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Playlists for Life: Keeping it K-popWhen I was in undergrad, I ran a college radio show called Keep it K-pop. It had, on its best days, a maximum of 6 listeners, but I didn’t care—I was technically sharing K-pop with the entire city of Boston! In that dank, cramped studio, covered with indie band stickers and faded underground show posters, I felt like an enlightenment coach, a curioso tastemaker unveiling the curtain on a world of sparkling melodies, earwormy hooks, and precise choreography. Who else but me was playing BTS on the radio in the mid-to-late 2010s?
It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that K-pop propelled me to study music in college. From the time I discovered the pastel, dreamy soundscape that was Girls' Generation's “Gee” in middle school, I loved K-pop. I lived K-pop—my life quickly became swirled up in watching glossy music videos, ripping poor quality mp3 files of EPs and albums from YouTube (this was before DSPs had the dedicated K-pop hubs they have now), and dancing sloppy versions of intricate choreography in front of my bathroom mirror. I bought CDs direct from South Korea (along with Korean makeup and skincare brands advertised by my favorite idols), taped up posters across my bedroom walls, and even started learning Korean so I could better understand the lives of the singers I was listening to.
What was it about this genre that captivated me so, despite having no personal connection to its country of origin? As K-pop has spread past its borders, many newcomers to its rise like to comment on the “idolatry” of it, the girls and boys with perfect faces and perfect bodies, who dance in perfect synchronization after years of training to attain that perfection—”factory” dolls, as I’ve seen them called. I understand these perspectives, to a point. Part of what I loved about K-pop was the package it came in: with each single, I could expect a glossy music video, multiple live performances a week, appearances on Korean variety shows—there was a structure to every album that was easy to follow. And there’s no doubt that what initially drew me to my favorite K-pop idols was their beauty—I was a 14-year-old girl, so duh.
As I near 30, I definitely do not have the same fangirl fervor for many of K-pop’s newest cohort of idols; I would not be able to tell you the names of all of NCT’s 26 members with the same fervor of someone half my age. But that doesn’t matter—as the genre has gone from my humble college radio station to mainstream recognition on Top 40 airplay charts, it’s the music that has kept me a fan all this time. From 2NE1’s ferocious electro-hip-hop hits to the genuinely odd faux-retro melodies in groups like T-ara and Secret, K-pop’s biggest strength is its malleability in familiarity. I love that no matter if I’m listening to WJSN’s dramatic orchestral sweeps or EXID’s sassy funk-pop, I can almost always expect a rap break and a chorus I won’t be able to shake off for years.
I think the ultimate reason why K-pop entered my life, and never left it, is because it put to sound the way I feel when I listen to any music. My favorite songs—not just K-pop—don’t just enter my ears, but leap into my heart. Something inside me soars, and I can imagine a new world of sound, beckoning me in. The songs I’ve collected here have opened numerous creative pathways for me—I hope, as you Keep it K-pop, you might make your own discoveries.
The Data Forensics of a Viral TrendIn the ever-fluctuating attention economy—full of new and competing DSPs, rising and dying social media apps, and a proliferation of short-form videos—an interesting phenomenon has been occurring. It seems like every week, a crop of Gen-Z content creators are unearthing ‘80s indie darlings, ‘00s R&B, and shoegazey rock b-sides, causing these catalog finds to explode in interest among young, internet-savvy consumers. It's a kind of music discovery process that would be viewed as typical if it didn’t lead to such calculable mainstream success.
Of course, not every artist’s back catalog is destined for a wider audience, and these trending tracks often disappear back into the past as quickly as they emerged into the present. But there are ways to predict what songs will flourish. Programmatic data combined with the contextual expertise of music journalists—aka music intelligence—can provide plenty of answers when you're seeking to pinpoint the songs striking that nostalgic sweet spot that will grab potential listeners for a project, or to surface an artist whose older music warrants a second go.
