To every K-Pop group, apart from the Korean market, agencies always head to other markets oversea to broaden the influence of that group. It can easily be seen that, in recent years, top groups of the new generation such as BTS, BLACKPINK, TWICE, GOT7,…all emphasizes and and focus on countries of the South East Asia area. What is the reason for this trend?
Based on the YouTube views of top 3rd generation groups, South East Asian countries seem to care a lot about K-Pop’s products. Views from countries such as Indonesia, Philippines, or Thailand, Vietnam are all in the top contributor countries of the aforementioned groups.
Apart from that, South East Asian countries are promising venues to do the opening show for K-Pop stars’ world tour. Countries with large population such as Indonesia or Malaysia are already very familiar destinations to TWIC, BLACKPINK and other groups.
However, Korean netizens are debating over this matter and suggesting many different reasons:
– “I don’t think so. South East Asian fans watch YouTube more than TVm that’s why the views from them are high.”
– “Instead of listening and buying music or albums, fans from those countries always listen on YouTube for free…”
– “These statistics are not wrong, their area’s population is 650 million people you know!”
– “That’s because they listen to music on nowhere else but YouTube.”
– “Thailand is the country with the highest smartphone users ratio in the world!”
– “MOMOLAND is extremely famous in the Philippines, they can even be compared to the “Gangnam Style” sensation there!”
– “It is smart for a group to gain access to the South East Asia markets through YouTube first.”
– “But it’s true that K-Pop is extremely popular in South East Asia. Even though our artists sing in a foreign language to them.”
– “It’s also because the price for promotion and stuff is cheaper in South East Asia.”
Sources: kenh14