[barbariangrunge]

K-pop bands are really are great at building loyal followings, but this article doesn't feel to me like the right resource for learning how they manage it.

Eg, it's mostly generic 'focus on personal stories,' 'lower barriers to entry,' and 'foster a good community' advice advocated everywhere you look in the blog-o-sphere (is that still an expression?)

Does anybody have any other articles they would recommend on the topic? Eg, about the details that make these groups actually excel at this compared to say the average blogger?

[ergocoder]

"Eliminate corporate jargon."

kpop has the highest number of jargons: nugu, sasaeng, maknae, pak, lead vocal, main vocal, black ocean, relay dance, aegyo, fancam, girlcrush, visual, bias

Guess what they mean.

[eslaught]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this jargon applies to kpop as a whole, not to any specific kpop band.

So when you're starting up a new kpop band, you don't need to educate your audience in all of this jargon. You just need to educate them on any terms specific to the new band (and I would guess the set of those starts in a limited way before it grows in any meaningful sense).

I think part of what we're seeing is that kpop as a genre is highly popular. It's "easy" (not really, but relatively speaking) to start a new band because fans can migrate from other bands. That's as opposed to starting in a more obscure genre where you'd be truly climbing up hill to reach any fans at all, even if you did literally every single thing that the kpop bands do.

As an aspiring author, I'm certainly very interested in this sort of audience acquisition, but it's not obvious to me what (if anything) can really be applied to my use case. The advice in the article makes intuitive sense, but it's also honestly very common advice, and I've talked to a lot of friends and colleagues who've done things like this and it's not that easy.

[jojok]

I think kpop artists spend more time building an emotional connection with their fans. In Korea kpop stars are on TV a lot, usually doing things like playing games together, sharing stories, hanging out at home, at work, at a cafe or restaurant. It makes you feel like you know them personally. With social media there are more people doing things like this, and those people have similarly devoted fans (e.g. the Kardashians). In the west artists still expect and want some degree is privacy, they want to make music but don't necessarily want to be a "professional famous person". My understanding is that for a kpop artist that's basically part of the contract.