The most foolish move of the history of Pop (not KPop) occurred on
When BTS returned to K-O-R-E-A after the Sofi concert which was the talk of the entire world.
The sofi concert made the Melon Awards in K-O-R-E-A a sideshow. BTS did not attend, and IU and a bunch of minor leaguers , plus txt and enhypen, showed up there.
(Melon is making itself a minor award. Last yeat it showered Lim Youngwoong a bunch of Grand Prizes, if it wants to reinvent itself as the Melon Trot Awards, now Lee Jieun won't probably attend it again, let it do it and the KPop singers just shun it.)
And , for the umpteenth time, I say that BTS did nothing for the next two months, while IU showed up in the Golden Disk Award and took the top position in K-O-R-E-A, a move which would have a probably fatal consequence to BTS eventually.
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With the end of IU as a domineering force in K-O-R-E-A, for the first time since 2010 KPop acts can now operate without a chance of being stabbed in the back.
One good thing Trot did to KPop is it ended any chance of older K-O-R-E-A-N balladist throwing tantrums.
Im Changjung's tantrum in 2016 seriously hurt Twice. But after the trot boom he is no longer relevant, and his girl group is going nowhere. Ditto to Yoon jongshin and others.
Trot basically made sure anything domestic in K-O-R-E-A would stay in a league of its own and not affecting KPop a bit.
At this point I think KPop acts should increasingly abandon K-O-R-E-A and concentrate on foreign activities.
The end of the relevance of the Melon Chart and the ascension of the Spotify as the primary measure was revolutionary - it made , well, basically everything Kpop acts does in K-O-R-E-A irrelevant.
IU did contribute somewhat to KPop by providing benchmarks for what an act can do when it concentrates only in K-O-R-E-A; she never brought more than $25 million per year. Her figures can't be faked since she is the only singer in her company (Woodz has done nothing since he joined Edam and won't affect the 2022 income from there).
That can't sustain a KPop company.
I think that after the first one or two years or so, when an act gets established in K-O-R-E-A so it can get foreign attention, KPop acts should spend as little time in K-O-R-E-A as possible. Maybe one promo in there per year, and just rake money from outside of the ungrateful, KPop-unfriendly, trot-following country.
The revenues are minuscule from Korea, and while it is good to film contents there, after an act gets established it doesn't have to stick there.
The current trends show that it is NOT necessary to be subject to large stations in K-O-R-E-A, which work according to their own whim and are increasingly being ignored, and the K-O-R-E-A-N fans can easily be ignored in the grand scheme of things as seen by acts who have bigger concerts outside of K-O-R-E-A than inside of that.
I can't emphasize enough about how big the impact of the removal of IU from Korean Pop to the KPop acts. Quite belated, but finally it has become safe for the KPop acts to ignore the unprofitable country of K-O-R-E-A to base their operations. Let the trends continue and let the ungrateful fans of K-O-R-E-A live with trot 24/7.
