Speaker 1: Even if you're not a teenager, chances are these catchy
Speaker 1: songs have hit your ears at one time or another.
Speaker 2: The best is.
Speaker 1: Coming going like a stuffing.
Speaker 3: The mona.
Speaker 1: There's some of the biggest Korean pop or k pop
Speaker 1: hits of the last few years from a band called BTS.
Speaker 1: They've built a huge international following. Their songs have more
Speaker 1: than thirty two million monthly listeners on Spotify, and the
Speaker 1: band's fans are extremely devoted. And now the man behind
Speaker 1: these artists' success has an even more ambitious global plant.
Speaker 4: A stream economy.
Speaker 1: Bangshi Huck is partnering with Universal Music Group, one of
Speaker 1: the world's biggest music companies, to try to recreate the
Speaker 1: success of BTS with a new band outside of Korea.
Speaker 1: Its members will be young women from all around the world.
Speaker 4: This is the first US based k pop internastrial girl bands.
Speaker 3: They have built into this process a lot of steps
Speaker 3: that they hope will cultivate a fan base before the
Speaker 3: group even debuts.
Speaker 1: That's Bloomberg, so He Kim and Lucas Shaw. They're here
Speaker 1: to tell us how BTS became so big and whether
Speaker 1: Bong can do it again. I'm west Kosova today on
Speaker 1: the big take how to build the next pop music sensation.
Speaker 1: I asked Lucas to tell us a bit about Bang
Speaker 1: Shie Hook. He's very well known in South Korea, but
Speaker 1: those of us in the US and some other parts
Speaker 1: of the world might not know much about.
Speaker 3: Him, so they don't know him per se, but they
Speaker 3: are very familiar with BTS, which is the group that
Speaker 3: he helped form and create through his company, which at
Speaker 3: the time was called Big Hit Entertainment and is now
Speaker 3: called HIBE. The successive BTS made HIVE the biggest music
Speaker 3: company in South Korea, made Bang the richest and most
Speaker 3: powerful music mogul in South Korea, and really, I think
Speaker 3: is credited by a lot of people with helping to
Speaker 3: bring K pop to the masses and bring K pop
Speaker 3: all around the world. Following the success of BTS, you know,
Speaker 3: you've seen a lot of different groups come to the US,
Speaker 3: tour Europe, whether that's Black Pink, which is a girl
Speaker 3: group with a rival company, or twice. We've seen this
Speaker 3: steady influx of Korean music all over the world, and
Speaker 3: I think Bond gets a tremendous amount of credit for that,
Speaker 3: and no small part because of his work with BTS.
Speaker 1: So he's been in the business a long time and
Speaker 1: he has this storied career. Can you tell us just
Speaker 1: about how he got started?
Speaker 4: He grew up listening to British pop USh pop and
Speaker 4: started writing songs inspired by Duran, Duran and Timberland. He
Speaker 4: kept playing composing music with his band and he won
Speaker 4: a national song contest in nineteen ninety four. Not long
Speaker 4: after that, he was scouted by a pop singer, Paktinjong,
Speaker 4: and both founded JYP Entertainment in nineteen ninety seven. Park
Speaker 4: also spent his childhood in New York and both had
Speaker 4: the American dream. They had confidence with their huge success
Speaker 4: at home days on base the tough reality because the
Speaker 4: K pop had not landed in the US and no
Speaker 4: one actually knew how to monetize or adopt K pop
Speaker 4: model in the US. The board of JIP at the
Speaker 4: time opposed to their bold ambitions to establish business in
Speaker 4: the US, and they didn't give the financial support. Park
Speaker 4: and Bank had to move into a friend's house in
Speaker 4: La and live together, so his time in La later
Speaker 4: not became like valuable lessons for his US ambition. Maybe
Speaker 4: the major part of his lesson was the attitude toward
Speaker 4: music was completely different because he worked like a machine
Speaker 4: while his fellow US producer seemed to enjoy music itself.
Speaker 4: That completely changed his attitude and he came back to
Speaker 4: Seoul and left JP to establish his own company, Biked
Speaker 4: Entertainment in two thousand and five.
Speaker 3: And when Bond came back to South Korea after the
Speaker 3: time in the US and split from JYP, one of
Speaker 3: the things that he wanted to do was try to
Speaker 3: bring some of the the American sensibility over to his
Speaker 3: home country. A lot of that I think was sonically.