A quantitative analysis is usually a good starting point when looking for a potential sleeper hit, but while it may help guide some initial hunches, it shouldn’t always be taken at face value. Human intuition is the best complement to clear, stratified data.
Using TBC’s proprietary data tool, we've pulled two examples of some notable catalog tracks—i.e., any song that is over five years old—to highlight. These numbers represent what our analysts have determined to be the most important data points when seeking to identify a breaking track, such as the numbers of TikTok videos and Spotify editorial playlists. Since many catalog tracks have gotten a foothold in TikTok videos in the past, we can start by looking there. The reigning track in this category looks to be Justine Skye’s “Collide (feat. Tyga),” which was a minor hit in 2014 but gained a new life on TikTok in late 2022, and was certified gold by the RIAA in March 2023. With almost 10M videos of the track on TikTok compared to the 2M videos of 2015's “Makeba,” it at first appears that this is the song worth paying attention to.
But a few other data points tell a slightly different story. French pop singer Jain’s “Makeba” has a much higher TikTok video count from the past 30 days: 1.8M compared to the 400K of “Collide.” Some notable editorial playlists have also featured "Makeba"—Spotify’s Viral 50 USA and Viral 50 Global—and it has been featured on 59 playlists overall. This is the sign of a viral catalog track that is currently trending, and as such, it’s wise to try to capitalize on it as soon as possible.
Identifying a catalog track that is spiking in popularity is step one. Step two is making sure it’ll be viable to use for the audience in question. A wider consumer base will likely include listeners who may not be as internet-cultured as the song’s earliest adopters. Here’s where the journalistic sensibilities in a music intelligence approach come most in handy: Doing some research on “Makeba” can provide a better picture of its current popularity, and if it has the potential to sustain that attention.
The 2015 French song, named after South African civil rights activist Miriam Makeba, had a few previous waves of fame before its most recent TikTok comeback. In 2017, “Makeba” peaked at No. 8 on the French Singles Chart, and its music video was nominated for a Grammy award. Then, in 2018, the song featured in a Clio-award-winning Levi’s commercial, reaching the top of Billboard’s TV Commercials chart in February of that year. The track clearly has a way of striking a chord with audiences (and, interestingly, was actually used in some of TikTok’s earliest months, stretching all the way back to 2017!).
Digging into the current popularity of “Makeba” produces some interesting insights as well. While the song began trending on TikTok around May with a viral dance trend, Jain can thank the song’s explosive growth to a June TikTok post that showed Bill Hader dancing to the song in a cut-for-time SNL sketch. Hader’s popularity exists well outside this TikTok trend, of course: In addition to his eight seasons on SNL, the comedian starred in the four seasons of the critically acclaimed HBO comedy Barry; its last season hit a ratings high and ended in May 2023. His goofy moves also had a life of their own; a now-defunct Twitter account from 2019 would post videos of Hader dancing to various popular songs on the platform.
All of these underlying threads—data, history, and context—manage to converge on one viral catalog hit, and prove that a track might be worth more than just its nostalgic factor. For purposes of marketing, it's worthwhile to examine how the track is currently being received versus earlier in its lifespan. Since it was named after an activist, “Makeba” had an original spirit that was about embracing diversity and communal gatherings—Levi’s 2018 commercial followed that idea, showing people around the world dancing to the song together. But in 2023, the song has spread through TikTok with its original context stripped to be a simple dance trend, or as the soundtrack to a relatable thought.
This is another reminder that viral moments shouldn’t be analyzed in a bubble, but as a reflection of a passage in time; trends ebb and flow, and popularity isn’t always one straight rise to the top. But a confluence of data and key intellectual insights can help map out the moments leading up to the moment, and what's likely to happen next.
TBC covered more data specifics of “Makeba” in an installment of Sound Signal, our biweekly newsletter that highlights music’s hottest emerging artists and tracks. You can read more in our roundup on Chartmetric, and subscribe to Sound Signal so you never miss another viral trend.
