listener brain - the famous sticky songs.
Analysing K-Pop songs through Spotify API, we discovered that most K-Pop hit songs have those characteristics considered successful by the research. Now let's analyse the biggest boyband in the world right now, BTS. But before getting to the data we need to learn some concepts:
Describes how suitable a track is for dancing - based on a combination of musical elements including tempo, rhythm stability, beat strength, and regularity.
Represents a perceptual measure of intensity and activity - Typically, energetic tracks feel fast, loud, and noisy. This attribute include dynamic range, perceived loudness, timbre, onset rate, and general entropy.
Detects the presence of spoken words in a track - Values above 0.66 describe tracks probably made entirely of spoken words like podcasts. Values between 0.33 and 0.66 describe tracks that may contain both music and speech.
Predicts whether a track contains no vocals - “Ooh” and “aah” sounds are treated as instrumental in that context. Rap or spoken word tracks are clearly “vocal”. The closer the instrumentalness value is to 1.0, the greater likelihood the track contains no vocal activity.
Down below you'll find BTS songs data taken from Spotify's API
If we compare BTS's numbers with those of Western artists, we can see that BTS's songs have significantly higher levels of Speechiness and Energy than most Western artists. However, in terms of Instrumentalness and Acousticness, BTS has lower levels.
Comparing K-Pop artists with Western artists, we observe a difference in the scores for Danceability and Energy between these genres, with K-Pop generally having higher scores. This is significant in the research as Danceability has become increasingly important over time.
When compared to two other K-Pop boybands with the same hip hop concept, BTS shows a wider range of tempo in their songs, covering a greater distribution of music. In contrast, Ikon and BigBang tend to stick to a tempo range of 125 to 90 BPM.
Musically, we can see that K-Pop groups have a higher level of energy and danceability in their songs than most Western artists, which are two properties that are very important for hit songs. On the other hand, the acousticness levels have dropped a lot compared to Western songs.
Another property gaining attention from the K-Pop industry is speechiness. This property is one of the factors that has given a lot of recognition to BTS songs.
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Beside the music content, the K-Pop industry is known for the high quality of their audiovisual productions and perfectly synchronized performances. The idols' elaborate dance moves, charisma, and stage presence are gaining more and more attention from fans all over the world.
Over the years, we have seen artists like Michael Jackson, Freddie Mercury, and others draw crowds of people with their stage charisma. These days, one of the most important things for an artist is their stage presence and charisma. That's why K-Pop idols are trained from an early age to acquire these qualities and put on unforgettable and appealing performances.
In addition to breathtaking performances and perfect productions, one of the most important things in the K-Pop industry is debut strategy. The group/artist debut is the artist's launch, and the first impression is EVERYTHING. The marketing promotions, visuals, music, and other efforts are put into the debut because it's when the public will decide if they like the group or not. If the debut doesn't get great numbers, the group will probably not succeed and may even be forgotten by fans most of the time.
Another strategy from the K-Pop industry is comebacks and concepts. Comebacks are singles, music videos, EPs, and even album releases by the acts. It's common for junior groups to release mini albums and EPs (with 5 to 7 songs) to make people get to know the artists with a lower market price.
The concepts, which are not often seen in Western artists, are very common and one of the most important things in K-Pop. We see the same artists with a lot of different styles and concepts in each comeback. The concept defines the album theme, the songs, dance, idols' visuals, and even the group image. It is a way to segment the audience, create expectations, engage, and bring fresh content to fans.
We see girl groups like Twice with a fanciful and cute concept, with the majority of fans being male (59%) between 21 to 30 (32%) and 10 to 20 (30%). On the other side, we see Blackpink with a girl power concept. This kind of concept has a greater appeal to the female public (61%) with the age range similar to Twice.
The concept defines a lot of the group's market. The cute concept mostly has more appeal to the male public, and Twice is mainly marketed as girls Korean people would like to date. Meanwhile, the girl power concept is marketed as girls people want to be friends with. That's why most of the content is turned to the group dynamic with vacation reality shows and other contents with friendship as the main narrative of the group.
Blackpink is also strongly marketed as self-inserts – people who fans want to be. That fabulous life, pretty people, clothes by famous designers, luxury parties and vacations, famous friends, and staff make fans want to live like them. They get inspired by their personalities, clothes, and even their lives. We will talk more deeply about archetypes and self-insert, but for now, these are the most successful group concepts.
Personal marketing can be done in mainly three ways, and you just need to know where to place them
1 - someone people want to date
2- someone people want to be friends with
3 -someone people want to be
With the goal of creating artists that delight fans, the K-Pop industry has been pre-fabricating the idols' image even before they debut.
The strategic team, based on data, creates a group with a market purpose, defining the group's image (fashion, archetypes, self-insert, brand, etc.), concept (songs, performances, music videos), and visual to achieve the group's market goals.
The objective is to make the group/act so appealing that fans fall in love instantly with the idols, caring and protecting them as members of their own families.
