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Build your fanbase using the K-pop method

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Re: Build your fanbase using the K-pop method

#111

Post by moviewatcher333 »

YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #93
moviewatcher333 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The real money maker is in goods.

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.

Re: Build your fanbase using the K-pop method

#112

Post by YurgenJurgensen »

moviewatcher333 wrote: post #111
YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The real money maker is in goods. 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…

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.

Re: Build your fanbase using the K-pop method

#114

Post by ergocoder »

barbariangrunge wrote: post #77

K-pop bands are really are great at building loyal followings, but this article doesn't feel to me like the right resource for learning how they manage it. 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…

"Eliminate corporate jargon."

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.

Re: Build your fanbase using the K-pop method

#115

Post by metadat »

xwowsersx wrote: post #74
metadat wrote: post #6

https://web.archive.org/web/20221002215004/https://lulu.subs... https://archive.ph/dEKil (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)

I regularly use archive.org to avoid the distorting and invasive pop-ups that regularly litter web pages these days, but I feel this is a bit of an overreaction in this case. I suppose they could position the sign-up area at the top of the page (or even in the middle). But tbf, the point of Substack is for readers to stay in touch with their favorite writers and for writers to build a readership. Thus, prompting the…

It is annoying to have it on every article. It didn't use to be like this, they're making the platform more user hostile in the name of growth.

It's not very nice.

Re: Build your fanbase using the K-pop method

#116

Post by franciscop »

jojok wrote: post #79
ziml77 wrote: post #9

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…

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.

Re: Build your fanbase using the K-pop method

#117

Post by eslaught »

ergocoder wrote: post #114
barbariangrunge wrote: post #77

K-pop bands are really are great at building loyal followings, but this article doesn't feel to me like the right resource for learning how they manage it. 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…

"Eliminate corporate jargon." 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.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this jargon applies to kpop as a whole, not to any specific kpop band.

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.

Re: Build your fanbase using the K-pop method

#118

Post by ASalazarMX »

max51 wrote: post #87
jojok wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 t…

> they organize events were fans can pay in exchange to sit down with them and hold their hand for a few minutes

Oof, that's very sad, even more so because it's a lifetime achievement for the fan.

Re: Build your fanbase using the K-pop method

#119

Post by uup »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #76
consumer451 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Korean songs 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 m…

> A song can have its lyrics translated/altered into an entirely different language and still carry the same weight. 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 obvi…

It's actually pretty common to separate music and lyric writing. For instance, I'm sure you recognize names like Puccini and Verdi as famous opera composers. It was very common for someone else to write the "lyrics" to their operas (called libretto in opera). For instance, both Puccini and Verdi had Francesco Maria Piave write libretto for multiple operas. And yet, we still think of Puccini and Verdi as having written their respective operas.

Re: Build your fanbase using the K-pop method

#120

Post by seanmcdirmid »

astrange wrote: post #95
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sou…

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.
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