From B2C to B2B: Selling Korean Pop Music in the Age of New Social Media

Abstract

The once prevailing myth held among scholars of East Asian Studies that Hallyu, or the Korean Wave, was over has now lost much of its credibility, as Korean TV dramas continue to attract and maintain an impressive audience base in Japan, China, Taiwan, South East Asia, and the Middle East. Particularly interesting is the resurgence of the popularity of Korean pop music not only in Asia but also in Europe and North America as well. This paper discusses the impact of new social media on the sudden explosion of K-pop popularity. We argue that the Korean entertainment industry is now rapidly changing its conventional business model from the audience-based B2C strategy to a new social media-dependent B2B model. In this new model Google through its subsidiary company YouTube acts as a key provider of the new social media market to the K-pop music industry that is now targeting royalty income as its main source of revenue. We use both archival and in-depth interview data to arrive at our conclusion that major Korean K-pop talent agencies, including SM, JYP, and YG, are exploiting a large profit potential through new social media and the B2B model.