Hyatt's Westkasova. The Big Take is taking a break this week, so here's an episode you might have missed. Even if you're not a teenager, chances are these catchy songs have hit your ears at one time or another.
The best muse is.
Coming, going like You's not coming more the mocking.
There's some of the biggest Korean pop or k pop hits of the last few years from a band called BTS. They've built a huge international following. Their songs have more than thirty two million monthly listeners on Spotify, and the band's fans are extremely devoted. And now the man behind these artists' success has an even more ambitious global plant.
That dream stream economy.
Bangshi Huck is partnering with Universal Music Group, one of the world's biggest music companies, to try to recreate the success of BTS with a new band outside of Korea. Its members will be young women from all around the world.
This is the first US based K pop international girl bands.
They have built into this process a lot of steps that they hope will cultivate a fan base before the group even debuts.
That's Bloomberg so He Kim and Lucas Shaw They're here to tell us how BTS became so big and whether Bang can do it again. I'm west Kosova today on the Big Take How to Build the Next pop music Sensation. I asked Lucas to tell us a bit about Bang Shihok. He's very well known in South Korea, but those of us in the US and some other parts of the world might not know much about him.
So they don't know him per se, but they are very familiar with BTS, which is the group that he helped form and create through his company, which at the time was called Big Hit Entertainment and is now called HIBE. The success of BTS made HIVE the biggest music company in South Korea, made Bang the richest and most powerful music mogul in South Korea, and really, I think is credited by a lot of people with helping to bring K pop to the masses and bring K pop all
roun the world. Following the success of BTS, you know, you've seen a lot of different groups come to the US tour Europe, whether that's Black Pink, which is a girl group with a rival company, or twice. We've seen this steady influx of Korean music all over the world, and I think Bong gets a tremendous amount of credit for that, and no small part because of his work with BTS.
So he's been in the business a long time and he has this storied career. Can you tell us just about how he got started?
He grew up listening to British pop, USC pop and started writing songs inspired by Duran, Duran and Timberland. He kept playing composing music with his band and he won a national song contest in nineteen ninety four. Not long after that, he was scouted by a pop singer, Paktinjong, and both founded JP Entertainment in nineteen ninety seven. Park also spent his childhood in New York and both had the American dream. They had confidence with their huge success
at home. Theason based a tough reality because the K pop had not landed in the US and no one actually knew how to monetize or adopt K pop model in the US. The board of JP at the time opposed to their bold ambitions to establish business in the US, and they didn't give the financial support. Park and Bank had to move into a friend's house in LA and live together, so his time in La later not became
like valuable lessons for his US ambition. Maybe the major part of his lesson was the attitude toward music was completely different because he worked like a machine while his fellow US producer seemed to enjoy music itself. That completely changed his attitude and he came back to Seoul and left to establish his own company, Bikit Entertainment in two thousand and five.
And when Bond came back to South Korea after the time in the US and split from JYP, one of the things that he wanted to do was try to bring some of the American sensibility over to his home country. A lot of that I think was sonically. His initial
efforts with Big Hit did not work. He had three to five years of trying to figure out what was the right artist for them, and even in the case of BTS, initially they thought it might be a hip hop group and it was only after they started to develop the group that they decided to go in the pop direction.
How did he form BTS because it kind of had an unusual start.
So initially Big Kid had no hit songs and they tried to form a hip hop group as like a Lucas mentioned, they were looking into some talented producers, talented as singers and pop stars that they could turn that into a group, a eid group that K pop is known for twenty ten. P Dog the initial producer. He found out a demo tape from a performer.
Cantung Hatchet Fields, and he later became a rap monster.
The leader of BTS, so like pe Doc gave a demo tape to Bang and the band was so fascinated with this boy, like fifteen year old boy, and he immediately started to scout more members to form a hip hop boy band. They did a nationwide audition and scouted Sugar the second member who can produce songs and basically a rap line member, and Jay Hoppe was a dancer.
Hello, Army is ja right here?
And he is also a rap line member. They ended those training pool to bring more charming and the more talented passionate members. They formed the seven member boy band at the end after years long training and the survival audition and competition among like thirty trainees. So that was the beginning of of BTS.
The crazy thing when you think about BTS and the development of the artists is that they started to form and I think twenty ten. The group doesn't debut until twenty twelve, two and thirteen, so it takes two or
three years for them to even form and train. And that's another thing that's very different about the Korean music style, where there's this whole T and D process training and development, where the management companies spend anywhere from a year to several years first picking the members and then training them. And even when BTS debuts, it wasn't immediately bigger and some of the other big acts debuting at the time, it took two three four years for them to start to find a global audience.
Lucas and So he report a big reason BTS really did start to break out was because of the way Bong tried to marry what he'd learned in America with the traditional South Korean model.
