Tag: awards

KPop is Now in the West, and it’s Here to Stay

The Western pop culture realm was severely shaken up when in 2017 BTS was nominated for a Billboard Music Award, and won. They were the first Korean artists to get nominated for a Western Music award, and were met with a mix of both excitement from their fans and confusion from the general populace. Social media was flooded with questions about who BTS was, and why/how they got nominated in the first place.

Two years later, and Kpop has not only exploded in popularity, but is slowly melding its way into Western music. Artists such as Steve Aoki, Nicki Minaj, Jason Derulo, and Dua Lipa have collaborated with some of the most popular Kpop groups, mixing both Korean and English in a way that had only previous been done with Latin music. Just last week Jason Derulo came out with a song and music video featuring LAY and NCT 127, the former being a Kpop singer and the latter being a Kpop group, called “Shut Up, Let’s Dance”.

Kpop is working its way into Western music, though at a much slower rate relative to the explosion in popularity among Western audiences. The rapid growth in fans of Kpop is rather astonishing, as in just a few months the rate of Kpop fans have skyrocketed, and social media interactions with Kpop groups. For both BTS’s and EXO’s twitters, the rate of interaction with the accounts by fans beat expected interactions by a longshot in 2018, beating out top western artists such as Beyonce and Justin Bieber.

Kpop groups have even made their way into Western advertisements, as BTS has both been on the cover of Billboard magazine and modeled for Vogue. The most popular female group at the moment, Blackpink, just appeared on the cover of Billboard magazine as well, having some of the highest amount of streams on Spotify. Their latest song “Ddu Du Ddu Du” also has topped 695 million views on Youtube, making it one of the most listened to Kpop songs globally.

Kpop is pushing its way into Western Music, and, at least for the time being, it’s here to stay. It’ll be interesting to see how Western music awards, particularly awards such as the Grammy’s, will adapt to the rising popularity of Kpop. Will it add a category specifically for Kpop, which they did for Latin music? Or will they simply meld it in to the preexisting categories, as what occurred with BTS this february? It’ll be interesting to see where the next few years takes us.

No, I Don’t Want to pay $40 for one Awards Show

So last sunday was the Grammys’. I’ve never actually seen the Grammys’ before, and figured that I this year might be the year to try watching it. Some interesting performers were up for awards, so I was intrigued.

Except, whenever I tried to figure out where it was streamed, I realized I could access none of the listed sites. Under my Dad’s account, I have access to DirectTV, CBS, and Hulu. But were they showing the Grammys’ on any of these sites? Nope, you have to pay $40 a site just to access their special “live” versions. Even when I tried looking it up directly on DirectTV (on my laptop), the Grammys’ couldn’t play because of copyright law. Copyright by who? Who even knows.

It annoys me to no end that these companies want you to by their “special” subscription just to be able watch something that you won’t really have access to again, just to boost subscriptions. No one wants to subscribe to “Hulu Live”, or something like that, they just want Hulu. Stop making this more difficult than it needs to be.

And, as for DirectTV, they had it on their special “on the go” subscription, but for some reason copyright prevented it from having it on their regular site? Even though I could look up the Grammys’, and get all the way to the “watch now” button before it’s a problem? Ridiculous.

Now, I could have technically gone downstairs and watched in on the TV itself. My landlady lives in the house I stay in, and has a TV set that has access to CBS. However, she had people over, and was in the living room with those people, which would have made it rather strange to just walk in and change the channel. So, while technically I could have done something, in reality it would have been socially unacceptable.