Speaker 3: His initial efforts with Big Hit did not work. He
Speaker 3: had three to five years of trying to figure out
Speaker 3: what was the right artist for them, and even in
Speaker 3: the case of BTS, initially they thought it might be
Speaker 3: a hip hop group and it was only after they
Speaker 3: started to develop the group that they decided to go
Speaker 3: in the pop direction.
Speaker 1: How did he form BTS because it kind of had
Speaker 1: an unusual start.
Speaker 4: So initially Big Kid had no hit songs and they
Speaker 4: tried to form a hip hop group as like a
Speaker 4: Lucas mentioned, they were looking into some talented producers, talented
Speaker 4: singers and pop stars that they could turn that into
Speaker 4: a group, a idol group, that K pop is known for.
Speaker 4: In twenty ten, P Dogs the initial producer. He found
Speaker 4: out a demo tape from a performer.
Speaker 2: We're too Young Hatchet.
Speaker 4: And he later became a rap monster. The leader of BTS,
Speaker 4: so like p Doc gave a demo tape to band,
Speaker 4: and the band was so fascinated with this boy, like
Speaker 4: fifteen year old boy, and he immediately started to scout
Speaker 4: more members to form a hip hop boy band. They
Speaker 4: did a nationwide audition and scouted Sugar the second member
Speaker 4: who can produce songs and basically a rap line member,
Speaker 4: and Jay Hoppe was a dancer.
Speaker 5: Hello, Army is ja right here?
Speaker 4: And he is also a rep line member. They expanded
Speaker 4: those training pool to bring more charming and the more
Speaker 4: talented passionate members. They formed the seven member boy band
Speaker 4: at the end after years long training and the survival
Speaker 4: audition and competition among like thirty trainees. So Oded was
Speaker 4: the beginning of of BTS.
Speaker 3: That's the crazy thing when you think about BTS and
Speaker 3: the development of the artist is that they started to
Speaker 3: form and I think twenty ten. The group doesn't debut
Speaker 3: until twenty twelve, two and thirteen, so it takes two
Speaker 3: or three years for them to even form and train.
Speaker 3: And that's another thing that's very different about the Korean
Speaker 3: music style, where there's this whole T and D process
Speaker 3: training and development, where the management companies spend anywhere from
Speaker 3: a year to several years first picking the members and
Speaker 3: then training them. And even when BTS debuts, it wasn't
Speaker 3: immediately bigger than some of the other big acts debuting
Speaker 3: at the time. It took two, three four years for
Speaker 3: them to start to find a global audience.
Speaker 1: Lucas and so he report a big reason BTS really
Speaker 1: did start to break out was because of the way
Speaker 1: Bong tried to marry what he'd learned in America with
Speaker 1: the traditional South Korean model.
Speaker 3: There had been historically in South Korea a lot of
Speaker 3: restrictions around what acts could do during the training process,
Speaker 3: how they communicated with the outside world. Everything was very
Speaker 3: closely managed by the big companies. South Korean management companies
Speaker 3: exerted a lot more control over their artists than those
Speaker 3: in the West. That is financial, you know, they take
Speaker 3: a piece of touring and merchandise and music and all
Speaker 3: these other areas that US record labels, for example, or
Speaker 3: US management companies don't always participate, but also just in
Speaker 3: their day to day behavior, at least while the artists
Speaker 3: are in the training process before they've made their debut.
Speaker 3: You know, they're not supposed to date. There are severe
Speaker 3: limits on what they can eat, like no junk food.
Speaker 3: They're really not supposed to communicate that much about what
Speaker 3: they're doing with the outside world. And Bong encouraged the
Speaker 3: members of BTS to communicate openly with their fans.
Speaker 2: Ah Hi Hi Sabrina Rubts and really build a following.
Speaker 3: And that coincided with the explosion in Twitter. Facebook was
Speaker 3: already fairly popular, Instagram came around, YouTube was really getting big,
Speaker 3: and so one of the novelties of BTS and one
Speaker 3: of the things where they've been really a pioneer in
Speaker 3: is building these ardent online fan bases, some of it
Speaker 3: through sort of your traditional American social media channels, but
Speaker 3: then also in a way that is very kind of
Speaker 3: uniquely Korean or at least East Asian, both in terms
Speaker 3: of the apps that they use. You know, Hibe has
Speaker 3: its own app called Weavers, and in terms of some
Speaker 3: of the different fan meetups and interaction. You know, you
Speaker 3: look at the way that Korean fans kind of support
Speaker 3: the artists that they love, and it's at another level.
