Build your fanbase using the K-pop method
lulu.substack.com
lulu.substack.com
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.
Oof, that's very sad, even more so because it's a lifetime achievement for the fan.
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.
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.
This difference might change how intimately an artist is manufactured and presented.
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
Every fandom of any type of a certain size has insane fans (looking at you sports teams and fans).
I understand your point but there’s more interesting analysis here than “this is the same it’s been done before.”
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)
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.
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.
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.
All are well-established and have no revolving lineup.
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 never got into AKB48; is that they problem they are having, or is it something else?
I know of one kpop member who attempted to keep their marriage a secret as a result.
> Carlebecker writes in English, and then Korean songwriters add new lyrics to her melodies
I believe the correct term would be lyrics, not songs.
A song can have its lyrics translated/altered into an entirely different language and still carry the same weight. Many pop songwriters would argue that the lyrics are one of the least important components.
Non-anglophone countries are full of such songs based on English language originals. Though this musical localization seems have be have been more popular in the past, for multiple reasons.
This is not true. Try listening to "the same" song in two different languages that you can speak, one of which being the language the song was written in.
One of two things will be true:
(a) It is obvious which songs was originally written in that language and which is a translation.
(b) It is not obvious that the two songs are the same.
> I believe the correct term would be lyrics, not songs.
Nope. The lyrics are the song. Music with nothing but lyrics sung to a melody is still a song. Music without lyrics is not a song.
You're pedantically correct according to the original definition of the word "song".
But in modern usage, the word is used interchangeably with "instrumental" and "track".
It's used to refer to everything as a whole, whether or not there are lyrics.
Lyricless music is not as popular today as it was during the peak of EDM, but instrumental tracks were/are still referred to as "songs", even though they technically did not contain a song, since there were no lyrics.
I've actually been kind of shocked how good they are given how poor many professional subtitle translation are. Like recently watching Cyberpunk 2077 and the English subtitles are not remotely close to the Japanese dialog
For me, the vocals are just another instrument and it doesn't matter what the lyrics are or what language they are in.
You may have the money
But you've got to go
It's sensible (it's sensible)
And those endless seasons
That go on and on
Incredible
But I'd sooner get out
And remember where we went last year
You said everything about it moved on your career
If you want to go
I'll take you back one day
It's a corner [hidden spot?] lost
on the Atlantic
It's exotic (it's exotic)
A secret corner
under the palms
It's fantastic
I could show you
how to get there, it's very easy
Close your eyes and let your eyelashes tangle
Here we are already
Welcome to the bay
Are you serious? Both songs are about going to "The Bay". Both songs compare The Bay to Berlin, London, Paris. Both of the choruses are literally "It feels so good , to be in the Bay".
If you're arguing that lyrics must be word-for-word translation for a song to be "translated", then that's an obnoxious strawman that I can't take seriously.
But in the English song, "the Bay" is an actual place in which the singer and a particular addressee have vacationed in the past, and in the French song, "the Bay" is an imaginary place which the singer invites a generic audience to indulge in.
Speaking of which, the English song is notionally sung to someone known to the singer, and the audience is conceptually overhearing it, while the French song is sung to the audience.
The two songs don't have anything in common. They both compare their bay to Berlin, London, and Paris, in the sense of saying that the Bay is not any of those places. Mount St. Helens is also not Berlin, London, or Paris. Have I just made a second translation of The Bay into English? Does it make any difference that Mount St. Helens is a volcano?
A B C
It's as easy as 1 2 3
Doe Rae Me
You and me
1 2 3 4
I am going to keep on counting
5 6 7 8
any interesting articles/videos about that?
Eg, it's mostly generic 'focus on personal stories,' 'lower barriers to entry,' and 'foster a good community' advice advocated everywhere you look in the blog-o-sphere (is that still an expression?)
Does anybody have any other articles they would recommend on the topic? Eg, about the details that make these groups actually excel at this compared to say the average blogger?
kpop has the highest number of jargons: nugu, sasaeng, maknae, pak, lead vocal, main vocal, black ocean, relay dance, aegyo, fancam, girlcrush, visual, bias
Guess what they mean.
So when you're starting up a new kpop band, you don't need to educate your audience in all of this jargon. You just need to educate them on any terms specific to the new band (and I would guess the set of those starts in a limited way before it grows in any meaningful sense).
I think part of what we're seeing is that kpop as a genre is highly popular. It's "easy" (not really, but relatively speaking) to start a new band because fans can migrate from other bands. That's as opposed to starting in a more obscure genre where you'd be truly climbing up hill to reach any fans at all, even if you did literally every single thing that the kpop bands do.
