K-Pop has established itself internationally: The girl band Blackpink is the headliner of the legendary Coachella festival. Away from the stage, the singers present themselves as fashion icons.
Headliner: Blackpink at the first of two Coachella appearances
Some pop culture phenomena are only granted a short half-life. After the hype surrounding a few stars, things soon settled down. The question of whether K-Pop would end up in this category can now be answered with no – if you take the girl band Blackpink as a benchmark.
Since forming in 2016, the South Korean quartet has smashed numerous chart and streaming records. And after becoming the first female K-pop act to perform at Coachella in 2019, the group is headlining the spectacle in the California desert this year.
Criticism for asynchronous choreography
Founded in 1999, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival is one of the largest festivals in the world and takes place over two consecutive weekends: the three-day program of the first weekend is repeated on the following. The headliner of a festival is the act to which everyone flocks on the main stage on Saturday night – a performance that no one in the audience misses.
Blackpink's first steps on the American market were bumpy, for appearances on US TV shows shortly before the first Coachella concert in 2019, the band received criticism because the choreography was not in sync and the singers seemed a bit listless. What would have been a reliable career killer a few years earlier is hardly a side note today: Appearances in “old” media such as television no longer determine the success of a band that reaches more people via other and direct distribution and communication channels achieved than any TV show.
370 million followers: Lisa, Jisoo, Jennie and Rosé
p>
Billions of views on YouTube
In the same year, “Ddu-Du Ddu-Du” became the first song by a female K-pop band to reach more than a billion clicks on YouTube. Today, the Blackpink channel on the video platform has more subscribers than that of Justin Bieber. To find that impressive, not only should you know that Bieber is quite popular, but also that he's followed by over 71 million people there. Almost 87 million subscribed to the Blackpink channel. The video for “Ddu-Du Ddu-Du” now has two billion views, the one for the single “Kill This Love” 1.7 billion – even though the group sings mostly in Korean.
Behind Blackpink – as well as behind the boy band BTS – is the South Korean entertainment group YG Entertainment. YG designs careers on the drawing board, casts talents, sometimes has them train extremely hard for years, screens no less uncompromisingly and puts the bands together. All steps are strategically planned down to the last detail, even the private life of the idols.
No saturation
In this long-term career planning, it has proven useful to resist the temptation to exploit successes in the short term and release albums in quick succession. The fans should not be oversaturated. An album released only in Japan in 2018 was followed by the international debut “The Album” in 2020 – four years after the band was founded. Last year “Born Pink” was released, the second album for an international audience.
When the release of “The Album” was delayed in 2020, fans protested against the record company using the hashtag #NO_More_Lies_YG. As risky as the artificial shortage can be because the fans could turn their backs: The uninterrupted demand confirms the strategy. Singles with stars like Lady Gaga or Selena Gomez also contribute to the success.
A fashion icon on the side: Jisoo at the Paris Fashion Week in February
Blackpink have not disappeared from the public eye during their musical creative breaks anyway. Jennie, Lisa, Jisoo and Rosé are considered fashion icons, sit in the front row at Fashion Week, act as ambassadors for luxury brands such as Chanel and Prada.
Of course, they keep their fans up to date on their social media channels. The four singers each have their own Instagram accounts – including the official Blackpink account, they have almost 370 million followers there. In order to optimize fan loyalty, the following have even been given their own “band name”. Blackpink fans are called “Blink” – made up of the first and last letters of the band name.
Blackpink have established themselves, initially unfocused appearances in the US Despite television, it is now also on the most competitive music market: Although it was only released in September 2022, the album “Born Pink”, which was only 25 minutes long, ended up at number 51 in the annual charts of the US magazine “Billboard”.