Speaker 4: To you, guys, am I every day home for me.
Speaker 6: BTS came into my life when I needed, when I
Speaker 6: needed them the most, and the save me from the process.
Speaker 6: So BTS came out. Their sound was really different compared
Speaker 6: to the groups that were out, and I was instantly like,
Speaker 6: this is really cool, this is really different. The dancing
Speaker 6: was great, they were really cute, and the music was
Speaker 6: really fun.
Speaker 3: One of the few US artists who has anything close
Speaker 3: to it or comparable is Taylor Swift. A lot of
Speaker 3: what Taylor Swift has done in the last three to
Speaker 3: five years is in many ways modeled off of what
Speaker 3: Bong did with BTS.
Speaker 1: When we come back Bang's plan for a new global
Speaker 1: music group. It may have taken BTS years of training
Speaker 1: and development before making their debut, but as we know,
Speaker 1: they've since become a huge hit group. They have number
Speaker 1: one singles all around the world. I asked Lucas and
Speaker 1: so he to tell us how that happened.
Speaker 3: In the Internet era, so much happens with momentum and
Speaker 3: so like, BTS develops the following in South Korea and
Speaker 3: it gets really big in Southeast Asia and across Asia
Speaker 3: where K pop was already huge, and then it just
Speaker 3: for a whole post of different reasons. This fan base
Speaker 3: sort of propels it to fandom everywhere else, and once
Speaker 3: a few people start buying in, they become sort of
Speaker 3: part of a movement. It's almost like a meme. But
Speaker 3: they had music that people really connected with.
Speaker 4: Their songs and their messages and their communications with fans
Speaker 4: were so powerful because they were talking about self love
Speaker 4: and empowerment of like youth. It was a very aligned
Speaker 4: with the UN's ambitions to support youth. That also helped
Speaker 4: like a BTS to make a speech at the UN
Speaker 4: and like a White House, and they were the front
Speaker 4: line speaker for youth and Asians.
Speaker 2: We been partnering with Yunisuff's Inviolence program to protect children
Speaker 2: and young people all over the world from violence, and
Speaker 2: our fans have become a major part of this campaign.
Speaker 2: With their action and with their enthusiasm, we truly have
Speaker 2: the best fans in the world.
Speaker 1: BTS was on top, but Bob began to think about
Speaker 1: just how long that would last.
Speaker 3: Bob was looking at his business. At the peak of
Speaker 3: BTS's sort of power and fame, sort of twenty eighteen,
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen into twenty twenty, he knew that he needed
Speaker 3: to figure out sort of what the next step was
Speaker 3: for his company, how he was going to diversify it,
Speaker 3: both because pop groups don't last forever. Most of them
Speaker 3: tend to last sort of like five to seven years.
Speaker 3: BTS at that point was already almost a decade old.
Speaker 3: It's now more than a decade old. There was also
Speaker 3: the issue of the South Korean requirement that men serve
Speaker 3: in the military. They had gotten that sort of pushed
Speaker 3: later and later, but he had to assume at some
Speaker 3: point that the various members would have to serve as
Speaker 3: they are now, and that would take them off the
Speaker 3: table for a couple of years.
Speaker 6: I've been in to cap up for almost twenty years,
Speaker 6: so I always know, especially guide groups, they're going to
Speaker 6: go to the army, so you know it's coming, but
Speaker 6: it's still like, ugh, okay, I'm proud of you for going,
Speaker 6: because like that's really something strong and admirable. But oh man,
Speaker 6: the lack of music, the lack of concert's gonna be
Speaker 6: so hard.
Speaker 3: And so he sought out to raise money and expand
Speaker 3: his business globally. Some of that was necessity, and some
Speaker 3: of that was just he's an ambitious guy. He's very humble,
Speaker 3: but he wanted to build this company into something bigger
Speaker 3: and greater, so they went public in twenty twenty raise
Speaker 3: some money. He went shopping and bought a big US
Speaker 3: music company called Ethical Holdings, which is run by the
Speaker 3: manager Scooter Braun, best known for his work with Justin
Speaker 3: Bieber and Ariana Grande during COVID.
Speaker 5: I got a call and they said, would you be
Speaker 5: interested in your company joining another company out of Korea?