There had been historically in South Korea a lot of restrictions around what acts could do during the training process, how they communicated with the outside world. Everything was very closely managed by the big companies. South Korean management companies exerted a lot more control over their artists than those
in the West. That is financial, you know, they take a piece of touring and merchandise and music and all these other areas that US record labels, for example, or US management companies don't always participate, but also just in their day to day behavior at least while the artists are in the training process before they've made their debut. You know, they're not supposed to date. There are severe limits on what they can eat, like no junk food.
They're really not supposed to communicate that much about what they're doing with the outside world. And Bong encouraged the members of BTS to communicate openly with their fans.
Ah Hi I, Sabrina Rubts.
And really build a following, and that coincided with the
explosion in Twitter. Facebook was already fairly popular, Instagram came around, YouTube was really getting big, and so one of the novelties of BTS and one of the things where they've been really a pioneer in, is building these ardent online fan bases, some of it through sort of your traditional American social media channels, but then also in a way that is very kind of uniquely Korean or at least East Asian, both in terms of the apps that they use.
You know, Hibe has its own app called Weavers, and in terms of some of the different fan meetups and interaction. You know, you look at the way that Korean fans kind of support the artists that they love, and it's at another level.
BTS to you guys every day. Well anyway home.
For me, BTS came into my life when I needed when I needed them the most, and they saved me from the process. So when BTS came out, their sound was really different compared to the groups that were out, and I was instantly like, this is really cool, this is really different. The dancing was great, they were really cute, and the music was really fun.
One of the few US artists who has anything close to it or comparable is Taylor Swift. A lot of what Taylor Swift has done in the last three to five years is in many ways modeled off of what Bong did with BTS.
When we come back Bond's plan for a new global music group. It may have taken BTS years of training and development before making their debut, but as we know, they've since become a huge hit group. They have number one singles all around the world. I asked Lucas and so he to tell us.
How that happened in the Internet era. So much happens with momentum, and so like BTS develops a following in South Korea and it gets really big in Southeast Asia and across Asia where K pop was already huge, and then it just for a whole post of different reasons. This fan base sort of propels it to fandom everywhere else, and once a few people start buying in, they become sort of part of a movement. It's almost like a meme. But they had music that people really connected with.
Their songs and their messages and their communications with fans were so powerful because they were talking about self love and empowerment of the youth. It was a very aligned with the UNS and to support youth. That also helped like a BTS to make a speech at the UN and like a White House, and they were the front line speaker for youth and Asians.
We've been partnering with Unstuff's in Violence program to protect children and young people all over the world from violence, and our fans have become a major part of this campaign. With their action and with their enthusiasm, we truly have the best fans in the world.
BTS was on top, but Bob began to think about just how long that would last.
Bob was looking at his business at the peak of BTS's power and fame sort of twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen into twenty twenty. He knew that he needed to figure out sort of what the next step was for his company, how he was going to diversify it, both because pop groups don't last forever. Most of them tend to last sort of like five to seven years. BTS at that point was already almost a decade old. It's now more
than a decade old. There was also the issue of the South Korean requirement that men serve in the military. They had gotten that sort of pushed later and later, but he had to assume at some point that the various members would have to serve as they are now, and that would take them off the table for a couple of years.
I've been into kpop for almost twenty years, so I always know, especially guide groups, they're going to go to the army, so you know it's coming, but it's still like, ugh, Okay, I'm proud of you for going, because like that's really something strong and admirable. But oh man, the lack of music, the lack of concert's gonna be so hard, and.
So he sought out to raise money and expand his business globally. Some of that was necessity and some of that was just he's an ambitious guy. He's very humble, but he wanted to build this company into something bigger and greater. So they went public in twenty twenty raise some money. He went shopping bought a big US music company called Ethical Holdings, which is run by the manager Scooter Braun, best known for his work with Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande during COVID.
I got a call and they said, would you be interested in your company joining another company out of Korea? And I had watched BTS and watched Bang from a distance, and I was curious, and I didn't want anyone to know. And I said, sure, let's meet, let's talk. And we started doing weekly zooms, telling no one about them.
He went and bought another record label with Scooter Braun. He tried to buy sort of one of his biggest
competitors in Korea. And at the same time that he was sort of buying these assets that would diversify the business, he was building up some technology and he started to try and develop more acts now he's developed a couple of big acts that are local to South Korea, but he also had this vision for applying the model that they'd used with BTS and really across South Korea using that training and development process, but also cultivating that extreme
fandom with a global group, and for help with that, he turned to Universal Music Group, the biggest music group in the world.
With Universal Bang as attempting to build out a truly global girl group with a massive publicity and social media campaign around the contest to choose its members. They're calling it the Debut Dream Academy.
Dream Swap.
Dream Dream Academy. This is the first US based K pop international girl band, so there are girls from twelve countries. It's not all Asian pop girl band that used to be, so this is a truly an international girl band that Hibe wants to make it as a US like a focus and they would have become a more global approach, not only like attract K pop bands, but to the pop fans in general. They are doing this month long competition and audition programs online.
