Why wont American radio play more K-pop?
K-pop band BTSs hit Dynamite was one of the biggest songs of 2020. It broke one record after another, including becoming the first K-pop song to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Days after BTS performed the song at the Grammys this past March, it also became the first K-pop song in history to achieve a double-platinum ranking. Dynamite paved the way for another BTS hit: Butter, the breezy bop that just spent a record-setting six weeks straight at No. 1 following its debut. The songs chart ascendency may end only because of yet another BTS single, Permission to Dance, which debuted at midnight on July 9. These milestones have helped BTS make unprecedented inroads with US radio  but so far theyre the only K-pop group to truly break through. According to the analytics platform Soundcharts, which tracks radio play across 400 US stations daily and collects data from several on-demand streaming platforms, the majority of K-pop artists have received very little airplay on mainstream Top 40 stations over the last few years, despite their streaming dominance. The absence of most K-pop from US radio doesnt make sense. K-pop has enthusiastic fans all over the world, including within the US. After Dynamite debuted at No. 1 on the Hot 100  a chart whose rankings factor in data from numerous sources, including YouTube and other on-demand music-streaming platforms like Spotify  many of those fans hoped the songs success would make it easier for more K-pop groups to draw American attention. Soundcharts data suggests that isnt happening. Despite BTSs repeat success, few other K-pop bands have managed to achieve even a fraction of the bands radio play and chart rankings. In a quest to find out why so much fan energy and global interest hasnt crossed over to US airwaves, I talked to a number of experts, from radio station programmers to chart analysts, about what factors determine which songs get radio play and why. Predictably, theres no catch-all answer for what makes a surefire hit  especially since on-demand digital music platforms like Spotify are changing the music industry. Such platforms make it easier for listeners to self-curate and be algorithmically directed to music that fits their tastes; they also provide easy access to countless artists that listeners typically wouldnt hear on mainstream Top 40 radio. The result is something of a gap between the internets power to expand the musical landscape and increase our exposure to a broad variety of artists and a mainstream radio culture that has struggled to diversify and take risks. Yet even as artists have more ways to reach listeners than ever, radio play is still the most prominent metric for determining mainstream success, at least in the American recording industry. Radio play contributes to chart rankings, signals name recognition, and boosts an artists overall profitability. No wonder achieving No. 1 on the Hot 100 remained BTSs primary goal for years  until, after steadily working to break into the US market, the band finally achieved that goal four times in a row, with its most recent four singles. The BTS effect  or lack thereof  Many people view BTSs stratospheric success since the bands 2013 debut as a barometer of changing music industry culture  a sign of globalization and the decreasing importance of traditional radio in an increasingly virtual world. Before Dynamite, however, it was incredibly difficult for BTS to attain US airplay, despite being both the biggest name in K-pop and the most successful band in the world. The bands first big 2020 single, On, managed to debut at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 2020  a then-unprecedented feat, particularly because it happened almost entirely without support from US radio stations. The songs chart ranking was driven entirely through digital sales and streams; it received very little radio play. Many media outlets (including Vox) have long criticized the American music industry for gatekeeping BTS prior to Dynamite, with many leveling charges of xenophobia at radio stations and industry executives. But once the band released a song in English, many stations abruptly embraced them. They followed the lead of BTSs American distributor, Columbia Records, which made a unique effort for Dynamite: The label commissioned a pair of songwriters to craft the song for the band, specifically requesting all-English lyrics  a feature that Columbia then heavily emphasized to radio stations. Via Soundcharts, heres a visualization of BTSs radio play across all of the bands songs for a 365-day period between March 2020 and March 2021. See if you can spot the moment Dynamite appeared. As the bands first all-English song, Dynamite is truly iconic: It even reached No. 5 on the US pop radio chart, which measures mainstream radio play. After the August release of the single, according to Soundcharts, BTS went from receiving a paltry handful of plays to more than 1,000 plays per day at the bands airplay peak in mid-November 2020  meaning BTS was played nearly as often as every other top-performing artist on the radio. All in all, BTS has received more than 160,000 plays in the 11 months since Dynamites release. Hard on the heels of Dynamite, BTS released two other fall chart-toppers in rapid succession. First, the band was featured on a remix of Jason Derulos Savage Love in October 2020. Then, in November, it dropped Life Goes On, the pandemic-themed single from the fall 2020 album Be. Both songs debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Its easy to assume these follow-up successes heralded a permanent change for the band, and K-pop at large, especially as Butter has since followed