YouTube taking 'hallyu' on international ride

[ashiva.livejournal.com]

A video grab of the official YouTube channel of YG Entertainment. Entertainment firms are using YouTube as a means to attract fans.

Firms taking advantage of user contents sites

The management of SM Entertainment, one of the biggest pop music agencies here, was amazed when they saw fans waiting in line for “SM Town Live 2010 World Tour in LA” last September. Among some 15,000 fans who gathered in Los Angeles for the concert featuring K-Pop singers including Girls’ Generation and Super Junior, Korean fans made up only 30 percent. Asians other than Koreans accounted for 20 percent, and half were non-Asians. Fans came from not only within the United States, but also from Europe and Latin America. Hallyu, or the Korean wave, seems to have turned into a truly global phenomenon.

YouTube globalizes Hallyu

The first wave of Hallyu started in Japan a decade ago with the Korean TV drama “Winter Sonata.” Its hero Bae Yong-joon won hearts of Japanese ladies, who gave him the affectionate nickname “Yonsama.” Bae and a number of handsome actors led the first wave of Hallyu, mostly in Japan and other Asian countries as non-Koreans came to enjoy Korean dramas.

The second wave of Hallyu reached beyond Asia, with singers like Rain, Boa and the Wonder Girls advancing into the United States.

The third wave of Hallyu has broadened the sphere. It has become a global phenomenon. Music videos of idol stars like Girls’ Generation, 2NE1, Big Bang and 2PM are popular around the world. Behind this new wave of Hallyu is YouTube.

When SM Entertainment released a teaser video of “Hoot” by its leading girl group Girls’ Generation, or better known as SNSD on the Web, via YouTube last October, it recorded one million views in just two days. This is impressive when considering that CNN’s official YouTube channel recorded only 17,000 views in two months after its launch and ESPN, the U.S. sports channel, attracted 2.4 million views in 8 months.

One will also find hundreds of cover videos uploaded by SNSD fans mimicking the girls’ dancing. “’Cover culture’ has become a cultural phenomenon in some Southeast Asian countries. Recently, videos mimicking Korean idols are increasing in Europe, Latin America and the United States as well,” said Jung Tae-soo, a researcher at Samsung Economic Research Institute.



The homepage of the official YouTube channel for girl group The Wonder Girls. YouTube is being used as a means to communicate with fans.

Entertainment firms using YouTube

Impressed by the hot reaction at YouTube, Korean entertainment firms are actively using the channel.

YG Entertainment, another leading entertainment management company, launched a showcase for the first solo album of G-Dragon and TOP, Big Bang members, through YouTube. A total of 11 songs included on the album were released through Big Bang’s official YouTube channel on Dec. 14. The one-hour live-streamed world premiere performance attracted 390,000 users worldwide.

YG had its girls’ group 2NE1 release three music videos from their first official album through YouTube’s main page and its official channel. “Clap Your Hands,” “Can’t Nobody” and “Go Away” recorded over 10 million views in just two weeks. “Clap Your Hands” in particular marked 470,000 hits on the day it was released, ending up as the most viewed video of the day on You Tube.

YouTube is saving them much of the marketing cost as well. Taeyang, a member of Big Bang, unveiled his first album “Solar” via YouTube without overseas marketing activities last July. It rose to No.2 in R&B sales in the United States and to the top in Canada on iTunes, for the first time for an Asian musician.

2PM of JYP Entertainment, which manages girl group Wonder Girls as well, released a teaser video demonstrating the acrobatic abilities of each member on Oct. 7. The video ended up as the most viewed video on YouTube worldwide for that day.

Real time Hallyu

Thanks to digital devices, Hallyu has turned into a real-time phenomenon. “The new Hallyu is expanding to Europe, the Middle East and Latin America from the previous hotbeds of China and Southeast Asia. In the past, they got popular in Korea first and then spread to other countries but it isn’t like that anymore. It is now consumed simultaneously around the world,” points out Jung.

He said that the expansion of social media, including YouTube, triggered the new Hallyu. People anywhere can access content uploaded on the YouTube channel. He added that the caption service by YouTube lowered the language barrier for Hallyu.

"Great content that is mass-produced in the very small and competitive local market has met global digital platforms like YouTube and earned widespread acclaim among users from all over the world,” said Suh Hwang-wook, a Google Korea director in charge of the YouTube partnership.

“Whereas the pre-existing 'Analog Hallyu Korean Wave' was only distributed offline in a single country at a time, the 'Digital Hallyu Korean Wave' is progressing across the globe simultaneously, and therefore its growth potential is boundless," he added.

According to an analysis of the official YouTube channels of SM Entertainment, YG Entertainment and JYP Entertainment, which are the biggest three in the industry, the total number of views generated by Korean music-related videos was 793,574,005 in 229 nations in 2010 alone. Some of views were from countries far from Korea such as Malta, Cyprus and Aruba, showing the unlimited potential of Hallyu coupled with the digital service.

Income model

The entertainment agencies and YouTube are working for mutual benefit through partnerships. While the agencies provide premium content in demand, YouTube helps its partners with various advertisement features, ranging from brand channels, a video statistics service and content identification (CID). CID protects the entertainment firm’s copyright over content by detecting videos that include even a minor portion of a partner’s content, helping to increase revenue by putting advertisements there. The partner entertainment agency and YouTube share the advertisement revenue that they get for each click.

