Golden email: K-pop merch

When I was in Berlin last year I decided to check out all stores there that sell K-pop things. They got really great merch. In fact, everything is merch, even the albums!

I like the idea of getting a bag with some photos, some cookies and a book, to enjoy along listening to the CD. In K-pop the merch, the trailers, the marketing material and everything else around the music aren't just bi-products to the music, they're also real things. And they are treated like that, they're produced with the same care and quality as the "real" thing. Aespa even made a sitcom to promote their album (or was it the other way?).

SM Entertainment created K-pop out of nowhere in the 90s, and since then they have been great in their own corner, in their own way, in their own pace, without ever trying to be a part of "our" world. For such a long time that it starts to show in record stores. K-pop has their own shelf in (some) CD stores, and it's not just another shelf, it's like their own mini store. It's an alternative to your whole culture. Between 2005 and 2015 K-pop went from pretty uninteresting to really cool, and before that they had been doing their own thing for 10 years already. If you try to fit into the existing world and get quick attention you'll never create a new world.

I just bought a Girls' Generation merch package for 800SEK on impulse. I don't know what to do with all of it. I can't just turn my home into a Girls' Generation home?

/kbrecordzz, 2024-05-08