Global K-Pop Is Thanks to YouTube

There are a lot of stars that YouTube has been creating and of course the biggest example would be K-Pop. Currently, the reason why we can see that there are fans around the globe from countries in South America, Europe and the Middle East is thanks to the internet and of course, YouTube. The age of K-Pop can be clearly divided into before and after YouTube.

■ Increase in Global K-Pop Fans

Last year, SMTOWN was able to hold a concert in Paris and it was the first European concert for a Korean artist. The SM artists were able to sell out the 14,000 seats and there were fans waiting outside the arena, enjoying the show as well. They performed in London, New York and LA, where flash mobs took place and other idols like Big Bang, BEAST, JYJ and others were able to have performances in the U.S., Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Spain, Germany and the UK.

Their music videos have been recording hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube and records have been doing well even overseas.

■ With YouTube, to the World

YouTube is definitely the biggest reason that k-pop stars were able to spread their music and music videos to the world. Facebook and Twitter also helped a huge amount. Internet users everywhere in Asia, the Middle East and to Africa are able to enjoy the videos of K-Pop artists.

The 3 big management companies SM, YG, and JYP have together recorded 2,280,000,000 views on YouTube, which is 3 times the number in 2010. According to Google Korea, there are even fans in Cuba and Sierra Leone. 

The big management companies moved accordingly. They used YouTube as their ways of marketing and promotion. SM was the first to establish its official YouTube channel and YG, JYP and Cube followed suit. They uploaded videos of their artists performing and they were able to show K-Pop to the world without stepping outside Korea.

■ The Power of Contents

YouTube allows all users worldwide to have equal amounts of access, which means that any artist in any part of the country can use YouTube. Then why is it that K-Pop is doing particularly well? 

Experts say that K-Pop uses a musical code that suits well to a lot of different cultures and K-Pop consist of dance music that would appeal to those in their teens and twenties, who are the majority of internet users. The music videos are also of very high quality. The usual reasons including the militaristically exact dances and their star appeal also contributed to the popularity of k-pop. There are videos of average people "covering" the songs, which also helped it spread out.

YouTube itself is very friendly towards k-pop. They created a K-Pop genre in the music category, which only consists of genres like pop, rock, R&B, rap, folk and Latin. K-Pop is the first genre to be created for a particular country.

Tags
YouTube
K-Pop
SM Entertainment
JYP Entertainment
YG Entertainment
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