Partner firms can also analyze location, age, and gender of viewers through YouTube’s statistics service.

Source: Yoon Ja-young @ The Korea Times

Comments

[ashiva.livejournal.com]

I'm forever creeped out by their Oh! MV viewer stats:

This video is most popular with:
Gender Age
Female 13-17
Female 18-24
Male 45-54 (Somebody really needs to tell these guys that they are way too old to be oppas.)

[belintuchiha.livejournal.com]

THIS PLEASE.

[fairchilds.livejournal.com]

NAISE.

I LOVE HOW SUCCESSFUL TAEYANG WAS.

[fairchilds.livejournal.com]

btw i think It Hurts should have had more views than it now has, that is probably my favorite video of 2NE1's because of the whole Addams Family/Creepy anime/Tim Burton concept.

[headswillroll88.livejournal.com]

hipster~

[lei-hime.livejournal.com]

An article talking about hallyu wave without even crediting TVXQ is a pure non-sense imo

[fromthemars.livejournal.com]

but its talking about how kpop has taken off on youtube in the last 2years especially its gotten crazy and tbh tvxq havent been around for the last 2years..

[lee-chikin.livejournal.com]

When are SBS & co. making a youtube channel too? At least with show clips et cetera?

[dilettantka.livejournal.com]

THIS

[maple88.livejournal.com]

Someone please send me a butthurt form.
The hallyu wave needs to include TVXQ~ this article is incomplete.

[imfogi.livejournal.com]

It's ok bb. *pats*pats*
I felt the same way too when I read this article. =(

[ghost-whisper.livejournal.com]

Lol, their second and third Hallyu waves are a little mixed up/not distinct. It wasn't triggered by Rain/Wonder Girls/BoA - more like that half of hallyu concurrently happened with the already large fanbase that was invisible on the world map, while the invisible fans cheered it on. :P

[taylorniw.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's popular enough worldwide to be considered global. We do need to think about the fact that fans will watch the MVs on Youtube over and over to jack up the view count (I know because they talk about doing it in the comments).

[taylorniw.livejournal.com]

Also comparing it to a news channel and a sports channel youtube is not a valid comparisn.

[jeugd1.livejournal.com]

this this this

[the-erotomanic.livejournal.com]

uh, this is an article about youtube spreading hallyu rather than an article about a particular kpop artist/group causing the surge in popularity of hallyu. so stop being butthurt.

what this articles don't mention, though, is how fans are using youtube to spread hallyu by subbing different tv shows or posting recordings of the music shows (hello unknowncarrotxxx!).

[burnout-talus.livejournal.com]

what this articles don't mention, though, is how fans are using youtube to spread hallyu by subbing different tv shows or posting recordings of the music shows (hello unknowncarrotxxx!)
agree. this would've been a more interesting take on YT + Hallyu. I, for one, was introduced by a friend to kpop via subbed X-Man videos.

[ss501pixie.livejournal.com]

*sigh*i feel dumb for asking but what is a hallyu?

[jeugd1.livejournal.com]

hallyu is the Korean pronunciation of the Korean wave
how Korean movies, dramas, and music is becoming more popular around
Asia and other part

[likeap0ny.livejournal.com]

dnw
sorry bitches i found kpop first u go suck african music or smth

[cherrypop.livejournal.com]

I'm too late. I was gonna say "In before 'I found kpop first oh yuck kpop is getting mainstream'"

But dem delusional "kpop fans" are already here.

[haymitch.livejournal.com]

seriously

[arsinoi.livejournal.com]

By the time kpop becomes a trend in my country (Greece) the wave will have died down (it seems we are always behind by some years) but we do have a steady fanbase that keeps growing. I'm kinda ridiculously proud to say I'm one of the oldest in the fandom but back in the day I felt so lonely. Now I like it that there are people around to flail & fangirl with. Makes life easier. (We even had DBSK, SNSD & 2PM on TV here but we're still the minority of asian-music-loving weirdos lol)

[xaoiholic.livejournal.com]

o well

[brianathebard.livejournal.com]

2PM of JYP Entertainment, which manages girl group Wonder Girls as well, released a teaser video demonstrating the acrobatic abilities of each member on Oct. 7. The video ended up as the most viewed video on YouTube worldwide for that day.

lol sorry guys n_n;;

[shinobu-chan69.livejournal.com]

sorry, why?

[dilettantka.livejournal.com]

Obviously, this article is faulty because they forgot to mention U-KISS. I for one am outraged.

[sundrunk.livejournal.com]

why are a bunch of you acting like some elitist kpop hipsters?

its not like kpop is some groundbreaking underground shit

[say-o-kay.livejournal.com]

LOL, yes.

[donutism.livejournal.com]

If only Jpop thought of international fans. Most of their titles are in Japanese (Mandopop, I am also looking at you) so international fans either have to copy and paste, or type in a horrible english pronunciation of the name that doesn't make any sense at all, making Youtube go WTF and give you a list of odd videos that is not what you were looking for.

Kpop makes it too easy for international fans. Sadly, just because they have lots of views doesn't mean the album actually sells well.