The KATSERALLIT colab just dropped, and it got me thinking about what’s going on at HYBE lately and where the K-pop industry is headed as a whole.
Now, before anybody calls me a “hater”, I’m not. I love all the members of the 3 groups and would never spread hate to anyone. This is mostly a critique of HYBE. Also, this post is obviously just my outside perspective as a fan. I have no idea how decisions are actually being made inside of HYBE.
The way I see it, HYBE knows that the best way for a song to get attention globally is to create online discourse around it, and the best way to create discourse is for the song to be polarizing.
Therefore, HYBE promotes songs that they know a good portion of the fanbase isn’t going to like because it creates discourse, which creates more posts, which ultimately creates more attention for their groups. HYBE tested it out with Spaghetti and Gnarly, and it worked. Now they are following the same playbook by promoting It’s Me, Pinky Up, Boompala, Celebration…
And if you reply with “what are u talking about <insert song> is sooo good!!” you’re missing the point of this post.
HYBE has no interest in promoting songs they think all their fans will like because it doesn’t generate as much attention as a song that half the fanbase likes and half hates.
Now, this new collaboration feels like HYBE openly admitting that this has been the strategy and taking a victory lap, stating that the “haters” and the algorithm have made their groups “iconic by mistake”. The only part that’s a lie is that it happened by mistake. This is exactly what they planned, and the plan worked.
At an even higher level, you can’t even blame HYBE for this. HYBE is a publicly traded company and has a fiduciary duty to increase profits. So if this kind of music/concept is generating the most attention, then they have to keep producing it.
What do y’all think?
submitted by /u/No-Cheesecake-1633
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