suit. Yet each of BTSs first two post-Dynamite singles was quick to fall off the charts. (Although Savage Love was a big hit for Derulo, Billboard noted that almost all of the songs overall airplay went to the version he did with Jawsh685 and not BTS.) Life Goes On, which has predominantly Korean lyrics, tumbled to No. 28 in its second week, and never managed to make it onto any US radio chart. According to Billboard, only one radio station in the country played Life Goes On enough that it reached double digits  Oklahoma Citys KJYO (KJ103), where it was heard a mere 13 times. So far, Butter  its six weeks atop the Hot 100 notwithstanding  has had mixed results on air. In a historic development, Butter was the first K-pop single to receive airplay at every reporting Top 40 radio station in the US in its first week. The songs reach could be a major, precedent-setting indicator of how fully BTS has penetrated US radio. However, after scoring a whopping 2,000 radio plays within a day of its release and getting significantly more daily airplay than Dynamite initially did, the song has yet to crack the airplay top 10; as of July 10, Butters current position is No. 11. Whats more, while Butter has increased the number of radio stations that are playing BTS, the songs total airplay lags behind most of the other hits with which it shares the charts. For example, over one recent chart week, Butter had just 28 million total audience impressions (the number of people listening when a song is played on the radio), compared to 57 million audience impressions achieved by the song in the No. 2 position, Olivia Rodrigos Good 4 U.  K-pop radio play in the US is nearly nonexistent  While Dynamite definitely opened some doors to US radio, it didnt open any floodgates  not even for BTS itself. Rather than receiving an auxiliary bump in airplay from BTSs success, other K-pop bands are actually faring poorer in comparison. Most K-pop bands have yet to receive even the meager amount of attention from US radio that BTS received before Dynamite.  Lets consider a quantifiable success metric: the top 10 most-streamed K-pop artists globally on Spotify in 2020. It is reasonable to expect many of these 10 artists to have decent radio play, especially if a US K-pop invasion is really happening, as many, many, many media outlets have suggested over the last decade. But according to the Soundcharts platform, except for BTS and Blackpink, none of Spotifys top 10 K-pop artists came close to getting a significant amount of mainstream US radio play over the last 12 months. (Note: Soundcharts does not track US stations fully dedicated to Korean music, such as K-pop Sirius channels.) Meanwhile, other top Spotify artists typically receive plenty of radio play. Like BTS, Blackpink made inroads in American pop culture by building a loyal fan base, playing major shows  they were the first K-pop group to headline Coachella  and collaborating with major US-based artists. Blackpinks English-language collaborations, Ice Cream with Selena Gomez and Sour Candy with Lady Gaga, drove the overwhelming majority of their US radio play, which totaled 18,500 plays across 142 radio stations in 12 months. Thats a far cry from BTSs 160,000 plays but still an impressive showing. But after Blackpink, the radio play for Spotifys K-pop Top 10 drops off to an astonishing degree. The third-highest-ranking band on the list, Twice, only received 38 plays across eight US radio stations, most of which were college stations. Additionally, most of the radio plays for every single band on Spotifys list of the most-streamed K-pop artists came from just one tiny dot on the radio landscape: KNHC / C89.5, a 50-year-old dance music station funded by the Seattle public school district and housed in a high school. KNHCs embrace of K-pop is thanks to 17-year-old Dakota Fox, who fell down the BTS rabbit hole in 2017 and began a crusade to bring K-pop to her community. Fox cohosts a twice-weekly K-pop segment, K-Plus, that over the last four years has drawn a steadily growing audience. My main motivation for doing the show was my love for the music, she told me. I felt like it deserved to be on the radio. It was so popular and it still wasnt getting played, and it was so odd.  Foxs interest reflects a growing national interest in K-pop. Across the US, college radio stations, in particular, have started to embrace K-pop bands like Twice, Ateez, and Stray Kids; major mainstream pop stations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago have also occasionally played artists like Seventeen and NCT, albeit only a handful of times. Eric Bradley, music director at Chicagos popular Top 40 station B96, told me that fans responsiveness makes a big difference. [The] K-pop groups weve played have always been very well received, he said in an email. Their fan bases are extremely active on socials, and theyre always so grateful to hear their faves in regular rotation on B96. Some of the songs go further or do better than others, but the full embrace from the fans is always so impressive to witness.  