BLACKPINK "600 Million Views in Seven Months"? Signs of Being the Next Global K-pop Phenomenon

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Photo from Yonhap News, BLACKPINK's World Tour "IN YOUR AREA" Bangkok Impact Arena

"The next global K-pop group will be born among the girl idol groups." This is what Korean music critics have concluded in unison after analyzing the prospects of K-pop at the lat year. Though the number of boy groups such as SEVENTEEN, MONSTA X, and GOT7 continue to increase, due to a growing market in the music industry for something new and out of the norm, it is the girl groups that are receiving greater levels of attention. Only fifteen days into the year and this claim is already demonstrating its credibility.

Girl groups are on the rise

Photo from Yonhap News, BLACKPINK's World Tour "IN YOUR AREA" Bangkok Impact Arena

BLACKPINK continued to reset new records with the beginning of the new year. Their M/V for Ddu-Du-Ddu-Du reached an astonishing number of 600 million views in the course of seven months since its uploading. The speed at which BLACKPINK achieved these results speaks greater potential in the upcoming year.

Not only has BLACKPINK's YouTube channel reached a number of 17 million subscribers, BLACKPINK members' Instagram has also all reached over 10 million followers. BLACKPINK's Lisa has the largest number of followers among Korean female celebrities, reaching a total of 13.23 million followers.

Photo from Yonhap News, BLACKPINK's World Tour "IN YOUR AREA" Bangkok Impact Arena

Another noteworthy feature that likely contributed greatly to the number of views is the growing amount of K-pop cover videos. The culture of K-pop cover dancing has grown drastically with a number of dance teams, especially in countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia with dance teams, especially female dance teams, created specifically for doing K-pop cover dances. Since in order to learn the dance it is necessary to keep replaying the videos over and over again, it is assumed that these teams played a big role in BLACKPINK's remarkable view rating.

George Mason University professor Lee Kyutak exclaimed "K-pop is more than just the music. It is also the music videos, the cover dances, the reaction the videos, and also the fashion, which takes up a big part of the K-pop culture as well." Last year as BLACKPINK announced a collaboration with Interscope Records, a label under the affiliation of Universal Muisc Group, BLACKPINK commenced plans for their World Tour, starting with Asia then moving on to North America, Australia, and Europe. In April of this year, BLACKPINK will be the first idol group performing in Coachella, one of the largest music festivals in the United States. With BLACKPINK it's not a question of how much farther can they go, but how fast they will get there.