Speaker 5: And I had watched BTS and watched Bang from a distance,
Speaker 5: and I was curious, and I didn't want anyone to know,
Speaker 5: and I said, sure, let's meet, let's talk. And we
Speaker 5: started doing weekly zooms, telling no one about them.
Speaker 3: He went and bought another record label with Scooter Braun,
Speaker 3: he tried to buy sort of one of his biggest
Speaker 3: competitors in Korea. And at the same time that he
Speaker 3: was sort of buying these assets that would diversify the business,
Speaker 3: he was building up some technology and he started to
Speaker 3: try and develop more acts. Now he's developed a couple
Speaker 3: of big acts that are local to South Korea, but
Speaker 3: he also had this vision for applying the model that
Speaker 3: they'd used with BTS and really across South Korea using
Speaker 3: that training and development process, but also cultivating that extreme
Speaker 3: fandom with a global group, and for help with that,
Speaker 3: he turned to Universal Music Group, the biggest music group
Speaker 3: in the world.
Speaker 1: With Universal, Bang is attempting to build out a truly
Speaker 1: global girl group with a massive publicity and social media
Speaker 1: campaign around the contest to choose its members. They're calling
Speaker 1: it the Debut Dream Academy Dream and.
Speaker 4: Swapna Dream Dream Academy. This is the first US based
Speaker 4: K pop international girl bands, so there are girls from
Speaker 4: twelve countries. It's not all Asian K pop girl band
Speaker 4: that used to be, so this is a truly an
Speaker 4: international girl band that Hibe wants to make it as
Speaker 4: a US like a focused and they would become a
Speaker 4: more global approach, not only like attract K pop bands
Speaker 4: but to the pop fans in general. They are doing
Speaker 4: this month long competition and audition programs online. Each step
Speaker 4: will be a gateway to the next for three rounds
Speaker 4: of eliminations leading to the live finale on a Nova
Speaker 4: for seventeen.
Speaker 3: They have built into this process a lot of steps
Speaker 3: that they hope will cultivate a fan base before the
Speaker 3: group even debuts, So they cast a wide net for
Speaker 3: this casting process that took almost a year. I think
Speaker 3: they said that they had more than one hundred and
Speaker 3: twenty thousand applications. More than seventy thousand of those came
Speaker 3: in within the first like ten days. They did some
Speaker 3: in person casting calls throughout the world. They narrow that
Speaker 3: down to one hundred or so people, and then they've
Speaker 3: spent the last year training them and winnowing down the
Speaker 3: group in the US. During this competition, you know, they
Speaker 3: unveiled the twenty finalists at this event in Santa Monica
Speaker 3: in late August.
Speaker 5: For our final limitation, we invite.
Speaker 3: Million And since then they've been uploading videos with different
Speaker 3: missions and competitions. Every year, the woman in the group
Speaker 3: has a video on YouTube TikTok and weavers introducing themselves,
Speaker 3: and then they have different videos of different challenges and
Speaker 3: different videos of behind the scenes. And then when the
Speaker 3: women get sent home, they do a goodbye video.
Speaker 1: We listen, it's been a journey. It isn't crazy. Almost
Speaker 1: everybody voted me out.
Speaker 5: Maybe they're afraid whatever.
Speaker 3: Except it's this whole different methodology for trying to cultivate
Speaker 3: a fan base. I will say that there is a
Speaker 3: part of me and a part I think even of
Speaker 3: some of the people involved in this process, who wonder
Speaker 3: if it all feels a little contrived. You know, you
Speaker 3: think about something like BTS and in retrospect it seems
Speaker 3: like banghad this master plan right, But a lot of
Speaker 3: it is just sort of kismet and right place, right time,
Speaker 3: right messaging, and it just works. It's always much harder
Speaker 3: to sort of manufacture that concept. Like New Genes, which
Speaker 3: is a different group that they have, has done very well,
Speaker 3: but they didn't set out with this exact process. John Jannik,
Speaker 3: the head of Interscope Caffin A and M, he told
Speaker 3: me that when he first got pitched this idea, he
Speaker 3: had reservations about it, but the more he got to
Speaker 3: know Bong and the more they talked about it, he
Speaker 3: just bought into this guy's vision and.
Speaker 1: So he is it working. Our people watching the YouTube
Speaker 1: videos and Netflix documentary voting online, are they participating in
Speaker 1: the hype.