We see a lot of K-Pop groups compared to solo acts (the Western opposite), because of the intention to belong to something. Every human being, mainly teenagers, has the yearning to belong to a community. So, the group chemistry, who lives and works together for years, makes it emotionally comfortable to watch their videos/performances, giving the fans an escape from their problems and creating a sense of belonging to the group. Also, Eastern people tend to have the collective side more outlined, while Western people are usually more individualistic.
One of the K-Pop strategies is to make idols appealing to the public, from physical appearance to their personalities. Each group member has a different appeal - music skills, main dancer, main rapper, visual beauty, funny personality, chic personality, etc. - according to the group's main strategy. In order to create an attractive personality, the K-Pop industry uses the creation of archetypes, which allows fans to connect easily with idols without the need to watch hours and hours of videos to know their personalities. Fans can look and fall in love immediately because of the idols' appealing personalities. Archetypes in music weren't created by the Korean industry; we saw the Spice Girls and their archetypes - Scary Spice, Sporty Spice, Posh Spice, Baby Spice, Ginger Spice - but it's really common to see the use of archetypes in K-Pop.
Besides archetypes, another strategy is the self-insert character. It's more than just liking an idol's personality; it's seeing yourself in those personalities. Idols' personalities, styles, fashion, and behavior are created so fans can live indirectly through their idols and project their desires onto the artists (just like we used to play with Barbies when we were kids). The self-insert strategy makes the idols and the idol's life become a fantasy the fan can live on, and create their own personality through the idol. The fantasy of a famous life, with parties, clothes, awards shows, and famous friends, makes the fans want to live as their own idols.
It's becoming more and more common to find idols from foreign countries like Japan, China, Thailand, Australia, Canada, and even the United States. These idols make K-Pop an international industry. Idols from other countries make the fans from those countries have a deep connection with the idols, which makes K-Pop stronger in some countries.
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Let's take a look at some of Blackpink's archetypes. Despite not creating as much music content as other K-Pop groups, they are currently the biggest girl group worldwide, and were even the first K-Pop act to perform at Coachella.
Blackpink consists of four members: Jisoo, Jennie, Rosé, and Lisa. Even before their debut, the group had the international market as their primary goal, with all of the girls being fluent in Japanese and three of them fluent in English. Rosé is from Australia, Jennie lived in New Zealand for 5 years, and Lisa is from Thailand.
Like every idol group, each member has their own role, with Jisoo as the visual and lead vocalist, Jennie as the main rapper and lead vocalist, Rosé as the main vocalist and lead dancer, and Lisa as the main dancer, lead rapper, and maknae (the youngest member). In addition to these roles, each member also has their own archetypes and self-inserts that are clearly defined.
Rosé is the "indie girl," a music lover whose dream of becoming a famous singer came true. Jisoo has one of the most commonly used archetypes in the K-Pop industry, that of the girl next door, a charismatic, humble, and hardworking girl that everybody adores. However, this archetype is easily overshadowed by more popular archetypes like Jennie's and Lisa's.
Jennie is known as "The Human Chanel", embodying the diva archetype - a fashionable but sometimes moody person. She wears clothes designed by famous and exclusive brands, and her love life and media scandals make many teenage girls jealous of her. After all, who hasn't wanted to be the most popular girl at school with amazing clothes and boyfriends?
Lisa is one of the most famous archetypes, especially abroad in Western countries. As a Thai member of the group, her Korean facial features are not as prominent, making her relatable to fans worldwide and giving them the fantasy that anyone in the world can become a K-Pop idol. This archetype is extremely relatable to teenage fans because Lisa gives off an underdog feeling - she wasn't always popular or pretty, but she became one of the most beautiful K-Pop idols in the world. This inspires teenage girls to dream of being like her. In addition to her physical traits, Lisa's personality is also very relatable. She's funny, cute, and always making jokes and being awkwardly adorable. However, on stage she transforms into a woman with a lot of attitude and self-confidence. Her duality makes girls with different styles relate to her personality. It's no surprise that she is the most followed K-Pop idol on Instagram and the most famous idol outside of Korea.
Blackpink, despite creating relatively little music content, are frequently featured in luxurious reality shows and fashion events, and they are also ambassadors for famous fashion and makeup brands, all in an effort to promote their archetypes and self-inserts.
It is worth noting that not every group has its own archetypes, and in some groups, one member can embody more than one archetype. But if you're wondering how idols' personalities become so striking to fans, the answer lies in mass dissemination.
K-Pop groups employ a variety of strategies to promote their content, including a strong social media presence, reality shows, vlogs, interviews, variety shows, and gossip. According to Schickel, the enchantment power basis lies in the illusion of intimacy established between the celebrity and the public through the media. It is the media that gives the impression that "the more you know about a celebrity, the closer you are to their life."
These content strategies are one of K-Pop's most effective weapons, bringing fans closer to idols and creating a proximity illusion that makes fans think of idols as friends, lovers, or even authorities.
In the West, it's really common to see artists keeping their distance from fans, and their private lives are not as clear as those of artists from the East. Idols' lives are shown in many reality shows daily, and they even appear on numerous variety shows where they can showcase their funny and catchy personalities that make them more relatable.
