Things Disappearing In Kpop

[RussianRoulette]

I just saw this question online and thought it was a good discussion topic.

We've all been here in the kpop scene for a hot minute.

Over the years, what are some things you've noticed start to disappear in the world of kpop?

A few of the thing's i've seen mentioned online are:

Set Group Positions
Most groups barely even have a set leader anymore. Since everyone is expected to be good at everything now groups with set positions like rapper and main vocal are disappearing.
- I've also noticed center and visual positions are pretty much gone too. Everyone is expected to be a visual member.

Full Length Albums
They take up too much time and money. singles or mini albums are quicker and easier to make and bring in just as much profit. I've also seen prices go up and there's not even really a price difference between single albums, mini albums, or full albums anymore.

Promoting B-sides
I remember in 2nd and 3rd gen it wouldn't be too uncommon to see a group promote a B-side or an alternative title track along with their main title track (Think AOA with excuse me and Bing Bing, or when BTS also promoted GoGo and Anpanman along side the album title track.) Maybe it's for monetary reasons (too expensive to pay to perform 2 songs), but now most groups won't promote a B-side unless it's become more popular than the title track (like Kiss Of Life recently with Igloo).

Live Vocals
I remember back in the day in 3rd gen when BTS got new headset microphones to perform with and celebrating! We were all so excited to hear their vocals better. Over time live vocals started to get replaced with pre-recorded live vocals, and now some music shows don't even allow live singing. Kpop has shifted from live vocals to lip-syncing to focus more on the choreography.

Variety Shows
This I feel like is kind of a shame since variety shows gave lesser-known groups a chance to promote. With Youtube and Tiktok taking over, variety shows have pretty much gone extinct. Promoting idols on their own platforms saves them money because they don't need to pay to send them on a show, and makes them more money because they gain the profits from the channel views.

What have you noticed disappear in Kpop?​

 

[Pandaa]

good music

 

[dnb]

online forums

 

[yyShin]

3+ min songs
That's not only in kpop but it bothers me truly

 

[Polaris_Tae]

cute/refreshing concepts: I want the refreshing concepts like wannaone's 'Energetic', PENTAGON's 'Shine', Oh My Girl & early GFRIEND.

The song length: Why is everything sub-3 minutes now?

sub-groups: where'd they all go. Super Junior M was top-tier. JJ Project, GD & TOP, Orange Caramel & Bang & Zelo were all great. sub-units are looking closer to being a remnant of the past lately. Like... we still have a few like BSS, but it's just not enough

nugu groups often end up in disbandment hell rather than sticking it out for a while: These days none of the groups seem to last as long and they tend to either get disbanded as soon as it looks like they'll be a deficit, or get ghosted by their company like Purplebeck. There are less groups that break free from nugu-dom to become mainstream, and most of the ones that do, tend to have a popular group member that gained recognition from varieties or survival shows

 

[hatmixx]

Variety Shows
This I feel like is kind of a shame since variety shows gave lesser-known groups a chance to promote. With Youtube and Tiktok taking over, variety shows have pretty much gone extinct. Promoting idols on their own platforms saves them money because they don't need to pay to send them on a show, and makes them more money because they gain the profits from the channel views.

For me this is the worst. My early kpop fandom was all about the variety programs and fun shows. There's just to much that social media took away from this kinda thing.

 

[inari]

Heavy on the variety appearance and live performance.

I've always supportef a group sounding awful over them never learning to sing.

1. Fansites. I think it is because of how messy they are but I feel like companies keep boxing fans out of doing our jobs? The last straw for me was official fancams a few years ago. I know we still have a few strong fansites that record but the official videos feel so sterile. A few yeard back channels like Mnet started making the compilation videos even.

 

[Seriously]

Just gimme the weird fun concepts back, I need some batshit crazy pop.

WJSN Chocome was such a treat.

 

[Sweetheart]

Choruses sung by everyone, instead of having 1 or 2 members singing it

 

[BianTwo]

Points I like to mention and develop on my side :

Set Positions : I think the goal was to get rid of specialized positions, so everyone can sing, dance or rap. There's still a leader, officially named or not, and a maknae but that's all. But on the other hand people can think that they aren't bad but they aren't great at anything, they don't have a particular strength in vocal or dance for example. The visual position kinda disappeared, nowadays every members or most of them are visually pretty. It's maybe unpopular and harsh but I think in previous generations companies probably didn't care much or selected members not "as pretty" or "average", they weren't ugly of course but you could see the "visual gap" with others. Look at most recent popular GGs they are pratically all pretty or very cute : Meoww, Babymonster, NewJeans, IVE, Aespa, ILLIT, STAYC, etc.

It reminds me what happened to football, at least at the highest level. Traditionnal "10", the playmaker, disappeared. The "9", the striker, is also disappearing. Fullbacks have to be great in both attack and defense. Goalkeepers have to be able to carry and pass the balloon like a playmaker.
Everyone must be able to defend and to run during 90 min. No more specialized players, not as much as back in the days.

Variety Shows : I often hear fans from 2nd-3rd gen about this with TV variety shows from end 2000's to mid 2010's, it was great, GGs and BGs could interact with each other, the idols were entertaining, etc. The era changed with VLIVE, Weverse, Youtube, every company can launch their own show, with SNS loud fans complained and sent hate to the artists for interacting with others, for having too much fun, etc. Also filming a TV shows took the whole day to film and it wasn't easy in reality. The big channels had their own rules and they were more powerful before internet and SNS became more used. Nowadays it's probably with better conditions but I do miss when different groups from different company were interacting together. We only have ISAC or TikTok/Short challenges at best, sadly.

