Pros and cons of music stages: M!Countdown’s is beautiful while Music Bank’s is the opposite!

Each stage of the music show has its own strengths but the community has agreed that M! Countdown has the perfect stage!

An indispensable specialty of Korean music industry is the weekend music shows where artists promote their songs to audiences across the country and around the world. The four main music stations that also attracted the attention of K-pop fans are: M! Countdown (Mnet), Music Bank (KBS), Music Core (MBC) and Inkigayo (SBS).

M! Countdown (Mnet)

Mnet’s M! Countdown is the leading music show in all aspects: from design, stage arrangement to sound quality, lighting, video recording. One of the points that fans enjoy watching Mnet’s comeback stage is because of the
thumbnail of the video uploaded on Youtube, as it looks like fansite shots! Moreover, the title of the video in both English and Korean and the fancam recording each member is also one of the factors that make Mnet has the highest subscriber channel in the four music stations mentioned above.

Music Bank (KBS)

In contrast to M!Countdown, Music Bank disappointed the fans many times because of the poorstage layout, inadequate lighting, faint sounds and full Korean titles whichmade it difficult for International fans to find. The most disappointing partof the video is the thumbnail of it. Since Music Bank lets Youtubeautomatically select the thumbnail, this causes a lot of humorous situationsfor idols when their image is chosen as the face for the video of the group.

Music Core (MBC)

Music Core is MBC’smusic drama that airs every Saturday. The advantage of Music Core is that allthe videos are set in the video format of 60 frames per second, which makes themovement smoother. MBC is also the only station adopting this video formatamong the four music stages. However, many fans claim that the thumbnails ofthe Music Core videos are slightly overly colorful and out-of-date, and thestage is rarely decorated.

Inkigayo (SBS)

Inkigayo is one ofonly two rare shows that the YG artists perform, so the comebacks of artistssuch as BLACKPINK, iKON, WINNER, etc on Inkigayo always received specialtreatment in terms of the stage design. However, the image of the stage is notclear enough, while the background is dark and the sound does not meet therequirements of the audience.

Source: k14