In July 2016, the mega-hit “Gangnam Style” by South Korean singer PSY surpassed 2.6 billion views on YouTube. Big Bang, a Korean pop (K-Pop) boy band, earned $44 million in 2015, making it among the highest paid in the industry. Is K-Pop just a passing fad — a matter of a few songs going viral? The answer is no. The global success of K-Pop did not happen by accident, nor is it simply an interesting cultural phenomenon.
K-Pop companies rewrote the playbook for Korea’s music industry. Three factors have made the difference:
Strategic talent management. The main difference between K-Pop and the rest of the music industry is talent management. In the traditional business model, talent is discovered by scouts or through auditions. In the K-Pop model, companies look for kids as young as nine or 10 to groom into the next generation of stars. K-Pop companies source artistic talent all around the world. For example, S.M. Entertainment hosts annual auditions in several countries, from the U.S. to Kazakhstan, and selects a few trainable and marketable individuals out of more than 300,000 applicants.