Each step will be a gateway to the next.
For three rounds of eliminations leading to a live finale. On November seventeen. They have built into this process a lot of steps that they hope will cultivate a fan base before the group even debuts. So they cast a wide net for this casting process that took almost a year. I think they said that they had more than one hundred twenty thousand applications. More than seventy thousand of those came in within the first like ten days. They did
some in person casting calls throughout the world. They narrow that down to one hundred or so people, and then they've spent the last year training them and winnowing down the group in the US. During this competition, you know, they unveiled the twenty finalists at this event in Santa Monica in late August. For our final limitation, we invite Allia And since then they've been uploading videos with different
missions and competitions. Every woman in the group has a video on YouTube TikTok and weavers introducing themselves, and then they have different videos of different challenges and different videos of behind the scenes. And then when the women get sent home, they do a goodbye video, well s.
It's been a journey, it'sn't crazy. Almost everybody voted me out.
Maybe they're afraid.
Whatever got except it's this whole different methodology for trying to cultivate a fan base. I will say that there is a part of me and a part I think even of some of the people involved in this process, who wonder if it all feels a little contrived. You know, you think about something like BTS and in retrospect it seems like banghad this master plan right, But a lot of it is just sort of kismet and right place, right time, right messaging, and it just works. It's always
much harder to sort of manufacture that concept. Like New Genes, which is a different group that they have has done very well, but they didn't set out with this exact process. John Jannik, the head of Interscope, Geffen A and M, he told me that when he first got pitched this idea, he had reservations about it, but the more he got to know Bong and the more they talked about it, he just bought into this guy's vision and so.
He is it working? Are people watching the YouTube videos and Netflix documentary voting online? Are they participating in the hype?
There are at least one hundred thousands of events on like a weavers, like voting online, and they are commenting on like every performance of these girls training programs, illumination programs, so they are supporting girls and at the same time they are like a selecting girls who should become the final members. So they're on TikTok, weavers and YouTube supporting the band's debut. And I would say, well, they are
already like engaging with this band event. And one of the biggest merits to do this audition program is that they already like have the huge fan base online and global. When they come out as a band, they can just go straight to like a concert and like a music live shows when they're ready, and fans.
Will be there when we come back. Will the K pop model work in the rest of the world. We've heard about Bond's success creating bts and other popular bands, so he and Lucas say that one of the most important things for this new group is to quickly build a fan base big enough to fill stadiums for their concerts.
Once they become big band, like a K pop band, they can tour globally like a US Dubai, La and Soul and Tokyo everywhere in the world, and then there would like a collect money from the kvivers, like from merchandise as stuff fans would love to buy.
Yeah, I mean the earnings are going to so depend on how popular they are, right, most musicians don't make a lot of money from the recording of their music anymore. The people at the very very top do. But for the most part, even those big stars make a lot more money from the tour. One thing that tends to be different about some of the bigger K pop groups, I think they have preferred for doing fewer but bigger shows.
They come to the US and they'll do multiple nights in LA at a stadium or at an arena, big venue, but they're not doing forty shows in fifty five nights. But each show that they do, the gross is higher because it's a bigger venue, because they sell so much merchandise.
So this international girl group is really just the beginning. They're hoping they can replicate the Dream Academy model over and over again.
Yeah, that's the idea of Hive, and right now the focus is on the US. But like, definitely if this makes a huge success in the US, they were definitely differentchise in different cities all around the world.
You know, the US is such a big focus for him right now. He bought a house in the US. He's spending a lot of time in the US. The Korean business. He feels like he has a team in place to look after it. But if it works here, there's no reason why they can't try micro versions of it or other versions of it in other markets. You know, whether they'd partner with a local label or how that would work remains to be seen.
So he write that the music industry in Korea is very competitive. Are the other labels in Korea watching what Bang is doing and maybe going to try to reproduce it.
We wrote a lot about his friendship with JOYP founder Patino, and he's actually also like a trying to build out a new US girl group partnering with one of the US record labels. And there are a lot of agencies watching this momentum and trying to follow, like what Hype
is doing. They are setting up their US office and trying to like partner with Sony Music or like a warner or like Universal to get involved with the US music scene after like seeing whether this could become a big hit, and they will like definitely jump into this formula and probably like us, record labels would find Crean partner as well.
So Lucas, thanks so much for sharing your reporting. Thank you, thank you, thanks for listening to us here at The Big Take. It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and iHeartRadio. For more shows from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen, and we'd love to hear from you. Email us questions or comments to Big Take at Bloomberg dot net. The supervising producer of The Big Take is Vicky Virgalina. Our senior producer is Katherine Fink.
This episode was produced by Frederica Romanello and edited by Caitlin Kenney. Our associate producer is Zenebsidiki. Rafael mcili is our engineer. Our original music was composed by Leo Sidrin. I'm West Kasova. We'll be back tomorrow with another Big Take