The K-pop Model of Soft Power and India’s W.I.S.H

After the release of the debut song, ‘Lazeez’ by the first Indian Pop girl group after 22 years W.I.S.H on March 1st 2024, everyone has been wondering if India is also going to follow the K-pop model of soft power, taking I-pop to a new height. 

The K-pop model of soft power can be called a tried and tested model in establishing one as a soft power leader. The South Korean economy has received huge benefits from their K-pop Idol groups. These Idol groups not only make music but they also set trends for many industries. Some of the hugely influenced industries are Fashion, Cosmetics, Tourism, Plastic Surgery, etc. Initially, the influence of the Idol groups were limited to SouthEast Asian Countries like China, Japan, and Taiwan, but this was later spread over throughout the world with the success of a Korean Boy Band ‘BTS’. BTS opened a whole new market for the Korean soft power and brought immense profit for the Korean economy. According to research, BTS attracts over 800,000 foreign tourists to Korea each year, stimulating 5 trillion Korean dollar spending every year. The profit earned by the private players like Hyundai, Samsung and Coca-Cola has seen an immense rise globally by appointing the boy band as their ambassador. South Korea is a country where an adult man has to serve in the military mandatorily, but considering the economic benefits BTS brought in, there was a heated discussion in the Korean National Assembly where the Defense Committee proposed to exempt the group from the service. BTS may be the one to make this model successful in the global market but they are not the only one, there are several other boy bands and girl bands following in their footsteps.

The K-pop Industry is led by the production houses among which there are three houses on the top of the pyramid. Majorly the market is controlled by them but once in a while a band belonging to a smaller production house is able to make it big like BTS who belonged to a smaller production house. These houses hold frequent auditions to select the Idol trainees. The Korean government also facilitates this by having several talent hunt shows and competitions both televised and non-televised, they also organize several music festivals both inside and outside the country. These trainees then go through a brutal training where they are constantly monitored in every aspect. These trainees are trained in music as well as dance or even acting for that matter. In the training, the houses strictly monitor every aspect of their private and professional life starting from their diets, clothes, friends, relationships, personal as well as social communication. Often the members have to sign unfairly long contracts with the houses lasting for 20 years which is also commonly termed as a ‘slave contract’. In this aspect, the K-pop industry has seen many lawsuits regarding human rights violations. But the Korean government has been very vigilant when it comes to copyright and performers’ protection laws. The laws have been frequently updated with the change in the technology to protect the performers and the golden goose K-pop Industry. Few years ago, the maximum contract length one can sign with the labels was reduced to 7 years and recently an aspect of mental health care among others was added to the performers’ protection laws. They also provide support to the artists by funding their travels and world tour concerts. 

The Indian Music Industry has been dominated by the film music produced by the playback singers in the Bollywood movies, with the majority of the rights on the music belonging to the production houses where the singers and musicians were not even given a share of royalty earned by their music. The production houses would further license or assign copyrights to the record labels. The performers often lost a huge amount of earnings which was produced because of the outside film commission of their work in the form of ringtones, radio, tv broadcast, public performances, etc. This was because of the unfair copyright law validated by the Supreme court where the rights belonged to the producers under employment or work-for-hire contracts. This not only affected the film musicians but also the non-film musicians such as the classical and ghazal performers, they were also not given the rights to the royalties earned by their work and were mostly taken by the record companies. These laws changed with time but the Indian Law making body and process is so slow that the bridging gap between the technology and the laws keeps on getting wider.

The introduction of online platforms like Youtube, Spotify, etc brought in a new revolution in terms of the music industry as it brought in independent performers who published their works on these platforms bringing in the phenomenon of platformization. But the laws were not enough to protect the rights of these performers from being exploited by the huge record labels. The platforms also suffered from the monopoly of the major record labels, one of the recent examples seen can be the feud between Zee Music and Spotify where Spotify was forced to remove all the songs under the Zee Music labels for months. 

The Indian Laws are not known for accommodating easily with time and technology, but in this same environment we see a rise in the new type of performers segment, with W.I.SH leading under Sony Music India with Mikey McCleary as their producer. W.I.S.H consists of four female  members three of them from Mumbai and one from Chennai. They were all handpicked and approached by McCleary and his team. All the members were already promoting their own music through the online platform that caught the attention of McCleary. They broadly follow the K-pop model. Initially, they were trained in both music and dance and later debuted with their music video “Lazeez”. The members are seen following a dance choreography as the K-pop Idols are often expected to dance as well as sing, giving out a whole power-packed performance. They have also had a fixed weekly live interaction with their fans on Wednesday following the K-pop model. In their music video they have a tagline, “Careful what you wish for”, which is something that can be noticed in the music videos of a K-pop girl group BLACKPINK whose tagline is, “Blackpink in your area”. 

Sony Music is one of the major dominating record labels in India and being the first one to introduce an I-pop band in the markets is presented with a large portion of the pie to bite on. This can be seen as Sony Music trying to establish themselves as one of the big I-pop similar to the Korean market’s Big three. This came up during a time when the independent artists are gaining a huge support from the Indian audience whereas Bollywood Music has seen a huge decline in the supporters. The other labels will soon join this trend of launching their own I-pop groups. I-pop has huge potential to take the Indian Music Industry forward and to make an identity for India as a global soft power but only if the laws are favorable and the government is supportive towards the performers and the industry. If the government leaves the industry on its own then these performers can also get exploited by the labels as the performers have a long history of getting exploited by the hands of the labels and production houses throughout the world.