Speaker 4: There are like at least one hundred thousands of events
Speaker 4: on like a weavers like voting online, and they are
Speaker 4: commenting on like every performance of these girls training programs
Speaker 4: illumination programs, so they are supporting girls and at the
Speaker 4: same time they are like selecting girls who should become
Speaker 4: the final members. So they're on TikTok, weavers and YouTube
Speaker 4: supporting the band's debuts. And I would say, well, they
Speaker 4: are already like engaging with this band event. And one
Speaker 4: of the biggest merits to do this audition program is
Speaker 4: that they already like have the huge fan base online
Speaker 4: and global. When they come out as a band, they
Speaker 4: can just go straight to like a concert and like
Speaker 4: a music live shows when they're ready, and fans.
Speaker 1: Will be there when we come back. Will the K
Speaker 1: pop model work in the rest of the world. We've
Speaker 1: heard about band's success creating bts and other popular bands,
Speaker 1: so he and Lucas say that one of the most
Speaker 1: important things for this new group is to quickly build
Speaker 1: a fan base big enough to fill stadiums for their concerts.
Speaker 4: Once they become big band, like a K pop band,
Speaker 4: they can tour globally like a US Dubai, La and
Speaker 4: Soul and Tokyo everywhere in the world, and then there
Speaker 4: would like a collect money from the k webs, like
Speaker 4: from merchandises, stuff bands would love to buy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, the earnings are going to so depend
Speaker 3: on how popular they are, right, Most musicians don't make
Speaker 3: a lot of money from the recording of their music anymore.
Speaker 3: The people at the very very top do. But for
Speaker 3: the most part, even those big stars make a lot
Speaker 3: more money from the tour. One thing that tends to
Speaker 3: be different about some of the bigger K pop groups,
Speaker 3: I think they have preferred for doing fewer but bigger shows.
Speaker 3: They come to the US and they'll do multiple nights
Speaker 3: in LA at a stadium or at an arena, big venue,
Speaker 3: but they're not doing forty shows in fifty five nights.
Speaker 3: But each show that they do, the gross is higher
Speaker 3: because it's a bigger venue, because they sell so much merchandise.
Speaker 1: So this international girl group is really just the beginning.
Speaker 1: They're hoping they can replicate the Dream Academy model over
Speaker 1: and over again.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's the idea of hype and right now the
Speaker 4: focus is on the US. But like, definitely, if this
Speaker 4: make the huge success in the US, they would definitely
Speaker 4: differentchise in different cities all around the world.
Speaker 3: You know, the US is such a big focus for him,
Speaker 3: right now he bought a house in the US. He's
Speaker 3: spending a lot of time in the US the Korean business.
Speaker 3: He feels like he has a team in place to
Speaker 3: look after it. But if it works here, there's no
Speaker 3: reason why they can't try micro versions of it or
Speaker 3: other versions of it in other markets. You know, whether
Speaker 3: they'd partner with a local label or how that would
Speaker 3: work remains to be seen.
Speaker 1: So he write that the music industry in Korea is
Speaker 1: very competitive. Are the other labels in Korea watching what
Speaker 1: Bang is doing and maybe going to try to reproduce it.
Speaker 4: We wrote a lot about his friendship with JIP founder Patino,
Speaker 4: and he's actually also like trying to build out a
Speaker 4: new US girl group partnering with one of the US
Speaker 4: record labels. And there are a lot of agencies watching
Speaker 4: this momentum and trying to follow, like what Hype is doing.
Speaker 4: They are setting up their US office and trying to
Speaker 4: like partner with Sony Music or like a Warner or
Speaker 4: like Universal to get involved with the US music scene
Speaker 4: after like seeing whether this could become a big hit,
Speaker 4: and they will like definitely jump into this formula and
Speaker 4: probably like US record labels would find Korean partner as well.
Speaker 1: Soey Lucas, thanks so much for sharing your reporting. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, thanks for listening to us here at The
Speaker 1: Big Take. It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and iHeartRadio.
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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen, and we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: Email us questions or comments to Big Take at Bloomberg
Speaker 1: dot net. The supervising producer of The Big Take is
Speaker 1: Vicky Virgalina. Our senior producer is Catherine Fink. This episode
Speaker 1: was produced by Frederica Romanello and edited by Caitlin Kenny.
Speaker 1: Our associate producer is Zenobsidiki. Raphael mcili is our engineer.
Speaker 1: Our original music was composed by Leo Sidron. I'm west Kasova.
Speaker 1: We'll be back tomorrow with another Big Take