Why do you think 4th Gen Boy Groups don't get as much recognition as 4th Gen GG's?

Cuz their concept is the same as other BG from big companies.. No one is different

GG on the other hand BIG DIFFERENCE

It’s the same for GGs…do people know non big company GGs? In fourth gen there’s just Ive. Which yes great for them. But also it’s the norm across BG’s and ggs

I think the main thing here is there are fewer active BGs from the big4 than there are GGs

Quote from tesswiwiblink

Trends change ?

GG sell as much as BG now and they have better chances getting CFs and stuff ?

Or maybe BG are not doing well : no good music, no presence, no charisma, ... ?

Or maybe females who used to support BG switched to supporting women like them which is AMAZING ?

So many potential causes for the BG fame penury ....

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Yep!! Former BG stan here... the music has just not been hitting anymore... only TEMPEST I like from the BGs that debuted since ENHYPEN

Not unusual.. in the past decade only Bigbang, BTS and EXO had GP recognition from among the BGs. They are exceptions than the norm.

otherwise it is always the GGs and others, who had the general public recognition.

K-pop is getting more and more silo-ed into fandoms, with the advent of social media as the primary platform of promotion.

This happens more for BGs, than for GGs - I have not explored why, but the pattern is evident.

So you will find BGs being very profitable with plysical sales and concerts, yet have disproportionately less recognition i.e. the digital charts.

S.K, the GP seems to prefer soloists - male/female-any genre >> K-pop GGs >> K-pop BGs, in general.

It takes exceptional popularity to transcend that trend, which BB, BTS, EXO have done.

Data crunching Gaon/Circle since 2010, the result was "On an average GGs do better on the digital charts than BGs, but the top BGs beat the top GGs on the digital consumption of the songs"

So while even average GGs will have some degree of public recognition, only the top BGs will have that.. average BGs have almost no recognition.

In the 4th Gen, simply no BG has yet attained the status BB. EXO or BTS attained, therefore little public recognition.

However BGs have far longer a shelf life than compared to GGs, hopefully that makes up for it.

When it comes to boygroups companies don't focus on general public appeal because they already know gp only care BB and BTS, boygroups are made more for selling and touring, also more so as company's musical experimentation

while for ggs they focus on general public because it is more easily achievable

Quote from bbgc

Not unusual.. in the past decade only Bigbang, BTS and EXO had GP recognition from among the BGs. They are exceptions than the norm.

otherwise it is always the GGs and others, who had the general public recognition.

K-pop is getting more and more silo-ed into fandoms, with the advent of social media as the primary platform of promotion.

This happens more for BGs, than for GGs - I have not explored why, but the pattern is evident.

So you will find BGs being very profitable with plysical sales and concerts, yet have disproportionately less recognition i.e. the digital charts.

S.K, the GP seems to prefer soloists - male/female-any genre >> K-pop GGs >> K-pop BGs, in general.

It takes exceptional popularity to transcend that trend, which BB, BTS, EXO have done.

Data crunching Gaon/Circle since 2010, the result was "On an average GGs do better on the digital charts than BGs, but the top BGs beat the top GGs on the digital consumption of the songs"

So while even average GGs will have some degree of public recognition, only the top BGs will have that.. average BGs have almost no recognition.

In the 4th Gen, simply no BG has yet attained the status BB. EXO or BTS attained, therefore little public recognition.

However BGs have far longer a shelf life than compared to GGs, hopefully that makes up for it.

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You forgot Winner, they had gp more than fandom

Ikon too though they fell after B.I

Quote from jinaland

You forgot Winner, they had gp more than fandom

Ikon too though they fell after B.I

Too short a period to matter.. in the data crunch I mentioned, Wanna One also did well.. but again too short a period.

Quote from bbgc

Too short a period to matter.. in the data crunch I mentioned, Wanna One also did well.. but again too short a period.

Winner and Ikon had too few releases, because of constant hiatus, but I thought all their titles did pretty well (IKON pre B.I), esp if u consider that both groups had smaller to nonexistent fandom compared to other bgs, their whole career pretty much relied on gp, groups like EXO, Wannone etc had big fandoms which can still chart them decent no matter what happens

No 4th gen bg have that smash hit like Next Level, Love Dive or Tomboy. They all have very strong physical sales though

2018 was the last good year for boy groups, iKON's Return and Seventeen's You Make My Day are some of my favorite kpop albums, we also had Shine, Boss, Love Shot, Killing Me, Fake Love. After that it seems like everyone started releasing extremely similar music, Seventeen and girl groups are saving 2022 for me

Well it depends on what you’re looking at here.

GG have always higher visibility and interest from Korean GP, as well as higher charting.

Outside of that, I’d argue that the continued strength of the 3rd Gen bgs is really stunting interest in 4th Gen boy groups.

Groups like BTS, Seventeen and NCT are at the height of their power - they are all fully formed artists with years of performance experience under their belt. In contrast, many 4th Gen bg, while talented, don’t have their own sound or style or the fundamentals that make performances engaging nailed down yet.

I don’t even care for most of Seventeen or BTS’ music but I’m always curious to see what they put out and will often go to watch their performances on awards show because they’re great. In contrast, I’m not even aware half the time that some of the 4th Gen groups even had a cb.

I also think the industry has done a poor job of differentiating many of the 4th Gen groups from each other. It’s not the noise music people complain about, but rather a lack of identity. It often feels to me like there are a lot of NCT knock offs who have not tried to carve out their own take on noise music or groups that are just swinging for the fences at every style (fresh, pop punk, noise) without landing on a specific one.

In contrast, SM made very clear to distinguish EXO as a very different sound and vibe to Shinee and NCT as a very different sound and vibe to EXO. (As much as people complain they want stuff more like Shinee or EXO, I get why this was a deliberate choice in the tt.)

