I just wanted to post how I felt and see how others feel or if people have felt the same:
The way I dropped so much kpop the moment I taught myself that I am not financially responsible for an artists’ success nor their salaries. For years and years (especially between 2018 and 2024) I felt like I had to get all the albums, go to all concerts because if I don’t give my favs my money, then they might disband! And while I always know this is what kpop companies want fans to feel, because it drives hella sales, gives all the promotional labour to the fans instead of the companies and employees having to put in the effort and pay for it all themselves, it still took me a long time to unlearn this behaviour.
This change of mind only came about when a group, who I had been a fan of since 2009 and was my ult group, got disbanded by their company last year, a year shy of their 20th anniversary, for absolutely no reason. It was quickly revealed that it not the members choice at all and it really broke me, but it quickly pushed me into the mindset of “well if a company is not going to give a shit about their employees/artists and drop them like that after almost two decades of bringing in money for them, then what is the actual point of me putting in time, effort and money in? It literally could just all disappear tomorrow with another group, just like this one”.
Now that I am finally at the mindset of “it is completely on the company and the employees as to whether an artist is successful. They’re the ones who are supposed to be promoting their own artists and products. They are the ones responsible for promoting them, they are the ones responsible for making sure albums sell out, making sure tours are promoted, making sure their artists are being shown and exposed to audiences on a variety of tv shows, radio shows, and youtube content. Not me. It is NOT my job to promote my favs nor my responsibility to pay my fav groups’ salaries.”, I’ve dropped over half my fanclubs, I reduced my album and concert spending by 80%, and I don’t obsess over streams and sales numbers at all – I couldn’t even tell you if they’re good or bad right now for my favs and their most recent comebacks.
That’s actually all the company’s job and if a company cannot be bothered to protect their own artists over the silliest shit (dropping a member over a dating scandal for example), if a company is making selfish, stupid decisions rather than make the obvious better financial decision (e.g. yuehua), if a company can’t make good career decisions, nor remain financially stable to be able to pay their artists a salary then that’s 10000% on them. Why should I continue supporting such an artist when their own company can’t?
I’ve gone from 30-40 artists I would religiously keep up with, with at least 10 of them being groups I personally felt responsible for (for their success and salaries), to just 2 groups I enjoy that, I feel, haven’t been fucked by their companies (yet).
It was hard to get to this point, but I am enjoying myself a lot more (just me and my fav music vibing) and feeling free without the feeling of responsibility and dealing with crappy company decisions crushing me every day.
And that’s the chunker done, so as stated above as well; I just wanted to see how others feel or if people have/had felt the same.
submitted by /u/aikokanzaki
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