Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Monsta X & Steve Aoki: how K-pop took over YouTube”.
In case you haven’t heard, kpop is a global phenomenon online. The addictive tunes and big-budget videos are wreaking in billions of streams and gathering fans from across the globe. I’M surrounded by like non Korean singing Korean like all kinds of people like all singing their songs in Korean everything’s online, but this genre has an advantage that took it from South Korea to selling out stadiums and headlining festivals around the world. You guys have one of the most dedicated fan bases in the world hands down. I mean they made us.
What are your fans mean to you mark? They mean everything to us, so we have a special bond with fans, the history of kpop, outside of Korea. You know is really closely tied to the spread of the technology that people use to discover it and to listen to it and when it comes to taking kpop global there’s one site that has been essential. You tell your dream on YouTube on YouTube: YouTube, compilation, videos yeah, why don’t usually leads you to the next two days like that, thanks to voracious fan, bases, kpop crushes on YouTube, with crazy levels of engagement and as you’ll see, this doesn’t happen by accident. Okay, I was not expecting for there to be a massive group of monsta x fans in sugar land, texas of all places, but everyone here is a mega fan there.
There are no lukewarm, monsta x fans in the crowd. I went backstage to talk with k-pop group. Monsta x, who have collaborated with american producer, Steve Aoki, I heard you guys have an intro that you do yeah. Let’S do it.
Do you think that YouTube has been really important with bringing kpop to America? Of course cuz. It’S really easy to get inside of that Channel and watch whatever you want, and you can see some video what is related with that video too. So I think it’s really important to us. This doesn’t mean that music from every country is spreading just as fast on YouTube. Kpop is perfectly crafted for the platform and the numbers don’t lie. Half of the biggest 24 hour.
Debuts on YouTube are all cable news. If you sort of adjust for the amount of overall viewership and you compare the like top 10 kpop songs on YouTube and the top 10 non k-pop songs, the like ratio of likes is almost double for kpop and for comments. It’S like 5 times more, and so you look at the top 25 most watched, kpop groups.
You know over the past year, 90 % of the views are coming from outside of South Korea. What is different with kpop and its music videos compared to other styles of music? So I think it’s another material to express our story about that song. To make it more easy to the audience to understand it, and plus especially kpop, is more than just music, because we always prepare a crabber fee with the stage, so it could be just listening and watching that’s why we are preparing and musically every single time.
Kpop is as much about the visuals as the audio. The choreography is super important and acts like Monsta X, developed new routines for every single video and often upload dance practice. Videos for fans to learn the songs, move we’re a multi-sensory being like the way our brains are. We need, as many senses being covered. You know you know as I’m working on the drop. I want to imagine these guys dancing to the song, because that’s like 50 % of the song – it’s like it’s all part of visual yeah, and then they asked me to be in the video which is dull that they are sick.
I’M not a great choreograph dancer. Good shuffle do a couple things here in their kpop. Videos are designed to hook people in the first few seconds, even if the person watching doesn’t understand the lyrics, they use things like quick cuts, fast, zooms tons of locations and, of course, impeccable performances and then, of course, there’s all the other types of content that exists Around the official content business, what do you mean by that? That is behind-the-scenes, video videos that highlight different members of the group, videos that you can watch to learn the chance that you’re supposed to use? You know when you’re at the show, so you have all these different things that sort of play into the behaviors of the fans and so being a fan. You know a sort of a deeper level where these artists means connecting with them in ways that go beyond just listening to the music. There are the Olympian athletes of pop world, whether it’s like in media training, they’re, dancing, they’re, singing they’re trained athletes of what they do like I saw them on YouTube. I saw hero honestly, I was like okay, so they danced, and then I like, went down a hole and saw them sing live and I was like: oh, they can see.
The official videos that are produced by the biggest kpop acts are incredibly reference dense. So watching a video as a fan gives you all of these things that you can then really glom onto there’s tons of Easter eggs in the play. A cool video, including the words airplane mode appearing in Korean. That’S a reference to the lyrics in the Korean version of play.
It cool hidden. Symbols are popular in kpop videos and it’s up to the fans to figure out what they all mean, which is often done online in forms or in comments what it is addicting. One of the places that that these communities can gather is in the comments, and they will, you know both be debating things, but they’ll also be sort of pointing out things in the video to each other or giving you sort of a pathway into something that they’ve Noticed to help you appreciate this thing as the work of art that they see it is and then, of course, there’s lots of fan, videos, lyric videos and things a long history on YouTube of people, sort of creating their own videos that help you kind of access. The sort of content, even it’s a different language, such as reaction, videos, dance cover videos, fancams that follow individual group members during performances. These fans also host online streaming parties to watch video premieres together and help their favorite acts break YouTube streaming records for the Monsta X. Take two: we are here listening party: they even provide lyric translations and other languages, I’m learning Korean as well. I guess I want to understand the music more, so I won’t have to look up the English version and look up the lyrics and so like that. So I want to actually understand what they’re saying at first being a kpop fan is a community effort, the fandoms we consider each other family. We have met so many people through coming to like all these different concerts, all over the country, people that have traveled to Korea, but we’ve just learned a lot of things and met a lot of people to be really awesome. People discover music differently now and kpop makes the most of this YouTube. Is the space to watch, listen and connect with other fans all in one place, allowing kpop to take it from URL to IRL? I think the world is just getting ready for our Jenna kpop buffet, so we hope the world get ready for us. [ Applause ], thanks for watching this video is brought to you by aloft different by design. Is there anything that you’ve personally learned from working with k-pop groups that you’ve incorporated into what you do personally as an artist I need it. I need to get a more polished skin their skins.
So shy. Oh, my god is a bit of moisturizer .