People says Big3 privileges are big in Korea, but it's actually big outside Korea

  • back in my first days as kpop fan in 2016


    I knew every group from SM, YG or JYP

    And most of times never heard of any popular group in Korea outside Big3, such as Girls Day, Apink, Infinite, Beast, T-ARA...


    Only learned about them after dig into kpop


    I guess that's because companies only focused their promotions on east asia, hence for SEA fans and western fans kpop was essentially what other kpop fans translate to us lol


    In this sense, Big3 groups used to steal most of attention of iFans while big groups in Korea sometimes were kept unnocited outside Korea even for markets very close to Korea such as China or Japan.


    In Korea kpop is (or was) mainstream enough to any group have TV, Awards, Festival or Radio appearances, hence they could be promoted even if not in the same therms as Big3 groups. Meanwhile outside Korea it was kinda like... they just never existed


    Just a random thought


    What you think

  • I think the privileges are big in both places but outside SK the gap is even higher as only big3 had the power to promote their artists.

    This, power and money in promoting helps alot. This is why sometimes we don't even know local brands at supermarket because big and powerful overseas company advertise their product on our TV and youtube ads non stop.

  • well its a repetitive cycle isn't it?


    If you have money then you can promote and advertise which brings in new fans/customers which then become interested in your groups thus bringing you more money...


    If you are from a small company and don't have such resources then you can't promote properly nor advertise as much thus unless you hit it with a viral song or dance etc then you remain nugu and its hard to get your brand out there.

  • Now Big3 also has the advantage of more connections in the west with western labels.


    When western labels started to sign kpop groups after BTS's success, they specifically started cooperating with big3, I remember western execs even explicitly saying they wanted to collab with the bigger companies.


    Smaller companies dont have the connections and they also dont have the money to throw at western promo.



    Big3 stans also distrort kpop history for western fans. They exaggerate the impact of big3 groups. For example somehow SNSD Japanese impact is much more known than KARA, because of SM stans.

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