Even with fan enthusiasm, however, supportive individual radio stations are outliers; most mainstream stations ignore K-pop. Radio stations claim theyre open to playing K-pop. A few recurring themes factor into K-pops low airplay numbers. The first is well-known: the language barrier, namely a hesitance among radio stations to play music with lyrics that arent in English. In 2018, Chattanooga KISS FM deejay Sassy, a K-pop fan whos spoken often about how her stations embrace of BTS has brought it huge success, blogged a number of reasons why other deejays might be averse to playing K-pop. First and foremost was singing predominantly in Korean. The facts are this, she wrote. America is an English speaking country and many people wont give BTS a chance simply because the song is not English. Although Spanish-language songs like Despacito and Bad Bunnys 2020 hit Dkiti have found success on US radio, theyre part of a trajectory that has taken decades to build, and they were still met with industry friction and resistance. The counter to this argument is that many, many K-pop songs are mostly or partially in English, and very few of them have achieved any notice from US radio. Still, its clear that when a band has buzz and momentum behind it, an English-language bop like Dynamite or Butter can get radio attention. Having a song thats upbeat also helps. What helped Dynamite wasnt just being in English but being uptempo, Sean Ross, chart analyst and writer of the Ross on Radio industry newsletter, told me in an email. He suggested that Dynamite by BTS reminded radio programmers of the 2010 hit Dynamite by Taio Cruz, which is what a hit single still sounds like to [them].  One big reason radio programmers might be a decade out of date is that corporate consolidation has fueled the increased homogenization of Top 40 radio. Without an infusion of new music like K-pop helping to diversify and enliven an increasingly sanitized and monolithic music industry, the Top 40 airwaves subtly perpetuate the idea that American music has to sound a particular way. Its bordering on a sociopolitical statement to get radio stations to play this music, Andrew Harlander, a radio programmer who is also Foxs K-Plus cohost, told me. Harlander discovered K-pop when he attended BTSs three-hour Rose Bowl concert in 2019 with Fox and her mom and was blown away. An industry veteran whos worked as a programmer and show host for numerous radio stations including CBS Radio, Harlander does see radios reluctance to engage with K-pop as ultimately rooted in xenophobia. After all, K-pop artists are no strangers to overt racism and xenophobic belittlement of their achievements. The idea of a music format thats so diverse being treated as though its not commercially legitimate kind of pisses me off, he said. This music is just as legitimate, just as commercially viable, and just as deep as any music genre or radio format out there.  Its also important. K-pop performers spoke out against Asian American hate in the wake of the March mass shooting of six Asian women, and hearing more K-pop on the radio could potentially change the way the average American radio listener thinks about racism and Asian American identity. But convincing programmers that K-pop is commercial may be difficult. Ross stressed that radio, even fully corporatized Top 40 commercial radio, still needs listeners to be profitable. Top 40 had its worst ratings in 25 years last fall for a variety of reasons, from streaming to changed listening patterns during Covid-19, he said. For example, if theres no carpool, theres no mom/daughter listening time in the car, which is where Top 40 was usually heard.  In that context, K-pop is a bigger risk to many stations in 2021 than it might be in a more typical year. As chart analyst and pop critic Chris Molanphy, who hosts the Hit Parade podcast and writes about chart-topping songs for Slate, pointed out to me over email, radio programmers  are leery of trying anything that will weird out their audience. And for Top 40 radio, weird out is sometimes as simple as a Taylor Swift song that sounds too indie for the format.  That perceived risk is often also ageist. Top 40 radio needs audiences with purchasing power and thus courts a young adult audience demographic, roughly 1834. This is why a string of teen pop idols throughout the 90s and aughts never had a No. 1 single, including Backstreet Boys, Justin Bieber, and One Direction. Harry Styles only finally went to No. 1 after he was perceived as an adult star, Molanphy told me. And the same goes for the Jonas Brothers, much more popular at radio in the late 10s (Sucker) than in their 00s teen-scream heyday.  K-pop, however inaccurately, has largely been lumped in with these kinds of pop idols as teen music, regardless of either the actual ages of the idols themselves  BTSs members are all in their mid to late 20s at this point  or the fandoms actual demographics, which are predominantly millennials and Gen X-ers. According to Charlie Harding, cohost of the Switched on Pop podcast, the result is something of a catch-22, where stations are waiting to see if a song and an artist can be commercially viable  while refusing to give them platforms on which to become commercially viable. They are probably waiting to see bigger domestic audiences [paradoxically, from radio play], but not playing on the radio is preventing those audiences from reaching their true potential, Harding says. Even BTS has been subject to that wait and see treatment. Whether by purpose or laziness, [radio stations treated] Dynamite like a one-hit wonder, Harlander told me. Like [BTS is] a novelty act because theyre Korean.  