Is any of this much different from pop boy bands of the 00's? You make generic, catchy songs that are hard to resist. Then have a group of four or five attractive teens perform the song. And then Highlight each individual so people form a parasocial relationship with the band members. The fanaticism follows quite easily from there.
As someone who enjoys both kpop and western pop I feel there's definitely something that about kpop that creates a more intense fandom, but it's not easy to put one's finger on why exactly. One reason might be that in the western music industry there's more of an assumption that the product is the music whereas in kpop the artist is the product. Kpop artists put out a lot of material that makes you feel close to them and makes them relatable. I'd say that the culture of Korean media is more intimate in general. Kpop stars appear on a lot of tv shows where they just play games, share stories, spend time with at their home, work, coffee shop, restaurant. If you have a favorite western pop star you might see them on a talk show or read their Twitter feed, but it doesn't really feel like you're spending personal time with them week after week.
> of an assumption that the product is the music whereas in kpop the artist is the product
It's not just an assumption, they are open about it. It's not a coincidence that kpop idol are forbidden from dating (they enforce it very strongly btw) and that they organize events were fans can pay in exchange to sit down with them and hold their hand for a few minutes.
Their business model has always been that they prefer to charge a single super fan 900$ for a limited edition album than sell a 10$ albums to 90 people.
Was in Bangkok a few months ago with my two sons. Driver dropped us off (mistakenly) at the first class drop off. It was quiet but when we entered the doors of the airport there was thousands of girls stretched all the way to the check in counter. And they all started screaming. My 15 year old and 13 year old sons thought that was kind of cool. The celebration quickly subsided once they saw we had no kpop stardom. The star arrived as we checked in and those girls totally lost it for the one or two minutes before he was ushered in to VIP.
>western music industry there's more of an assumption that the product is the music whereas in kpop the artist is the product.
I disagree, also a big fan of kpop and 90s/2000's pop groups and KPOP is just another iteration. All that intimacy on boybands was there back then in magazines, hotlines, tv shows, etc etc, but we probably were not teenage girls during that time and didn't participate.
Kpop groups routinely hire many of the same producers that were popular in the 2000s boy groups into kpop now. One that really stands out is Teddy Riley and other NJS producers from the actual 90s here.. A lot of them migrated over there where New Jack swing continues even to this day.
Anime and games target a similar crowd as K-pop. Although anime mostly targets single (lonely) males with obsessive characteristics, K-pop goes mostly after the female parallel.
Looking at the 2021 sales figures, this seems false. While one might argue that Uma Musume, Tensura and Love Live count, the other top-10 grossing franchises of last year are Haikyuu, My Hero Academia, Shingeki no Kyojin, One Piece, Tokyo Revengers, Jujutsu Kaisen and Kimetsu no Yaeba. From this, what anime mostly targets is pretty obvious: School aged boys who read Shounen Jump.
And when you decide to check the offer and not just what some people buy, you have content for a lot of people. Shojo targets young women, Yaoi is not really aimed at a young heterosexual male audience either.
You want diversity in picture books? Mangas have been doing it for more than 40 years. Some of their more successful authors are women.
A genuinely high quality anime takes time and money to make. Otaku fan service can be churned out along with loads of cheap knick knacks. There’s also the whole gacha game industry which ties into those series.
K-pop is similar. People obsess over a band and not only buy an album, they buy an overpriced can of coffee with a picture of their favorite star, a shirt, a bracelet, order a bag of cookies they shilled on their Instagram, and so on.
A school aged boy has to beg his parents to buy him a tshirt with an anime he likes. An adult Fate or Love Live fan has no problem throwing down $500 for a new figure or $80 for a “limited edition” Bangladesh-made bag. They’ll happily do it monthly.
The only two examples you listed are primarily gacha games though. If you meant to draw parallels between K-pop and gacha, why mention anime when they're never the primary medium? And even then, the real money still isn't in the goods, it's in getting people to waste their life's savings gambling for JPEGs.
Both of the games are based on anime franchise, though.
Even aside from that, here in Japan it is not uncommon for enthusiastic anime fans to throw multi-thousand $ for goods (including fan-made "doujin" items), live concerts of voice actors/actresses, travels to model locations and so on.
I don't see any difference between their mind and K-pop fans'.
I imagine letting the artist become influential outside of music would mean their record labels and producers loose control. I wonder if the relationship of who owns what and the where various lines are between The Talent and Producer in world of K-Pop is maybe quite different compared to places like the UK where characters like Harry Styles have long-since moved past being a "music artist".
This difference might change how intimately an artist is manufactured and presented.
One big difference is social media, where you can see any celebrity "at the same level" as your uncle or friends, while back in the 2000s there was nothing to reproduce this "mundane" seemingly close relationship with celebrities.
