Spotify got 24hrs to add my music back or I'll be forced to intervene

These albums arrived, Jinsoul Kim Lip look so beautiful Hahaha Choerry too;)

I don’t what’s worse, the birth of asians, or k-pop

That JinSoul version is pretty rare, good pickup fam.

well you boutta be banned over k-pop 😟

Red velvet wasn't included in this new merch line from SM which included literally every other group that is currently active under SM.

along with Yeri's room being canned for what seems like no reason, their comeback being delayed and contracts being up in about 5 months this is not foretelling good news at all & Reveluvs are freaking out on twitter about it.

twitter.com/SMTOWNandSTORE/status/1368841751885012993

edit: actually they did release a merch line less than a week ago that included red velvet but not Aespa so this might just be I and other Reveluvs being antsy considering everything that's happened as of late

twitter.com/SMTOWNandSTORE/status/1367408281845571588

Wow, I didn't know, thanks fam:)

Blinks really praising this Rose album like they ain’t been working on her solo stuff for 3 years and only came up with two songs and two instrumentals. plus it’s clear she has minimal writing on them at best.

KPop having this big commercial boom rn and still don’t have an artist that can put out material written and produced by the artist that’s on the level of 2021 Hikaru Utada (in her 22nd year as well).

Korean music not gonna advance until they get past these slave driver record execs and actually make quality music that isn’t all wrote and produced by the one lame record company guy (looking at you and your outdated 2010’s beat drops, TEDDY.).

actually make quality music that isn’t all wrote and produced by the one lame record company guy (looking at you and your outdated 2010’s best drops, TEDDY.).

have you listened to any kpop not released by Blackpink? that's a problem mostly specific to them tbh. Most companies outsource producers (SM ent being a great example) and in a lot of groups idols self produce the music for the group (I could list out some for you). YG is just weird with their handling of Blackpink.

2021 Hikaru Utada

I think this comparison is apples to oranges though, regardless, Hikaru Utadu is a singer songwriter, not an idol. Korea also has a much more traditional music/indie/hiphop/ect scene it's just not nearly as visible globally like idol music (kpop) is.

A more apt comparison would be to Japenese idol groups, such as AKB48 and their sister groups, of which I personally find to not enjoy as much as kpop comparatively.

anyway

the Wujus are back

I’ve listened to a few of them, BTS seem to be the only one that actually domineer the production and writing aspect and it shows in their music.

A lot of the other companies may not be AS domineering as YG are with their artists but they still seem to struggle with similar problems.

You bring up SM but Red Velvet members have no writing or producing credits on their last album or EP. Neither do SHINee. Girls Generation had one or two on average per album. And Super Junior and EXO seem to be a bit more involved but not enough to consist them having the majority of the handling in their projects.

And then of course you do get the more serious singer-songwriters in Korea but they are almost always forced to take a backseat to the boy/girl bands and only highlighted when they want to write songs for those bands because the industry is less artist focused and more commodity focused.

JPop has the exact same problem for the most part, Kpop seems to have a more mature approach to music which has given them more ground overseas as compared to the AKB48’s of the world but they still focus on holding idols hostage and milking them for everything they are worth. But despite there is def more of a successful musical talent base there then Korea. Artists like Utada Hikaru, Kenshi Yonezu, LiSa, One OK Rock and others would be shut out by record companies and radio in Korea for fear of hampering their boy/girl bands.

Utada’s the biggest “pop star” Asia’s ever had. The only artist on the planet who had a better first week anywhere this century was Adele. She was as idol as you can get in her formulative years.

But despite all the industry pressures and manipulations that young women have to deal with in music, she wrote and produced the vast majority of her tracks and the ones that she didn’t (like working with producers like Darkchild, Timbaland and Jimmy Jam/Terry Lewis), she still wrote and composed the entire song.

And to this day, she does the same. She has a completely unique sound (which you and I both know no kpop idol can say right now) and makes music her way successfully at the top rung of the industry.

