The Growth and Decline of K-Pop Fan Cafes

[imienazwisko.livejournal.com]

Before Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and even Instagram accounts were a necessity for K-Pop groups, there were and still are fan cafes. Fan cafes are online communities where fans not only share photos and have discussion, but also become a united voice and identity in representing the fandom. You couldn’t be considered a true fan unless you were a member in an official fan cafe. Even celebrities are often members of their own fan cafe to read what the fans were thinking, and their management works with the leaders of the fan cafe to organize fan events.

However, with the rise in popularity for Facebook and other sites as easy and effective ways to reach a worldwide audience, agencies and fans alike are stepping away from the fan cafes. Especially with social networking sites, celebrities do not need to use a fan cafe bulletin board to communicate with their fans. More and more celebrities are opening up personal accounts to share their thoughts and photos directly to their fans, both in and out of Korea. Agencies are also using the Twitter or Facebook follower counts as a measure of their artist’s worldwide popularity.

This change is being reflected in the fan cafes themselves. Even the most famous idol groups are seeing a decline in fan club membership, although that doesn’t necessarily translate to a decline in popularity.

These graphs will show the difference in the number of members of the largest fan cafe for each artists. The numbers do fluctuate on a daily basis and have been rounded to the nearest thousand. Keep in mind that these numbers are for that one particular fan cafe and does not represent the number of members in all fan cafes. All these artists have several fan cafes.


Hallyu-dols



The graph shows the most popular idol groups that debuted before 2009, fondly known as Hallyu-dols. Comparing the number of members in their biggest fan cafes, all seven groups saw a decline in the numbers since May of 2013.

Although TVXQ‘s largest fan cafe lost the most amount of members since 2013, they are still the largest by a great margin. No other K-Pop fan group can compare to the sheer numbers of TVXQ fan cafe members. In both years the cafe was still more than twice that of the second biggest fan cafe, BIGBANG.

BEAST saw the least amount of change, with a mere 4,000 member difference between the two years. Older groups such as Super Junior, BIGBANG, and Girls Generation had a rather large drop of members, all of them losing more than 20,000 members.


Trending-dols



We also have “Trending-dol,” idol groups who debuted after 2009 and are considered to be trendy these days. These groups have gone up in their fan cafe numbers. EXO‘s fan cafe had the biggest growth since 2013, with an additional 122,000 new members. INFINITE has kept their strong numbers and remain the group with the most numbers on this list. IU is the only solo singer represented in this list, showing that her fandom is comparable to that of a group. VIXX has had an impressive growth in the past year; their numbers have more than tripled.

Promising Groups



We also have the numbers for promising idol groups. These groups have modest but growing numbers, and should be an idol group to keep an eye on. BTOB, for example, saw an increase of 17,000 members, more than some of the idol groups in the “Trending-dol” graph.


Super Rookies



Then there are the super rookies. These three boy groups debuted after May 2013 but have competitive numbers. BTS and Winner have numbers close to each other, and close to groups that have been around longer. The brand new GOT7 is still small but not the smallest out of all the groups.


Before you comment:

1. The original source chose what groups to represent and omitted several popular groups.


2. The groups were ranked in the graphs by the highest number of members in 2014.

source: soompi, 10asia (with updated 2014 numbers by CallMeN00NA)

Comments

[digitalqueen.livejournal.com]

but shinee's has been closed to new members for years and its not even official, idk how it keeps being used for rankings and comparisions.

[imienazwisko.livejournal.com]

+1000
also the whole "talent" thing. like can't we just enjoy music/visuals without getting so defensive about everything

[pepper.livejournal.com]

MTE.
Makes me wonder if they'll drop their "biases" the moment they start flopping sales-wise.

[hellodee16.livejournal.com]

+1

[petecarl.livejournal.com]

I've noticed that seems to always go down with pop/top 40 artists. A lot of people will refuse to keep up with them even when they're still producing good music b/c they're not popular to like any more. Like how on ONTD people are too much with X number of albums sold, went double platinum, multiple Grammy awards, when will your fave?, etc. It only seems to be okay to not be obsessed with rankings if the group is perceived as "indie" or "authentic" (whether or not it's true doesn't matter. it's the perception), and then people do that hipster "oh, you've never heard this group? I know they're not well-known, but they've been around forever. How could you not know them?" instead of just sharing the music that they like.

[mad-nux.livejournal.com]

some are closed already so this is only relevant to nonhallyudols or nugus

[pikapika217.livejournal.com]

Nine Muses :/ They did so well in 2013. I really wish the addition of any new members would be postponed until the new year and that this one focused on the 6 we know/currently have.

[miuratenshi.livejournal.com]

It's a little sad that the use of fancafe is slipping because tbh I still use them to track popularity.

[gray-fairy.livejournal.com]

Like other people have said, some of them have been closed for years. Fans mostly use social media now.

[hearttaek.livejournal.com]

The only thing im getting from this is VIXX is in the trend-dols list like omg they've really made their 2014 goal happen.
Of course they may not be THE trend like exo is/was for 2013. But they've been referred to trend-dols for some time now.
Yaaaaay vixx bbs!

[weerainbow.livejournal.com]

This was basically what I got out of this post too :) So happy for our boys!!

[babyonions.livejournal.com]

Winner should be "before debut" and "before debut" / ha ha, so funny I want to cry

[shintotchi.livejournal.com]

mfte

[kitty9163.livejournal.com]

Lmao this truth

[hellodee16.livejournal.com]

ikr

[shintotchi.livejournal.com]

I'm just here to question how the frack Winner has 52,000 and they haven't even debuted yet!?! How can you be a super rookie without even debuting? Tv show or not, that's ridiculous.

[hearttaek.livejournal.com]

I remember someone mentioned it was needed for the voting for WIN or something. Idk.

[shintotchi.livejournal.com]

YG is even more cunning than SM. That's all there is to it. I mean wow.

[ridzithenerd.livejournal.com]

it's a little sad how less of a value fancafes have become in the eyes of social media, but tbh i've only been a member of like 2 fancafes because i feel like it's more for k-fans. social media has become an international hub for idols and fans alike to interact.

[ruddens.livejournal.com]

the exo numbers are ridiculous omfg

[4minutesluts.livejournal.com]

smh @ the original author not going with "The history of the decline and fall of the kpop fancafe" for the title

[petecarl.livejournal.com]

I don't get how Winner has so many fans when they haven't even debuted. I really need to check them out just to see what all the hypes about.

I don't have anything to say about the fancafes cause I'm an ifan, so I've never used one. (only knows English)

[anonymous-loljk.livejournal.com]

i don't care about anything else but yaaaas for my vixx babies getting their relevancy