East Asian pop music idol production and the emergence of data fandom in China

The itinerations of East Asian pop music industries, the Korean wave and the digital dynamics of idol production in China

The idol industries in China and the concurrent growth of data fan practices are directly related to Hallyu (Korean Wave, 韩流), commonly narrated as a tale of two waves. First, a localized wave in East Asia from the 1990s and a second wave, sometimes referred to as Hallyu 2.0, facilitated by digitalization, mobile and internet communications and social media. This second wave was underpinned by national recognition of the economic significance of Hallyu and strategic financial investment from the Korean government (Hong, 2014; Jin, 2016; Kwon and Kim, 2014). Shaped by the digital economy and a more global market for K-pop, it is part of the historical context for understanding the formation of social media platforms and idol production in China.

The popularity of K-pop idols in China (Hallyu 1.0) can be traced to the ‘normalization’ of relations between Korea and China after 1992, which allowed for an expansion of trade and tourism, young people moving to study in China, along with media liberalization facilitating the growth of television ownership (Sun and Liew, 2019). Hallyu gained fans in China from the mid to late 1990s, and K-pop fandom increased after 2008 as the digital and mobile economy rapidly expanded (Zhang and Fung, 2017).

In this section we identify the factors that contributed to the Little Fresh Meat idol industry in China, and the broader contexts within which data fandom emerged. These are: (a) the legacies of a Japanese model of idol production and its influence on K-pop; (b) Korean companies expanding the market for K-pop by producing Chinese-language songs and creating bands composed of Korean and Chinese performers; (c) Chinese companies strategically investing in the Korean entertainment industry, deriving an economic return from a booming sector, and seeking to draw on Korean industry expertise; (d) Chinese government investment in digital infrastructure and the ICT/ mobile sector; (e) the growth of Chinese digital platforms needing content and Korean pop sourced to fill that content; (f) political tensions between China and Korea that led to a restriction on the selling and promotion of Korean idols in China and caused a space to open up for the development of Chinese idols. We now move through these points in more detail.

Although film and television stars had become popular in China throughout the second half of the 20th century, a new type of idol industry began to emerge, gradually from the late 1990s, due to the influence of the production team methods associated with K-pop and the growth of the digital economy and social media. The K-pop production system is usually attributed to Korean entertainment companies, with Star Museum (SM) Entertainment often cited as the most influential. Starting as a studio in the 1980s, SM grew to incorporate songwriting, production and recording, and then fused this with the operations of a talent agency, management company and concert promotion (Russell, 2008). JYP (Jin-young Park) Entertainment and YG Entertainment (founded by Yang Hyun-suk or ‘Yang Goon’) adopted this approach, dealing with all aspects of a performer’s education, music and performing skills.

Korean contributions to the development of East Asian idol production should not be over-emphasized as they are indebted to Japan in (at least) four ways. First, SM Entertainment was modelled on Johnny and Associates, a talent production company first established in Tokyo by Johnny Kitagawa in 1962. Kitagawa’s company had, in turn, been influenced by systems of stardom in the United States (notably Motown Records) that had combined talent spotting and casting, education and training, music production and media presentation (Kim, 2018). Second, the visual aesthetic of K-pop was influenced by the way Japanese music and idol industries, from the early 1970s, had sought to develop cute yet ordinary young idols, with a pretty-boy and -girl aesthetic influenced by the unblemished two-dimensional images of manga animation (Machiguchi, 2018). Third, Japanese talent companies and J-pop industries encouraged fan involvement and influence in the careers and identities of idols from the earliest days (Galbraith, 2018). Fourth, Korean music idol production was shaped by ‘transborder’ exchanges with Japanese industry personnel and producers after the Korean government lifted its ban on Japanese culture in 1998 (Shin, 2009a). The very category of K-pop was introduced by Japanese music companies. Hyunjoon Shin has shown how early K-pop was J-pop, with Korean singers performing songs written, arranged, produced and marketed by Japanese music industry personnel and their companies (Shin, 2009a). The result was a fluid model of popular music idol production, with individuals blurring and crossing boundaries between the roles of ‘songwriter-arranger, recording engineers, managers, design coordinators’ with ‘East Asian characteristics . . . that . . . cannot easily be found outside the region’ (Shin, 2009b: 510).

