K-pop is one of the most popular genres of music today. K-pop is short for Korean popular music which originated in South Korea. Wikipedia has written specifically about the history of K-pop and has said it “can be traced back to 1885 when an American missionary, Henry Appenzeller, began teaching American and British folk songs at a school.” This genre has been here forever and is still growing non-stop!
People who listen to K-pop can stream/watch it on many platforms like Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, and so much more. Korea net, a news website that focuses on the culture of Korea, has provided statistics about the amount of K-pop on-demand streams. Their most recent studies come from October 2023 and “the number of K-pop on-demand audio and video streams worldwide has grown 42% this year.” The biggest consumer was Japan, with 9.7 billion streams. Another interesting statistic is that 39% of Japan’s on-demand streaming is from Gen Z Japanese females and they are 105% more likely to listen to K-pop.
My brother streams a bunch of K-pop on Spotify and it’s his favorite genre of music. A reason he specifically enjoys it so much is because “K-pop doesn’t just consist of pop music, it consists of R&B, rap, hip-hop, and plenty more.” With my brother always streaming K-pop, I was able to explore a new genre of music that I now love. Not just the music is good but the choreography in every music video is outstanding.
My Top 5 Girl K-pop Groups (With their most recent albums):
- NewJeans
- Get Up
- TWICE
- Ready to Be
- G-IDLE
- 2
- NMIXX
- Fe3O4: Break
- LE SSERAFIM
- UNFORGIVEN
There are also many boy K-pop groups but I only listen to one of them, Stray Kids. Their most recent album is ROCK-STAR, which was released in November of 2023. According to The New York Times, It has racked up around 16 million streams with 213,000 copies sold in the United states!
For the girl K-pop groups I listed, they also had an amazing past year with every album they have released. I’m not the only one who thinks so, my brother also agrees. He has said, “Personally, my favorite K-pop group is NewJeans. Their group’s music genre is electric pop and hip-hop, which is a very enjoyable beat to listen to, especially in the car. It is always so exciting when every album is released. On top of that, it is even more fun to collect the albums and photocards.”
Another aspect that I don’t think people really understand is the whole process of how the groups that produce the music are created. Specifically for JYP Entertainment (According to Wikipedia, “A South Korean multinational entertainment and record label conglomerate.”), the company is run by J.Y. Park, a K-pop soloist/CEO, who is looking for talent and the next big thing. Anybody can audition to possibly be in the next rising K-pop group. After passing auditions for JYP Entertainment, they will become a trainee to practice vocalization, dance, and the Korean language. JYP Entertainment actually has dorms in Seoul, South Korea for them to live in. While there, they don’t just learn the basics of becoming a group but they also learn the culture, geography, and history of South Korea. Once they are prepared to become K-pop idols, they are then placed in a group to debut.
In general, the music that is produced doesn’t always have to be in Korean! Take the group VCHA for example, they are currently averaging at least 1 million streams per song and they don’t even sing in Korean yet. It is really such a cool process to see how successful this genre is.
K-pop is continuously growing everyday, even behind the scenes with all the training they do. It is such a unique genre that I think everybody should give it a listen. Even though the lyrics may not be in English, the beat alone is so enjoyable and worth the listen.