How to Identify the Next Big ArtistEvery day, programmers at major streaming services, marketing professionals looking for artist alignment, and A&R leads trying to sign the next big star are confronted with hundreds of thousands of artists trying to grab their attention. Most likely, they already have a couple of techniques and tools for weeding out the duds, but each source can be its own beast, with overwhelming amounts of data to sort through and little framework for contextualizing it. And of course, the music industry is changing so rapidly that an artist can easily lose momentum as quickly as they gained it. Buzz is ephemeral, and while instincts are important, they can't fill in every blank.
That’s where music intelligence comes in. It's an approach that leverages an analytics system that pinpoints the most important morsels of data, and pairs them with human insights from writers and journalists who have wide-ranging expertise in specialized genres, scenes, and territories. With a combination of quantitative data and qualitative knowledge, it’s possible to identify artists who are only just breaking out.
A glance at one of Third Bridge Creative's intelligence tools reveals a wealth of information to make informed decisions about artists who warrant attention. The bar graph at the top presents a first snapshot. The bars themselves share the numbers of artists who are enjoying some level of growth and sorts them by career stage (undiscovered, mid-level, or developing); clicking a colored section of any of the bars filters the results below to display only those who meet that qualification. This classification system—devised by TBC's collaborators at Chartmetric—captures how quickly an artist is reaching broader recognition. In addition, TBC's algorithmically driven Artist Score aggregates various metrics and reflects the overall relevancy of an artist for any particular project, tightening the focus on the artists that matter most.
The playlisting, short-form video, and charting scores help explain why a given artist is gaining momentum. The playlisting score looks at numerous trendsetter and emerging artists playlists, capturing those who make noteworthy appearances. The short-form video score indicates an artist’s prominence on TikTok or YouTube Shorts, while the charting score reflects their presence in trending charts on major DSPs.
The list of artists now consists only of potential trendsetters who are undiscovered or developing and have some form of trending growth. Adding the TBC Score makes it clear that these artists deserve attention. With the data sorted, it’s time to look a little closer.
This type of tooling and data-sorting is invaluable for programmers and curators, and can help them quickly focus on a small pool of viable candidates for their campaigns, playlists, or stations. But it still requires the intuition and research of a trained analyst to understand how to interpret the information and make key decisions.
In a recent example, the artist known as Maeta had a high TBC Artist Score and a decent Cross Platform Performance (CPP) Velocity of around 50%. The sultry R&B singer has worked with stars like SZA, Ty Dolla $ign, and Kehlani, and she had put out a new album not long before, which might explain her high ranking. She had also appeared on a recent New Music Friday update on Spotify, as well as on 23 other editorial playlists. But despite what appeared to be a consistent DSP push, Maeta had a low count of TikTok Track Posts and didn't appear to be making a big splash on the platform. While her music is smooth and has a tight mainstream sound, it seemed wise to wait a few more weeks after the new-release buzz to see where she stands on this list.
Elsewhere in the data there appeared a few names familiar from TBC’s own Sound Signal newsletter: That Mexican OT and 6arelyhuman. Existing in niche subgenres of Texas trap music and '00s nostalgic hyperpop, respectively, these two trending artists were flagged by experts with knowledge in the scenes where they were gaining traction. TBC had been following That Mexican OT since last year—at the time, he only had modest hits on Spotify, but he was clearly unique, with his Spanish-language bars drawing more from U.S. classic rap than reggaetón. That alchemy paid off: The runaway hit “Johnny Dang” brought him up to a TBC Artist Score of 79 in spring 2023, and he also saw a huge increase in TikTok and Instagram followers. Likewise, the gloomy club music of 6arelyhuman, who was highlighted in a Sound Signal post in early May, has continued to resonate with listeners, with a TBC Artist Score of 75, explosive growth, and more than 100,000 TikTok Track Posts.