I’m with you that there is a ton of talent in Korea but it is constantly undermined by the powers that be there and continues to happen because kpop fans accept it. They know how awful the working conditions are and the near slave labor contracts they are under but people will still eat up the over processed s*** that comes their way. You can’t tell me Rose is happy with getting two songs and then not getting another run with the ball for the next five years. I think she probably has the talent to produce and write a 10 track album in 3 years that she could be proud off but she’ll never get the chance. America used to be as bad but the rise of the internet and artists being able to plug their way in independently without being sucked up by the system is possible. It really isn’t in Korea.

And things will never get better when fans still accept such mediocrity like a 2 song “album”.

BTS are far from the only one (Seventeen for example are even much more involved) Gidle, Stray kids, ikon, winner, bigbang are some of the most well known examples. When it comes to writing there are WAY more.

I don't think that matters much though as idols are arguably performers first and foremost and this is pop music and honestly most of the music I've heard from self producing idols are simply not as good as the one done from producers that are outsourced.

You bring up SM but Red Velvet members have no writing or producing credits on their last album or EP. Neither do SHINee. Girls Generation had one or two on average per album. And Super Junior and EXO seem to be a bit more involved but not enough to consist them having the majority of the handling in their projects.

by outsourcing I meant taking from producers outside of their company, SM in particular usually outsource African American producers which shows in the music itself, sorry if I didn't make that clear. When it comes to creative control SM are much worse than YG in that regard.

again I disagree when it comes to singer-songwriters, in Korea idol groups have as a whole has never been the main consumed music among the GP outside of a few (BTS is the only big currently active boygroup and the rest of the popular ones among the gp are girlgroups). Though they have a lot of core stans that are teenagers mainly.

The most popular music in Korea are generally ballads from singer-songwriters if you were to look at sites like melon. Trot, krnb and khiphop are also very popular. Though yes the Japense music industry is a lot bigger and more varied.

on your final point international kpop fans are fans of kpop because of the idol aspect, you have to understand that more so than the music there's a lot of other things kpop is popular for, visuals, peformances and entertainment outside of the music such as variety shows which rely on someones personality are all what has made kpop stand out compared to the Western industry and has made me a fan, so taking the "boygroup" and "girlgroup" aspect out of it would simply not work. Also I'm a fan of fun and I guess "overproduced" pop music lol.

KPOP is simply a lot more than the music though there's also no problem with just enjoying the music.

Indie/krnb/khiphop wouldn't take off outside of Korea globally because it's not bringing anything that isn't already popular in the West.

edit: also idol music itself is much more single based (the album rose is releasing is a single album) and blinks aren't at all happy with it either, I've seen constant complaints on twitter about it as they were expecting a mini album (ep)

Look, I think we can at least come to an impasse that while there are some bands/solo idols that are in charge of making their own music that it’s the minority and it’s a major problem in the industry.

If the industry is constantly micromanaged by executives who don’t have what it takes to actually make the music, have you really heard enough self produced music to make that call?

I looked up the top ten selling songs of each of the last ten years in Korea and it seems to be a 70-30 split in favor of boy/girl bands. I think you and I both know teenage/young adults are the driving force behind the most successful artists in any market, that’s why U2 and Foo Fighters drop albums to this day and still don’t break the charts despite having such a vast and varied fan base to sell to. Young people are more fanatical and willing to spend as much money as they can towards these young artists having their first cup of coffee in the big time.

I really think other korean genres could take hold internationally if companies put as much press and effort into those artists as they do their pop acts. Keith Ape had a moment with It G Ma on the net but his record company never tried to push him west or partner with a Western company like BTS and Blackpink did.

I’m aware that a big part of the kpop idol appeal is the glamourised aesthetic and the almost sterilised manner of presenting them in some sort of opposite gender fantasy. But I counter that if that is the main source of appeal for kpop fans then what is the danger in actually letting the artists produce their art more throughly and authentically. Hell, even in America the record labels get into it with the artists about getting one or two songs that they can send to radio on the album but other then that it’s a hands off approach. I mean you have artists like SZA who literally has the opposite problem of a Rose where she writes all her music but doesn’t want to release her 10+ track album because she has confidence issues and her record label have to force her to release.

oh when it comes to the physical market in Korea, yes idol groups dominate as they're really the only acts that sell music.

to better illustrate my point, look at the current melon chart:

melon.com/chart/day/index.htm

(it'll be hard to read as it's in Korean) but to summarize out of the 100 most popular songs in Korea atm only 16 are from idol groups and in the top 10 there are only 2 currently.