Korean companies became more influential with the development of digital platforms and social media. Johnny and Associates was established in the early 1960s, many years before digital media, and the company was slow to get involved in digital platforms. Although Japan was the first country to manufacture, market and sell CDs during the 1980s (and Sony introduced digital studio technologies during this period), the Japanese recording industry and music fans were less enthusiastic about digital files and remained attached to physical artefacts (Parc and Kawashima, 2018). The Korean music industry engaged with digitalization more rapidly than Japan. K-pop became an ‘extension of Korea’s high-tech culture’ (Shin, 2009b), benefiting from government investment in digital infrastructure, and the advance of social media, smartphone ownership and mobile networks. Korean music production experienced ‘digitalization at the fastest pace in the world’ in the mid-2000s (Lee, 2009: 489), with the growth of streaming rapidly replacing digital downloads and physical formats (although CDs continued to circulate as collectable merchandise rather than as a format for listening to music on a discrete music player).

Just as state investment in digital infrastructure was important to the growth of Korean entertainment, so it shaped the development of the internet, social media and mobile economy in China. There are two aspects to this. First, is the role of the Chinese government in implementing the tenth five-year plan on the information industry (2001–5), strategically allocating direct financial investment and establishing economic incentives to facilitate research and the building of digital infrastructures. Second, were policies of political re-regulation after China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. These allowed for state-managed capitalist competition and private enterprise, and reduced restrictions on both capital investment into China and the external operations of major internet companies, such as Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, outside of China (Jia and Winseck, 2018; Tse, 2015).

Unlike Korea, where entertainment companies had been signing and developing pop artists since the 1980s, the rapid growth of the digital economy in China led to platforms being set up that required content that was relatively scarce within the mainland recorded music industry. The commercial recording sector in China developed relatively slowly following the economic reform programme of 1978. During the 1980s the recording industry was characterized by cover versions of songs made popular in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Only limited artist development had been introduced by the end of the 1990s. In China, the digital economy facilitated platformization rather than the growth of talent acquisition, and conventional cultural production (Shen et al., 2019). This was part of a more general historical change in the music, media and entertainment industries: A shift from investment in production and manufacture (the selling of individual recordings as artefacts) towards a subscription model of access to digital content, underpinned by datafication as a means of risk management and revenue generation (Negus, 2019).

During the 2000s, Chinese urban society rapidly became one of the most developed smartphone, mobile, and data-driven economies in the world. An entrepreneurial sector sought to profit from and provide a service in response to this. Numerous start-ups began to compete intensely, setting up and acquiring networks and platforms (Shen et al., 2019), evidenced by over 1100 mergers and acquisitions ‘in the technology, media, and telecoms sectors’ during the period 2014–16 (Jia and Winseck, 2018: 49).

These platforms required content. Korean companies began to provide a large part of that content as K-pop. Notable here was SM Entertainment’s ‘cultural expansion’ philosophy, a corporate strategy pursued from the early 2000s. This entailed establishing joint ventures in order to gain access to local companies with knowledge of Chinese markets (Ye and Kang, 2017). By 2008 Korean Entertainment companies were significant providers of content for Chinese digital platforms, and K-pop idols had become major stars of music, television and the growing smartphone economy. Strategic attempts to reach Chinese audiences also entailed producing recordings sung in Mandarin (such as those by EXO and Super Junior) and agreeing endorsement deals with Chinese brands (such as Super Junior promoting hair shampoo). Bands were also put together, or re-created, to contain a mix of Chinese and Korean musicians (such EXO, Super Junior and GOT7).

