#if they'd just *sustained* the promotions over time - i really believe this

[xcziel]

this has been sitting in my drafts as a response to some ideas that were circulating online a week or two ago due to that bang sihyuk interview, and it's clumsily worded but i still feel like it's a valid take so i'm just posting anyway. i'm not a music professional or connected to the industry, so if i'm far wrong just ignore this random post. i just get frustrated that for all the talk of strategy etc. everyone seems to act like bts (and by extension jk) are an established *western* act while either still promoting like a kpop act in sk schedule-wise or like a beyonce/tswift level act (which ... yeah duh) with vast u.s. name recognition (not so much) - and then wondering what's not clicking

idk about this "crisis" but i know one thing has struck me about the kpop and sk press and kpop stans in general

i touched on it back when i was talking in my tags about like crazy getting traction in the us

and what i meant was that those involved in kpop are too blinded by the industry cycle and too used to that cycle's accelerated evaluation by stans and press alike

like no one in the us who is not already a fan is waiting on the day of release to listen stream and buy. it is NOT like sk with weekly shows, several comebacks per year, etc etc

and most especially it's not this thing of: create song, choreo, mv, do a spate of music shows, see what hits if anything, maybe leverage concert dates if it does - but if not then done! next concept! move on and keep it moving - got to fill those music shows and if you don't constantly have new pieces to show you could lose attention and traction

but the general public in the u.s. is NOT socialized to all tune in to check out what's new at a certain time each week or whatever

only some check the charts and even that is mostly just to see where their personal fave is

what gp recognition goes by is repetition (that's one reason why radio is weighted so heavily in ratings- not fairly, but it's true): have we heard a song before? was it in the car on the way? was it in the club? was it in the music in the background at a store, at a party, on a friend's playlist?

when americans say they heard a song "everywhere" it means literally you could not escape it - and for that kind of feeling or environment to exist, it has to happen over *t i m e*

true, yes, sometimes a song takes off and gallops out of control like a wildfire catching but that is the exception not something that can be planned for or marketed into existence

and once you are a big enough name and have enough fans (us population @ 330 million so ... a lot more fans than it take to equal the same percentage of sales in sk ... so only a sliver of a percentage of that can mean a #1 bb hot 100) you CAN get that immediate-drop chart push

but most of the time, u.s. artists need to build up name recognition with the folks who wouldn't know a music chart if it popped up in their excel spreadsheets. that's why you get youtube reactors or even music business professionals months after release going oh i didn't know they even had an album/track/mv out

the larger a group, the longer it takes for things to disseminate past the early adopters and the media who watch them and the industry (nobody wants to be left behind, so journalists/talking heads are always like pets when you walk into the kitchen: heads on swivels in case it turns out relevant, and will write things just to be on top of a possible trend)

and this is where, i think, after watching hybe and its american arm try their push on jk, the kpop focalists are veering astray in their plans and projections: not seeing immediate huge success (or not *sustained* huge success) they think there is some kind of crisis rather than understanding that a u.s. or even just western gp fandom cannot be a top-down thing - it will take time

bts are huge (and yes a triumph for bts IS NOT and SHOULD not be lumped in as "a win" for kpop in general as has been pointed out is too often the case) but in the first days of jk's album release, *2 months* after seven had debuted, the huge nationwide retailer where i work couldn't even get his name spelled correctly in the point-of-sale database, so

the u.s. music industry is a big machine and busy on its own, many listeners only stay in their own bubbles and don't pay attention to anything outside that, because just keeping up with the output of one scene or genre can take as much effort as watching the kpop industry as a whole

to break wide you need to be either insanely ubiquitous and not just on social media (which runs the risk of people getting sick of you just as fast) or you need the slower groundswell of people going from "oh *that's* them? i heard of them but i didn't know that was their song" to "omg that's my song!! turn it up!"

there's just too much out there today to catch people's attention and the media cycle turns ever faster - used to, a song could be out and getting steady radio play and it still wouldn't hit the consciousness of the national public for like 3 or 4 months sometimes. sometimes it could take a year or more.

so this thing of short promotion periods for kpop acts - even bts! - is just not viable as a way to attract a wide gp following in the states. being on late night tv shows is a good step, but since the advent of streaming the influence of shows like that has waned considerably since the days of ed sullivan or johnny carson.

jk's run of promoting *was* the right kind of thing to do in fact - it simply should have been much more spread out over time. you can see all his album collab artists have things coming out *now* ... and there's no way to really take advantage of that with the curtailed promo.

and yes, obviously jk did get probably the second longest promo period of all of bts chapter 2 solos efforts (i think yg's tour ran longer?) and it was cut off for very valid reason! but!

i think bangpd et al. taking the fact that they couldn't make jk a household name in the u.s. nor nab him a grammy nom (nor any other kpop groups) within the 5-6 months of their fairly blatant push for us recognition as indicating a "crisis" is just not looking at the long game.

they didn't get all the accolades right away, so it seems they've decided 'that didn't work we need to make some big changes' instead of continuing what they'd been doing in support of the artists

it's this attitude of welp they didn't give us a grammy we were entitled to even though it's the first time we played ball in this particular way, so now we're worried bc we don't know how to shop kpop beyond people who aren't primed for it

like, they are looking at the business of it, and likely accurately, but not at the audience itself

it's not that the observations bang is making are wrong i just think he is basing them off premature information - songs in the u.s. DO benefit from purchase power, but they ALSO rely a lot on word of mouth. not for charts positions necessarily, but for longterm growth, support, and more importantly demand, you cannot beat a fandom that grows on its own.

the paid promotions at the end of the day serve the same purpose as bts's early days vlogs in the current western music climate - getting the artist and songs in front of as many eyes and ears as possible. but then you have to allow time for that wave to spread - and the bigger the pond, the more time it may take