I really think other korean genres could take hold internationally if companies put as much press and effort into those artists as they do their pop acts. Keith Ape had a moment with It G Ma on the net but his record company never tried to push him west or partner with a Western company like BTS and Blackpink did.

I again disagree, hip-hop is already incredibly popular in the US so there is no big niche audience that Keith Ape is fitting into.

BTS first charted on the billboard 200 in 2015 prior to even attempting to push into the West, keep in mind that at that point Bighit were an incredibly small company compared to the big dogs like YG, JYP & SM. They actually haven't signed to any Western label at this point, only a distribution deal. So they themselves were in demand.

Other groups have not been able to replicate this success for that very reason, you can push all you want but something needs to be in demand for it to find success.

I agree on your last point and that's why you see more groups like Stray kids and (G)-idle debuting, "authenticy" is seen as something more valuable as of recent, it's a big reason as to why BTS themselves are so popular.

Though it's pop music and I don't really mind it being "unauthentic" in terms of who is making the music, I don't really see it any less unauthentic than a Dua Lipa for example.

The problem there is that Korea is much more of a sales based music industry with the prevalence of physical media like CD’s and merchandise bundles still being a thing (Japan as well). From what I understand, the melon chart isn’t judged off sales, streaming or downloading but is an “alternate popularity chart” which I am still trying to wrack my brain around how that is calculated and wherever those numbers translate to real life equity. And at the end of the day, the people in charge of making and breaking artists are most interested in that.

Look, hip hop fanatics may not be ultra interested in a Korean rapper but BTS have seemly opened up a mainstream eye to Korean music in the same way Parasite has shone light on other Korean films that casual movie goers may not at first been interested in. A lot of mainstream pop listeners also dip their feet into other genres’s artists. Drake has been a master at being relatable to the mainstream from the beginning, Weeknd was an rnb singer who would drop a couple of pop records on the radio to catch the eye of radio listeners. Your scepticism isn’t unfounded as it will always be an up hill battle right now for foreign language artists to success in English speaking countries but it’s not impossible. Bad Bunny was the highest streaming artist in the world last year, not just the Americas.

To be honest with you, the BTS momentum internationally was a freak incident. No international record label, small label at home, no radio, all internet sensation. So a blueprint is there for other artists that are original and build the grassroots movement like they did to repeat that success.

I think Dua Lipa is a good example of an artist who has the machine behind her but still has enough of her artistry and character in the music. Dua has top billing on every writing credits on Future Nostalgia. Not every kpop act has to do that but it would help if all of them that are capable of that are allowed without labels sticking them down with the same old people and been told exactly what to do in their songs.

Melon is the biggest streaming platform in Korea though it's market share is slowly dying down a bit after some big scandals, mostly to do with not paying royalties. What your confused about might be how it's calculated? Prior to last year it was just like any other streaming service but because of fandoms mass streaming, the charts now rely on unique listeners (the song with the highest daily ULs top the chart), it's not perfect but I find it the best way to gauge what is most popular in Korea.

BTS' popularity rise to fame truly is something special & once in a lifetime, watching them grow over the years and continue to reach new hights all the time has been mind boggling.

I don't have much to add other than that though, I think I mostly agree despite some disagreements which might just come from me being more personally invested into kpop.

Ah, ok. So it’s to stop them barricading like they do on Twitter and Youtube. Makes sense.

Look, if they leave the door open for other artists, that does more for their legacy then just their own success would.

Look we can both agree that they clearly have more then two songs in the vault for Rose in 3 years and giving her a two song “album” followed by what will likely be a 4-5 year period like Jennie has had of no new solo music is basically wasting years of talent.

oh of course, though I'm personally not a fan of blackpink, my biggest problem with the management of the group has always been the fact that they barley get to release new music despite them expressing their desire to (it took them 4 years to get a debut "album").

It's quite clear that it's an issue on YG's end as well considering long hiatus' between new music isn't something new among their groups, "YG dungeon" is a well known term in the kpop community for a reason lmao.

that's the general consensus among blinks as well, they despise the company (understandably) and constantly yell about the fact that they want the girls to leave as soon as their 7 year contract under YG is up in 2023.