It's been a year since Spotify launched in South Korea, and roughly 8 years since the flagship playlist, K-Pop Daebak, was introduced. ...
It's been a year since Spotify launched in South Korea, and roughly 8 years since the flagship playlist, K-Pop Daebak, was introduced. Since its debut in 2014, the playlist has amassed billions of streams for Korean musicians, allowing them to reach a global audience. With the increasing popularity of Korean music in recent years, Spotify is riding the wave of this global dominance by relaunching their popular flagship playlist, K-Pop Daebak, which is now known as K-Pop ON! (온).
According to Spotify, K-pop has experienced a 230 percent growth in listening and with nearly eight billion monthly streams globally. In the last 90 days, Spotify had more than 4.7 million searches for “K-pop.”
“K-pop is still daebak, or awesome, but there is so much more to the genre and the culture it has fostered around the world and so the name change reflects that,” says Ng. “K-Pop ON! (온) embodies the idea that ‘K-pop is always on 100 for the whole world.’ The new name is a double-entendre — combining the Korean word ‘온’ meaning ‘100’ or ‘whole,’ with the English word ‘on’ to display the action of ‘turning on,’ a word that’s accessible to many languages around the world.”
Along with the name change for the playlist, Kossy Ng, Head of Music, Asia at Spotify says that this year Spotify will offer "original content" in K-pop, which will "peel back the curtain on fans' favorite artists and songs." There will also be new K-pop listener discovery tools, as well as industry and non-industry collaborations. According to Spotify, the playlist attracts 6 million new listeners each month, and 4.7 million searches for "K-pop" have been made on the platform in the last 90 days.
“As music lovers, we get how exciting the world of K-pop is and what it means to the fans who follow it wholeheartedly,” says Ng. “The K-pop fandom is more than liking a song or following the latest group trends. It’s being passionate and involved, supportive and inclusive. Essentially, it’s being a part of a community.”
Spotify is also launching a series of billboards around the world to celebrate the revamped playlist, including supergroup NMIXX in Los Angeles, BTS, asepa, and NMIXX in New York City, ATEEZ, Red Velvet, NCT Dream, and others in South Korea, SEVENTEEN, BLACKPINK, and others in Indonesia, BTS, NMIXX, and IVE in Japan, and BTS, TWICE, and ENHYPEN in Toronto.
Kossy Ng hopes that the relaunch is even more inclusive to listeners around the world. “K-pop has exploded into an infectious global phenomenon and is taking over the ‘whole (온) world,” she says. “Every day in the K-pop dreamland, there are new songs, styles and trends, and the K-pop fandom is always-on. With K-Pop ON! (온), you’re not just turning on a playlist, you’re turning on the movement.”
More information can be found via Spotify’s For The Record blog post HERE.
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