Bigbang, the first Korean act to land on our Celeb 100, pulled in $44 million this year, offering a window into the campy K-Pop genre—and a blueprint for making money on music anywhere in the world
As record executive Joojong Joe weaved through the packed crowd at the 19,000-capacity Honda Center in Anaheim, California, there to see Korean boy band Bigbang, he spotted a young Russian woman crying. She couldn’t explain why. Confident that she wasn’t in any actual distress, he moved on.
“It’s like the Backstreet Boys back in the day,” Joe says with a shrug. “A lot of people cry.” Even, it turns out, a Russian obsessed with five androgynous Korean boys. Such is the reach of the hottest global pop genre, the campy Korean variant known as K-Pop.
The top act in its niche, Bigbang took home $44 million in pretax earnings over the past year, easily more than the $33.5 million collected by today’s highest-paid American all-male arena pop group, Maroon 5. Bigbang landed the No 54 spot on our Celebrity 100 list, even topping such artist-entrepreneurs as Dr Dre (No 63, $41 million) and Jimmy Buffett (No 66, $40.5 million), though that’s more attributable to the popularity of the group’s music than the depth of its members’ business savvy.
“We made more than Maroon 5?” says front man Kwon “G-Dragon” Jiyong, 27, through a translator. “Did not know that. My mom is in charge of my earnings.” Fortunately the group’s finances are being guided by much more than a mommy manager. The real force behind Bigbang is former K-Pop idol Yang “YG” Hyun Suk and his namesake company—a $630 million publicly traded record label, talent agency and concert promoter with fingers in pies from fashion to marketing to film. The company and its founder are responsible for creating not only Bigbang but also, to a great extent, the modern K-Pop movement, which is in the midst of a transformation from regional staple to international craze.
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