Further connections were established by Chinese companies investing in the Korean entertainment industry. This had begun during the mid-1990s and became more pronounced in the 2010s. It was reported that Chinese companies invested more than two trillion won in the Korean Entertainment industry in three years, from 2014 to 2016 (Hwang, 2016). This trend led to Alibaba investing in SM Entertainment and venture capital companies taking a stake in Big Hit Entertainment (Herman, 2018). K-pop groups began to be managed through ‘bi-national’ joint ventures, with T-ara and Exid part managed by Chinese company Banana Culture, and WJSN and UNIQ (made up of Korean and Chinese musicians) part managed by Yue Hua Entertainment, based in Beijing (Herman, 2018). Management agencies in Korea began to support their Chinese-speaking artists in China, including Yixing Zhang and Jackson Wang.

Deals between Chinese and Korean companies led to exchanges between personnel and staff, with Chinese companies ‘scouting industry experts from Korea’ (Herman, 2018: n.p.) to acquire information and expertise. Performers trained by Korean companies also began to return to China and pass on their knowledge, including Han Geng of Super Junior and members of EXO. Idol industries in China were influenced by the way K-pop used teams, involved fans from the earliest days, and promoted idols across social media and via product endorsements (rather than relying on the conventional route of recordings plus concerts).

These evolving relationships were disrupted in 2016 by political tensions after the Korean government deployed the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system, developed by the United States, in collaboration with the US military. Although presented as protection against the growing military capacity of North Korea, it was perceived to be a threat to Chinese military operations, armed forces and weapon systems. One of the immediate responses from the Chinese government involved cancelling concerts and tours by Korean musicians, removing Korean celebrities from adverts, and refusing to allow Korean actors and musicians to appear on talent shows and TV series (Kil, 2017). Korean-produced films and contributions by Korean creative personnel to film production in China were halted. Restrictions were imposed on all music shows funded and produced by Korean companies (Sanchez, 2016). It was estimated that the Korean entertainment industry lost the equivalent of US $54 million in revenue, and that tourism, confectionary and direct investment declined by the equivalent of US $11 billion (Herman, 2018). Although there was no ban on the streaming of recordings by Korean performers, the immediate lack of visibility and promotion affected the popularity of K-pop. In the following 12 months, of the three major Korean entertainment companies, the share prices of SM fell 18% and YG fell 32%, whereas JYP (with little involvement or ‘exposure’ to China) rose 32% (Kil, 2017: n.p.).

With the Chinese digital economy expanding, there was an escalating demand for content from consumers and related industries in the music and entertainment media, as well as the concert business. Opportunities opened up for existing and newly formed entertainment companies, initially with Chinese performers who had previously been members of K-pop bands, such as Lu Han, Kris Wu, LAY and Z.TAO. Little Fresh Meat now became a term for Chinese idols performing K-pop (just as early K-pop was Korean idols performing J-pop). Almost immediately Chinese idols filled the gap created by restrictions on Korean content and a more clearly defined Chinese idol system emerged, derived from production methods and aesthetic styles developed in Japan and Korea and focused on social media and digital platforms.

These commercial, technological and political relationships form one thread of our story, as interwoven popular music idol industries and pop fandoms developed across East Asia and in China. With the increasing introduction of digital platforms, social media and smartphones, fans came to play a decisive part in the development of a new type of content trafficking and data practice. The recorded music industry was being reconfigured: shifting from a business that created and supplied products for purchase by consumers, according to a linear or ‘supply chain’, towards a circuit within which cultural and economic value accumulates as active fans (along with musicians, industries, and governments) seek to shape, edit, update and manipulate a continual flow of changing content that is, in turn, filtered by bots, curators, censors and algorithms while being constantly mined and analysed for data that loops back into further interventions. We now extend these ideas and this narrative by explaining the pivotal role of data fans in these processes.