Song length : it started with NewJeans but they anticipated the TikTok mindset with people having less focus time and also with shorter song you can replay them faster to raise the numbers on charts and on apps like Spotify, Apple Music, Youtube, etc.

Live vocal : only a part of the fans were really into vocal skills or even in idol skills to be honest. Talent is only a part of an idol's appeal but visual, brand power and character are as important or even more in my opinion. However the industry saw what happened to Le Sserafim during Coachella, they'll think twice in order to not completely disregard live singing, there's a balance to find.

Cringe, silly, weird concept : it's maybe a niche but there's currently no one who are filling the gap, maybe there's some exceptions with nugu groups but otherwise it's missing.

The "K-pop" sound ? : yes K-pop always took it's inspiration from the Western and especially the US industry, culture, etc, even back in the days the writers and composers were from abroad. But nowadays the Western influence is getting more and more noticeable.

 

[RussianRoulette]

Choruses sung by everyone, instead of having 1 or 2 members singing it

I feel like this was already going out the door by 3rd gen?

I remember for AOA (I'll use Good Luck for example) in the actual recorded song everyone would be singing the chorus but for live performances only one person (usually Choa or Yuna) would actually sing it. I remember being very confused by this and had to re-listen to the song a bunch of times to figure out when did the chorus suddenly become Choa/Yuna's lines and I guess their voices in the chorus are slightly louder? But I feel like in kpop this sort of became the norm (only one person singing the chorus live when everyone sings it recorded) and at some point they just said screw it, if only one person is going to be singing it live we might as well record it that way

1. Fansites. I think it is because of how messy they are but I feel like companies keep boxing fans out of doing our jobs? The last straw for me was official fancams a few years ago. I know we still have a few strong fansites that record but the official videos feel so sterile. A few yeard back channels like Mnet started making the compilation videos even.

THIS!!!!!

Slightly off topic but I need to rant about how much fansites have changed now in days:

Spoiler: fansite rant

I feel like i've grown to a point where I just straight-up hate fansites now. They definitely still exist, but they have changed to much to the point where they are just saesangs with big followings who post the private pictures they've taken for other fans (and no one wants to address the fact that they are saesangs cause they're grateful for the photos).

I'm on Deobi twitter and an Eric "fansite" recently posted pictures of Eric returning back to Korea in the airport after privately/secretly flying back to Korea to visit his family. Everyone on twitter is swooning over the new pictures of Eric, but i'm sitting here wondering HOW THE F did this person find out when Eric was flying home, what plane/gate he was on, and manage to show up at his gate to bombard him with pictures. This was a private personal trip where there was no staff, so it's not like this was public knowledge

I forget which thread we talked about this on, but old fansites use to have their own actual websites and would sell stuff to raise money for their artists and stuff. I remember every once in awhile they would even organize fundraisers and give donations to charities on their idols behalf. Some of them actually did a lot of good.

Now in days fansites will occasionally sell merch they made with the pictures they took? But it's just to raise money for them to get into fancalls and fansigns. They will literally fight you if you even suggest to them trying to use the profits they made to do anything else.

There use to be a difference between fansites and saesangs in the past. Now I feel like the line is blurred.

 

[SirTim0thy]

I get why having an entire set of beautiful talented all-rounders is ideal, but there was something fun about having those specialty roles that I kinda miss.

The album/song length thing is less important to me than the quality (I prioritize a no-skip experience), but I get how that's a real turn-off for some and an unfortunate byproduct of the times.

For me this is the worst. My early kpop fandom was all about the variety programs and fun shows. There's just to much that social media took away from this kinda thing.

This is the biggest downside over time IMO. Having those variety shows was a peak part of the whole K-culture experience, to me. And seeing the groups interact with each other was so fun. Our loss.

 

[inari]

I'd like to add highly conceptual groups? And I'd like to piggyback with "good riddance?" I feel like 3rd gen had a whole lot of that, and I always found it pretentious when I had to read a whole book to even start listening to a group.

 

[frostpuddle]

The "K-pop" sound ? : yes K-pop always took it's inspiration from the Western and especially the US industry, culture, etc, even back in the days the writers and composers were from abroad. But nowadays the Western influence is getting more and more noticeable.

This was the main reason I pivoted to K-pop, I like that 2000-2010s kpop sound, nice melody with synchronized dancing. Now that sound is almost gone.

Interactions between girl and boy groups across different companies also disappeared.

 

[choively]

cute/refreshing concepts: I want the refreshing concepts like wannaone's 'Energetic', PENTAGON's 'Shine', Oh My Girl & early GFRIEND.

have you seen BEWAVE?

 

[tokki]

for as money-hungry as companies are these days, I'm surprised that the repackage album trend has almost completely died away in the Korean market...maybe it wasn't as popular as it seemed though (I've seen a few groups do them but not as many as I did back in 3rd gen)

for those that don't know what repackages are - they basically would add maybe one or two new songs + the songs from their last album release and release it as a "new" album for a quick cash grab between real proper comebacks (one such example would be TWICE's Twicecoaster Lane 1 and Lane 2 albums)