It’s wildly different. Not a sports guy but it’s like NFL vs CFL. Sure they’re both football but the industries built around them are millions of miles apart. Kpop has the support and resources of a nation state with an explicit objective to become the world’s leading exporter of culture.
The behaviours of the K-pop fans in my life don’t resemble anything like the fans of boy bands growing up. Do you remember vast swathes of wealthy, intelligent 30-40yr olds listening to Backstreet Boys, selling and trading merch, building shrines, etc
Stans (who take their name from Eminem’s song “Stan”, where it wasn’t a positive association) get quite intense, to the point of breaking and entering private property, stalking and causing road accidents, writing messages in their blood, even poisoning them, and that’s just the “selected incidents” on Wikipedia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasaeng_fan
I think there was an enormous amount of innovation and ingenuity required to broaden a market so narrow that it only included preteens to the entire globe across all sex, age, and cultures.
I understand your point but there’s more interesting analysis here than “this is the same it’s been done before.”
>The behaviours of the K-pop fans in my life don’t resemble anything like the fans of boy bands growing up.
My completely anecdotal experience seems to contradict this, the most "mainstream" example I have was when I saw Loona's AMA on the front page of reddit. I read through the thread, and you're going to have a hard time convincing me the average poster was not a 14-year-old girl.
I've also listened to some kpop myself and more directly I always thought, yes, this is type of music I'd go for if I had severe ADHD (not an insult to the genre, I can't say it was "bad", it just gave me that impression)
It seems the K-pop industry has come up with a somewhat repeatable machine for churning out these bands: they manage everything from scouting young talent and training them, writing the songs, merch, events, etc?
That's pretty much what every boy band creator does since nkotb in 1984.
The truth is 16 year old boys don't get together with 4 friends and make music like this. So you need someone in the industry to bring talent together, write their songs, etc. Compare that with rock, rap, punk, emo, etc which happens more organically usually.
It's no different to what has been happening in the music industry for decades. Many of the most popular pop songs are written by third parties and the recording companies will often pair artists with experienced producers and tour managers.
The popularity of K-pop is more an artefact of the US mainstream favouring individual rap/hip-hop over dance-centric boy/girl bands and leaving a large opening in the market.
Jpop has moved in more artistic directions, probably because of fan tastes. Like Attrashi Gakko, who are intentionally produced to look, dance, and sing unpolished and natural (the anti K-pop band)
It's been like that for a while (like "anti-idols"). Japanese media is always unpolished and cheesy anyway, which is one reason anime is the only part anyone outside the country cares about, but the music industry does have a surprising amount of room for letting artists do whatever they want as long as it works.
When I heard about Atarashii Gakkou I thought it was some kind of American fan group because the name sounds like it was Google translated… guess it's just unpolished too.
I'm not sure if the unpolished aspect is intentionally produced or genuine. I would bet on the former, that...they intentionally take idol quality girls and go plain on the clothes and makeup for that "girl next door" look.
These days, the members get involved more in every facet, including doing their own choreography & writing / producing their own songs.
Seventeen in particular pushed their choreography to the point where it feels like they made it a new sub-genre. Kinda feels like a concentrated Broadway show.
As I was reading the article I was thinking the same thing. This is just the most recently evolved version, now including things like social media and online communities. It was still an interesting analysis to read. I wonder how the numbers compare for the biggest boybands of 2002, 2012, and 2022.
Kpop has “generations” in the sense that mandatory Korean military service for men puts an expiration date on them all being present, and they fade away in popularity if only some of the members are present.
Also, the contracts are long, but idols don’t necessarily stay around if they think they can get a better deal elsewhere, or if they want to move onto another chapter of their life which idol employment doesn’t allow (like dating).
It’s Blackpink, BTS, and Twice now. Before them, it was 2NE1, 2PM, Miss A/the Wonder Girls, SNSD, etc.
I was a Morning Musume fan in high school but the members of the group kept getting younger as they were replaced, and I kept getting older. After a while, it stopped making sense to be a fan. (They never did a song "I'm sad about only being able to contribute $20,500 per year to my 401(k)".)
I never got into AKB48; is that they problem they are having, or is it something else?
I'm not familiar with the post-COVID situation, but I suspect VTubers may have eaten their lunch by operating a similar business model but without the risk of showing your face in public and becoming an IRL retelling of Perfect Blue.
many (most?) kpop members are contractually required to adhere to the image built for them. There have been cases of a kpop member's storyline being around their love of someone and when the actor/actress is found to be cheating they lose the contract.
I know of one kpop member who attempted to keep their marriage a secret as a result.