In addition to personal content shared by idols, it's also common to see autograph sessions and special events where idols give food and presents to fans to thank them. Another interesting thing in K-Pop is how involved fans are in group activities. For example, groups create fan chants (parts where fans can sing with the idols) to their songs, and even encourage fans to create interactions with banners and merchandise, like the famous lightstick which provides fans the chance to be, somehow, part of the show with those lights.
But we can't talk about K-Pop without giving the internet a huge credit for its success. The internet has given the chance to reach people all over the world, and with the internet also came the golden word: ENGAGEMENT. You have to keep fans engaged, or they will be gone. One perfect example of engagement is BigHit Entertainment, which uploads a lot of BTS content, such as official songs, videos, photos, reality shows, and even creates fictitious storyline content related to the group to engage fans.
Besides video content, the boy group also does punctual actions to engage the audience, like the online project that was executed in February 2019, where the company spread QR codes on the internet and in real-life places where people could share their experiences about BTS on that day.
Another cool action made by BTS was during the Love Yourself album release. Every physical album version had a piece of paper with a random message, and fans could put them together to create a story. Fans engaged on the internet and tried to complete the story, and the company published notes with the whole story completed.
This takes us to the BTS fictional world storyline. This strategy contributes a lot to fans' engagement. The boy group has many fictional stories in a fictional world, and these stories are told in pieces that you can find in albums, music videos, short films, booklets, comic books, logo designs, and other materials from the group. Fans go crazy when another piece of the story is out, and it contributes a lot to their engagement.
Another important strategy used by many small companies is to upload official music videos from their artists to different channels from large media companies. The huge amount of subscribers and larger reach of these channels give a lot of visibility to smaller groups. They also make contracts with music distributors to help release new songs on websites like Melon and Genie, which are very popular in the East.
We can't deny that K-Pop groups have a much higher amount of content than Western artists nowadays. Besides songs, there are concepts, videos, vlogs, theories, variety shows, and interviews that engage fans all the time.
Analyzing BTS, even before their debut, the group had a lot of content on digital platforms such as cover songs, dance practices, and other videos about the group. They still share a lot of personal content with the fans through social media.
Besides these spontaneous contents, there are exclusive contents like appearances on talk shows and variety shows to promote an album or music video before its release.
Every content is released to bring fans closer, create connections, and keep the group on the media to keep fans engaged. Even during tours and vacations, groups pre-record a lot of content and shows to release according to the group's strategy.
We know that the biggest artists in the world have been supported by their army of teenage fans. Examples include The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Spice Girls, Justin Bieber, and One Direction. Their usually hysterical and passionate teenage fans helped spread their idols' name to large crowds around the world.
According to Sandro Caramaschi, a psychologist, young people usually have a need to find a community. It is normal for teenagers to look up to public figures like musicians, actors, and famous people.
The fanaticism for their idols gains a voice around the world, especially on social media, where fans can connect with groups of people who share the same interests. This sense of community helps them to define their own personalities. According to Laurel Seteinberg, a psychotherapist and teacher at Columbia University, being a part of a fandom gives teenage kids goals and purpose, and the feeling of belonging to something bigger.
As an example of fans' devotion to their idols, we see fandoms getting together and planning strategies to become bigger. The fans create and maintain many online accounts with different goals, such as Views Accounts - where they plan and spread strategies to get more views on streaming platforms like YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, and others - and Voting Team Accounts - where they inform and organize efforts to vote in awards and competitions.
There are even accounts that are in charge of monitoring and creating multitudes of people to reach number goals on Billboard charts, clean up bad comments on videos and posts by idols, and even create more content to keep fans engaged. Every account has several administrators who post in different time zones and in many languages so that fans all around the world can help to achieve their goals and spread the idols' names.
The fans' dedication makes them spend hours and hours of their days voting and streaming their favorite artists to reach the fandom's goals. Fans also create videos (fancams and edits), translate videos, post information day-to-day about the idols and shows, create theories, stories, fanfics, funny videos, and a lot of content about their idols.
It's very common to see lots of fans getting together to collect a large amount of money to donate to NGOs and organizations in the idols' name. Besides these online actions, fans also send flowers and food to radio stations, asking the DJ to play the idols' songs, as this has an impact on the Billboard charts. This way, the idols become more and more successful, and it brings the feeling of success to the fans. That's why they spend hours and hours of their days working, because of that unconscious feeling of power and fame that the idols' conquests bring to the fans.
Social media is one of the most important keys to the success of K-pop around the world. It is on the internet where fans can connect with thousands of people, but mainly with their idols. The idols' versatility, personality, and brand make them not just musicians but also dancers, fashion icons, and actors. But above all, they are entertainers created to enchant people all over the world. The idols and groups present different images and concepts in every comeback.
K-pop is not just music or culture; it is also a brand. Always new, fresh, and with great audiovisual appeal, it surprises fans and captures people's attention all over the world.
It's really important to keep an eye on this industry that has HUGE export potential, with idols who speak multiple languages and come from various countries around the world. They are able to connect with fans worldwide thanks to the globalized market of K-pop and the popularity of idols.