What is Treasure’s sound and style? I don’t know.

The Boyz? TXT? Cravity? I thought I had Enhypen nailed down but nope, they changed too. (I know fans of the group will tell me there’s a specific style, but I’m speaking as a non-fan. You can certainly change up your style but with the 3rd Gen groups, there’s still a clear through line that tells you this is an EXO or BTS or GOT7 or Monsta X song, even if the genre is slightly different.) And that’s not even counting the little groups like Cix, P1 Harmony and TO1.

To my ear, there’s also a kind of sameness in the vocals (a higher, often thin tenor) vs distinguishing vocals that stand out, but that’s just my thing. Some Kpop fans continue to say “having great/showstopper vocals doesn’t matter” and it feels like companies took that to heart. That creates a sameness in the music, which makes it often disinteresting to me. Even if I didn’t care for a Monsta X song, I loved those Kihyun flourishes.

Quote from the101

Well it depends on what you’re looking at here.

GG have always higher visibility and interest from Korean GP, as well as higher charting.

Outside of that, I’d argue that the continued strength of the 3rd Gen bgs is really stunting interest in 4th Gen boy groups.

Groups like BTS, Seventeen and NCT are at the height of their power - they are all fully formed artists with years of performance experience under their belt. In contrast, many 4th Gen bg, while talented, don’t have their own sound or style or the fundamentals that make performances engaging nailed down yet.

I don’t even care for most of Seventeen or BTS’ music but I’m always curious to see what they put out and will often go to watch their performances on awards show because they’re great. In contrast, I’m not even aware half the time that some of the 4th Gen groups even had a cb.

I also think the industry has done a poor job of differentiating many of the 4th Gen groups from each other. It’s not the noise music people complain about, but rather a lack of identity. It often feels to me like there are a lot of NCT knock offs who have not tried to carve out their own take on noise music or groups that are just swinging for the fences at every style (fresh, pop punk, noise) without landing on a specific one.

In contrast, SM made very clear to distinguish EXO as a very different sound and vibe to Shinee and NCT as a very different sound and vibe to EXO. (As much as people complain they want stuff more like Shinee or EXO, I get why this was a deliberate choice in the tt.)

What is Treasure’s sound and style? I don’t know.

The Boyz? TXT? Cravity? I thought I had Enhypen nailed down but nope, they changed too. (I know fans of the group will tell me there’s a specific style, but I’m speaking as a non-fan. You can certainly change up your style but with the 3rd Gen groups, there’s still a clear through line that tells you this is an EXO or BTS or GOT7 or Monsta X song, even if the genre is slightly different.) And that’s not even counting the little groups like Cix, P1 Harmony and TO1.

To my ear, there’s also a kind of sameness in the vocals (a higher, often thin tenor) vs distinguishing vocals that stand out, but that’s just my thing. Some Kpop fans continue to say “having great/showstopper vocals doesn’t matter” and it feels like companies took that to heart. That creates a sameness in the music, which makes it often disinteresting to me. Even if I didn’t care for a Monsta X song, I loved those Kihyun flourishes.

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music and concept has to do with company's choice and how much creative input they put in their groups

small or nugu companies can have aspiration but they are usually limited by resources and they can't afford to hire good in house producers. Even if the group comes up with distinctive sound no one knows them (literally no one knows E'Last for example, but they prolly have the most distinct sound right now in 4th gen or even in kpop). Why try to be different and have distinct sound when it brings no attention? Just hop on the trend and gain more with less effort? most companies think this way.

We only could expect big or mid sized companies to come up with something different, cause they have the resources, they can take the risk. But they are not doing it, lets look at YG, nah they don't put effort in their groups, its usually their idols themselves that write and compose their stuff, but they are not giving Treasure full control tho, when their best performing song was one that composed by the member, lets look at JYP, compared to YG they at leats try to do sth but they even failing their ggs actually glad SKZ writes their own music, SM doesnt have 4th gen bg so i skip, lets look at HYBE, it seems like they are going for emo rock music for TXT, idk enhypen, look at starship, whats going on with cravity, i dont see any single company really focusing on musical evolution and development of their boygroups, honestly all of them seem like pretty much hyper focused on their girlrgroups, maybe they completely shifted to that because now the battlefield is for girlgroups.

Quote from jinaland

music and concept has to do with company's choice and how much creative input they put in their groups

small or nugu companies can have aspiration but they are usually limited by resources and they can't afford to hire good in house producers. Even if the group comes up with distinctive sound no one knows them (literally no one knows E'Last for example, but they prolly have the most distinct sound right now in 4th gen or even in kpop). Why try to be different and have distinct sound when it brings no attention? Just hop on the trend and gain more with less effort? most companies think this way.

We only could expect big or mid sized companies to come up with something different, cause they have the resources, they can take the risk. But they are not doing it, lets look at YG, nah they don't put effort in their groups, its usually their idols themselves that write and compose their stuff, but they are not giving Treasure full control tho, when their best performing song was one that composed by the member, lets look at JYP, compared to YG they at leats try to do sth but they even failing their ggs actually glad SKZ writes their own music, SM doesnt have 4th gen bg so i skip, lets look at HYBE, it seems like they are going for emo rock music for TXT, idk enhypen, look at starship, whats going on with cravity, i dont see any single company really focusing on musical evolution and development of their boygroups, honestly all of them seem like pretty much hyper focused on their girlrgroups, maybe they completely shifted to that because now the battlefield is for girlgroups.

Great points here about the risk/benefit and $$ to fund.

I wanted to add I’m not including SKZ in my discussion around 4th Gen groups because I think they have a clear style and sound. Whether or not you like it, it’s clearly differentiated from other groups.