Still, Molanphy stressed that theres no tried-and-true formula for radio success  that what works on American radio is, simply, an undeniable song. And thats exactly whats so frustrating about the dearth of K-pop on the air. Its frankly impossible for me, as a fan whos been listening to K-pop since 2005, to imagine the best K-pop songs  for example, Ikons 2018 earworm Love Scenario  failing to catch on with the US audience. Perhaps this is why K-pop fans have all but given up on American radio. Instead, theyve turned predominantly to streaming  and to an intensified form of manual labor  to make sure K-pop artists have a chance to be heard. K-pop fans are replacing the influence of radio spins with an intense form of fan labor  Three broad (and rather fraught) metrics factor into a songs Billboard chart ranking: radio play, physical and digital sales of the song, and digital streams. Because radio play is essentially denied to most K-pop artists, streaming is the mechanism by which fans show their support and boost the chances that their favorite bands will chart. Billboard has included digital streams in its Hot 100 calculations since 2007, and the relationship between streams and charts is a very big deal to many music fandoms  one thats transformed fan streaming into a complex system of labor. Dynamites chart success happened partly because Columbia gave it a concerted label push, but fans increased their own role with an elaborate, months-long, fandom-wide system of organized goals aimed at streaming the song as much as humanly possible. Army (as BTSs fandom is known) re-initiates this labor campaign each and every time a potential milestone presents itself, whether its a new BTS song, a new album, or even just a birthday for one of the band members. The agency that fans have over streaming counterbalances the importance of radio play within the K-pop industry. BTS targeted mainstream US radio play for years, but increasingly K-pop artists seem to be finding alternate routes to charting. One of the reasons that labels dont pursue radio is that they have other ways to reach fans now and also because the Hot 100 game has changed, Ross said. Once Dynamite had proven that BTS could have a US radio record, there was not apparently the same incentive to pursue Life Goes On [the bands No. 1-ranked November 2020 single, sung mainly in Korean] especially after going No. 1 on the Hot 100 with minimal radio. Essentially, with Life Goes On, BTS learned it could now chart at No. 1 with a relatively small amount of radio play compared to other top artists, albeit only briefly. The fan-driven streaming machine could do the rest of the work. This step back is part of a larger ongoing shift away from radio across all genres. Streaming platform subscriptions are rising and radio ad revenue is falling. More and more, its worth less to K-pop artists to fight an uphill battle for attention from radio programmers who think theyre a risk to begin with. Ultimately, theres more than one path to the radio for K-pop  While theres no clear formula that guarantees radio glory, more K-pop artists have started to establish new strategies for cracking the airplay code. BTSs long-game strategy prior to Dynamite was to steadily build its fanbase with frequent albums and single releases  so that when Columbia finally gave Dynamite a promotion effort, it worked. Meanwhile, performers like the band Loona and Chinese K-pop artist Jackson Wang have found radio success through other methods. Loona built its fame very deliberately. The band announced its members over a year and a half beginning in 2016, cultivating anticipation for its eventual 2018 debut. In 2020, Loonas management company, Blockberry Creative, spent months marketing the bands all-English song Star in Los Angeles. The strategy paid off when fans flooded iHeartRadios popular Saturday night live request hour, #MostRequestedLive, ensuring that the song received regular radio play for weeks. Loona has garnered 6,300 plays across 103 radio stations within the past year, with Star reaching #31 on the Billboard Pop Airplay chart, all without help from a major US distributor. Blockberry Creative is a boutique label, but its success with Star indicates that distribution effort and strategy go a long way  and that fan efforts alone arent always enough. The biggest explanation of what gets radio plays and what doesnt still usually involves whether a label has actively promoted a song to radio, Ross told me. It doesnt guarantee a hit, but it usually guarantees a hearing. With Dynamite, Columbia gave BTS the label promotion that meant radio stations finally tuned in  and so far, they havent tuned out. With Star, Loona got a hearing  and it may well make a difference in the bands ability to gain US airplay in the future. Meanwhile, in April, Jackson Wang performed his new all-English single LMLY on The Late Late Show With James Corden. Wangs media campaign also featured interviews with US media outlets like GQ and Esquire  which may have helped him sidestep the musics for teens only stigma. LMLY has since spent eight weeks on the Billboard Pop Airplay chart and has been played 3,800 times across 99 US stations. You can never predict what will be a hit, Molanphy told me. Dynamite was the most deliberate attempt ever to break a K-pop song in US history, and it worked  but it was after years of patiently building BTSs US fanbase, and even then, the conditions had to be just right.  Butter repeats the Dynamite template for a fun summer bop in English  and fans have already vowed to make sure the bands new single Permission to Dance tops the Hot 100 in its first week of release, meaning even more potential radio saturation. The greater US popular culture bubble seems to have finally reached a consensus that BTS really is a big deal that aint going away any time soon, Harlander told me. Butter sitting atop the Billboard Hot 100 for multiple weeks now might be the kind of indicator to finally wake some industry folks up to treat BTS like the deep catalog artists they actually have been all along.  The real question, he added, is whether this shift will nudge US radio stations to finally make room for more Korean artists. There are amazingly well crafted and catchy new songs  many in full English  coming out of the K-Pop genre on a weekly basis.  Its music thats worth paying attention to, whether you hear it on the radio or not.