As an aspiring author, I'm certainly very interested in this sort of audience acquisition, but it's not obvious to me what (if anything) can really be applied to my use case. The advice in the article makes intuitive sense, but it's also honestly very common advice, and I've talked to a lot of friends and colleagues who've done things like this and it's not that easy.
It’s interesting framing. Some might view this as pure to your values, some might view this as lacking in values, but it certainly got my attention. Reducing this quote down, the claim is “activism on unrelated important issues has no value [to your business].”
But that quote I think is just saying to pick and choose your battles wisely.
You can't blame half of america feeling alienated in their own country when bigcorpo uses their might in every avenue possible to oppose their views (conservatives), despite what you may think of them you still have to share a country with the people you disagree with. People shouldn't have to fight or have political discourse against companies, it should be individuals that debate, discuss and influence political outcomes in a democracy.
Perhaps we are now in a neo-feudalist society?
> Parents should raise kids, not teachers.
True. But parents do not choose the curriculum, and are not talking at their kids 6 hours a day.
> they should leave their biased political views at the door of the school
Sure, but it's naive to believe that they actually do.
Within 2-3 generations of that nurturing of awareness and identification with lower socioeconomic classes, the entire populace ends up inclined to look out for equity for each other, and tears down the cabal.
I guess it's not that simple.
What you have at the end is a stinking cesspool, but this cesspool is still better than your country's politicians pledging allegiance to the equivalents of Rupert Murdoch. This is exactly like Churchill's characterization of Democracy - horrible system but better than any other alternative.
Negative value, not no value.
He does regularly troll on twitter, but it isn't like he is pushing an agenda other than trying to exist /how he exists/ and not for /how you would like him to exist/.
If Lil Nas X is political, then so is Kieth Urban. Both of them are just writing songs about what they know, but somehow only the less mainstream artist is considered 'political'.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/20/world/asia/bts-un-perform...
But even though Asia has a lot of rappers, they’re not allowed to do anything interesting or illegal, and if you ever do drugs you’re instantly blacklisted and all your work is erased from stores forevermore.
A zoomer I was at a party with recently said “yaaa she’s good but like sooo controversial” in a hushed and nervous way like we were in high school and about to go smoke a cigarette.
I don’t know that I’ve seen good numbers on that.
I mean Taylor Swift managed to dodge the idea of politics for years (it was an explicit strategy because of what happened to the Dixie Chicks), but eventually people started directly asking questions, and saying "I don't want to comment on this thing my fans feel strongly about" is pretty bad for business I guess.
- Keep in mind these bands are disposable. They're typically tied to a generation, a slice in time, and then they fade away. Perhaps that's by design because sustaining such a high sugar diet isn't possible?
- That said, ultimately it's about connecting with your audience. Marketing is typically about awareness and/or driving sales. But these bands go further and connect with their audience. They give the audience what they want *and then some* and do that on the appropriate platforms.
- But easier said than done. There's a connection I have on LinkedIn. She's always posting - nearly always video - about her (SEO) agency. Dogs in the office, someone's birthday, etc. I don't remember a single time she's posted something of use to me. Maybe that would work if she was a K-Pop band? But for who I suspect her audience is, it often feels off target.
That applies to most media. There are some art/music/games/tv/movies that stand the test of time, but that's not the rule and you can't really create assuming you're going to last forever, even if you're hot for fifteen minutes.
How many people are still doing Wordle right now? I bet it's less than 5-10% of how many people were doing it at its peak near the beginning of the year, and that was huge at the time, seemed like pretty much everyone on social media were doing it (and/or one of its variants).
For music, how many people can keep creating hits for more than a generation? Pretty much just Weird Al and Madonna, isn't it?
In the context of the article's conversation, creating a sustainable connection with a product's fans is difficult. It's fun to relate it to K-Pop but - and to your point - there's more to it.
I'm from a smaller country and around 2010-2012 smaller bands did this as well. It was hilariously easy to create a 'trending topic' in a country back then, so it happened quite a lot.
It's just fun to create attention for the thing you love. The same way people on Hacker News like to share certain (open source) projects and upvote it.
Be young and beautiful. Stop being old and ugly.
If you are insist on your right to be old and ugly, then stop being poor and be rich instead.
And Slipknot fans are maggots. I know some of you motherfucking maggots are around here too.
(For those not wishing to be smacked in the face with a wet fish pop-over registration modal dialog upon scrolling down the page; fku substk)
It's not very nice.
When did people start advocating deleterious to society suggestions, openly and shamelessly?
Not of the "I thought it was a good ideology" kind, which always existed, of the "everybody should recognize that this is bad", like here...
I'm half-amused half-shocked that this article is so frank in explaining how this works, without a hint at any consequence.