EXO will make five stops in North America by February, after local fans selected the key cities they want to see the act through K-pop concert kickstarter site, MyMusic Taste. (Photo : YouTube)
Have you heard of that really popular boy band called EXO-M?
If you're a Chinese female in her teens or early 20s that's tech savvy and urbanized, chances are the answer is an ear-splitting, "Yes!"
K-pop boy band EXO-M is the leading edge of a new Korean popular music or K-pop wave that is again surging through China leaving thousands of young women screaming in its wake. The secret to EXO-M's success?
It's a not so hip word called "localization."
China will definitely become the world's largest music market because of its 1.3 billion population and growing affluence. Breaking into this massively profitable market has been a stiff challenge for Korean musicians, however. That's because the Chinese government has tough restrictions on imports and the broadcasting of foreign cultural content.
South Korea's K-pop industry overcame these barriers by developing an innovative strategy called "localization."
This means training Chinese stars under the world-renowned K-pop training system and distributing Chinese-language songs throughout China using China's Internet and mobile platforms.
The poster boy for the success of localization is EXO, or more specifically, EXO-M, which has four Chinese boys out of the six in the band.
EXO has two six-boy teams: EXO-K performs in Korea while EXO-M sends the girls screaming in China. EXO-M's performances and albums are in Chinese.
EXO-M's four Chinese members are Lu Han, Tao, Lay, Kris. The Korean boys are Xiumin and Chen EXO-M recently topped the music chart on CCTV, China's state-run media outlet, for its hit ballad, "Overdose." Overdose is the title track of the band's latest mini-album released earlier this month.
But EXO-M isn't the first K-pop band to localize. That honor goes to the hugely popular band, Super Junior that recruited a Chinese member as part of its efforts to amass more Chinese fans.
Chinese entertainment industry experts said recruiting Chinese as K-pop band members makes Chinese fans see K-pop boy bands as local artists. Fans don't feel any cultural differences at all from the band members in terms of nationality and language.
Other K-pop bands have followed in EXO-M's and Super Junior's footsteps.
There's a new Chinese boy band, M4M, which hit the scene last year after four years of training in Seoul. The group consists of two boys from Hong Kong, one from Taiwan and another from mainland China.
Localization is good for South Korea's economy. Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said the country's exports of cultural content to China rose by 28 percent on average from 2010 to 2012. Exports of pop music products jumped more than 10 times, or from US$850,000 in 2006 to $8.86 million in 2012.