Data fan practices: chart beating and data visualization, content trafficking and collective team strategies

Popular culture fandom in China has developed as an integral characteristic of the idol industries, and within the context of transnational itinerations linking Japanese, Korean and Chinese fans, not only in the realm of popular music, but also in anime (Mōri, 2011), manga and TV dramas (Chen, 2018; Fung, 2009). Just as Chinese pop idol production systems are linked to J-pop and K-pop, so too are the practices of fans; influencing each through ‘transborder dialogues’ (Shin, 2009a) that can allow for the adoption of nationalistic (Chen, 2018) and more global or transnational expressions of identity (Chin and Morimoto, 2013). The activities of Chinese idol fans have been inspired and stimulated by the way K-pop fandom encompassed a wide range of activities whose ‘cultural endeavours traverse the curatorial, re-distributive, artistic, and consumptive spheres’ (Choi and Maliangkay, 2015: 9).

Data fandom extends these cultural endeavours, and became more noticeable when some Little Fresh Meat idols (including Lu Han, Kris Wu, Yang Yang and Li Yifeng) became known as ‘data traffic stars’ (líu liàng míng xīng, 流量明星). By 2018, the category was circulating widely and Cai Xukun came to the attention of fans as a ‘new data traffic star’. Facilitated by the way platformization and social media had reconfigured the traditional recorded music industry, these stars gained their visibility and success through the active interventions of fans into the data circulating across social media.

In our introduction we referred to studies of the way social media users acquire an understanding of the logic of platforms and datafication, and develop strategies to intervene (van der Nagel, 2018). In a similar way, data fans strategically seek to impose their presence, using knowledge of the impact of data as statistics (quantities and metrics), and an understanding of how semantic data can influence an idol’s popularity and contribute to this traffic; increasing the commercial and cultural value of idols.

Fans seek to influence the quantity and quality of data circulating about an idol. Such circuits of data can continually change shape with the involvement of different participants as they alter and intervene in the loops of information that are characteristic of how social media is used and digital platforms achieve their popularity. We explore this further by focusing on three issues that were raised most frequently in our interviews with fans (a) chart beating and an expanded idea of ‘charts’ as a visualization of an idol’s success, (b) the role of formal fan clubs and less structured patterns of collectively organized behaviour and (c) the role of the data team.

Concluding comments: data fandom within content circuits of cultural production

Data fans are integrated into dispersed circuits of content as traffic in data becomes central to popular music platform economies. Data traffic has become an asset valued by fans and industries alike. The value loops linking performers and fans have developed most rapidly within the idol industries of East Asia, due to the influence of J-pop, K-pop and the growth of social media platforms; facilitated by investment in the digital economy and mobile communications. East Asia is where the most visible structural realignment of the value chains of the older recorded music industry has occurred; from the production-to-consumption ‘supply chain’ model of the recording era towards emergent circuits of content that integrate industries and audiences. The role of fans in maintaining idol production is just one part of a much longer history that might be narrated about fandom–industry relations across the geographical region of East Asia, and beyond.

In this article we have drawn the concept of data fandom from research on industries and fans in China. It is an activity that has become more widespread, although neglected in academic studies. We hope this category provides further opportunities for exploring the way fans engage with stars and musicians, platforms and social media, in other contexts and situations. The practices and experiences of fans, and their comprehensions of self and social belonging, ultimately move us beyond pop fans’ use of digital media as a means of interacting with idols, and towards the datafication of private and public life and the varied ways in which this is shaping how we experience being human and acting in the world.

‘Data’ has always been part of human understanding of individual and collective behaviour. The use and manipulation of data in human societies has been traced back by various scholars to markings on artefacts about 20,000 years old found in what is modern Africa, and to Babylonian data systems on cuneiform tablets estimated to be about 6000 years old (Holmes, 2017). Data fandom is new – in that it becomes salient with digital technology and social media. Yet, it is part of a much longer story of how human understanding of self and others, and the will to influence the social world, is informed by ‘data’ and a ‘codified interpretation of life’ (Cheney-Lippold, 2017). The concept of data fandom that we have adopted in this article is not collapsible into celebratory notions of a free and creative ‘constructed self’, nor the idea of a more pessimistic, controlled and ‘colonized self’. Data fans use a new type of knowledge and a particular ‘self-concept’ when acting to achieve a series of specific aims. They also continue to participate in the fun and frustrations of being a pop fan.