The process of identifying emerging artists will never be simple, given the multitude of evolving factors in artist popularity and listener attention span. No single artist is going to have the highest streaming numbers, social stats, and viral short-form video posts all at the same time. But with a combination of clear, stratified data and informed, focused human skill sets, it's entirely possible to pinpoint an artist with a real spark, who has the potential to succeed in whatever niche genre they belong to.
Five Unconventional Approaches to Digital MusicIt's news to no one that streaming has radically changed the face of music in terms of both consumption and business models. In 2022, for the seventh year in a row, recorded music revenues grew to (ahem) record heights thanks to the wide adoption of streaming by companies, artists, and fans; streaming accounted for 84% of the industry’s $15.9 billion in recorded music revenue, according to a year-end report by RIAA. But many musicians and industry vets yearn to see the industry grow in more ways than just financially
Thankfully, there’s still plenty of room for experimentation, and has been demonstrated in this industry time and time again, sometimes the biggest ideas come from the bottom up. Here, we take a look at a new crop of digital-music providers who are stretching the idea of what a service can look like.
Resonate is a music-streaming platform that operates a little like your local farmers’ co-op. Listening fees are structured on a system called "Stream2own": The cost of one stream for a song starts around $0.25, and the price per listen doubles with each successive play. If you listen to the same song nine times, the track is free forever (ie, you "own" it). It’s a simple way to guarantee streaming revenues for every artist on the platform, and for listeners to have visibility into where their money is going—70% of revenues go directly to the artist. As a democratic, cooperative organization, Resonate is owned by a community of musicians, listeners, and developers who each provide their own contributions and have a say in key decisions made by the co-op.
Logging into Marine Snow’s interface can feel like entering an exclusive, high-end auction house, with an emphasis on undersung but innovative art. That’s how cofounder Tony Lashley (who has industry experience working at SoundCloud, Spotify, and Frank Ocean’s Blonded) sees the experimental streaming service, which pays artists an upfront sum that he claims is equivalent to 500,000 US streams. In exchange, the artists grant Marine Snow exclusive rights to host their music for 90 days. Listening is free (for now), and the mobile app pushes a music-discovery experience, offering daily digital capsules that open with random songs and chances to earn "shards," which build more song capsules based on interacting with the app.
Catalog doesn’t offer exclusive streams of music. Instead, it sells non-fungible tokens (NFTs) of lots of unique, one-of-one digital records. Selling music on the blockchain creates a transparent path that will always lead directly to the original digital recording, regardless of how many buyers exchange it with or how many copies and remixes of the work are made. Artists own 100% of the first NFT sale of their work, and can determine the percentage they collect from secondary sales. And since the music copyright itself is still owned by the artist, they can determine if NFT buyers get perks or rewards for choosing to be a part of their musical journey—like when indie-pop artist VÉRITÉ offered behind-the-scenes access to the making of her latest album while it was still in progress last year.
Sound is also a service that operates in the music NFT space, placing an emphasis on community engagement and fan/artist relationships. Artists drop songs via listening parties, which go live on the site a few times a day. While the song is playing through its first public stream, listeners have the option to mint a limited amount of exclusive NFTs of the song and leave a comment on a timestamp as a way to make their early support of the artist known. By creating scarcity in the amount of NFTs available for each track, Sound encourages listeners to back rising artists at early career stages, and build their own collection of unique NFTs. Artists also keep 95% of revenue made from their primary NFT sale and can offer perks for token holders, giving them autonomy on how they want fans to interact with their music.
At Royal, streaming music comes with an extra perk. This Web3 investment company cofounded and led by DJ and producer 3LAU highlights the ever-evolving relationship between artists and fans by allowing them to have a shared stake in streaming music. Royal allows users to to buy percentages of song or album royalties, giving artists revenue upfront and listeners the opportunity to invest in music they care about and want to succeed. Listeners buy percentages through tokens, which can be sold on secondary markets, and artists can choose what percentage of their rights to offer. While the company is just a few years old, it’s partnered with huge artists like Nas and Diplo and has paid out over $100,000 in royalties from artists to fans.
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