I'm sure you already heard about kpop slave contracts
It's where these young aspiring kids sign a contract
to be a trainee under a big kpop company in hopes of becoming the next big thing
I made a video a while ago talking about why k-pop idols don't make money
I mentioned it's because of the break-even system where k-pop companies
Charged these trainees and once they debut and become idols
they have to pay back all the money the company invested in them by teaching them how to dance sing and
food and housing and everything which still exists today
But I forgot to add
Another way k-pop companies make idols pay them back because you will pay back your debt to the company in one way or another
Either pay back your debt over time. Like I mentioned with the break-even system or the company pays for everything regarding trainees
But once your debut you start receiving a paycheck right off the bat, which is good
But it's much smaller than you think there could be a split in revenue between the company and the idol either a 50/50
70/30 or worst case scenario
80/20 maybe even worse than that
This is all because of how much it costs to train these idols and
to debut them the average cost to debut a k-pop group
starts in the hundreds of thousands all the way to
millions like what Loona did. Loona debuted with almost as much money as the whole GDP of this island country
I don't know how to say its name.
Anyways, Loona could own a country if they wanted to now, why is it so expensive to debut a k-pop group?
Could it be filming cost, production cost , you know making music or maybe traveling costs actually none of the above?
the most expensive cost for k-pop companies is
Food
Yes, feeding all these hungry kpop trainees and idols is really really expensive take a group like Seventeen
Having a total of 13 members it cost
$300 per meal to feed everyone that's almost
$1000 a day
or nearly
$30,000 a month in nothing, but food
Imagine
$30,000 of Tteok-bokkii, ramyeon don't even get me started on tacos. I'm hungry right now. I might need some Taco Bell
Okay
I think I made my point now, the rate on how much these companies charge these idols for everything depends on the company
We can't get our hands on any contracts because of legal reasons
so we're only left to speculate and what these companies actually say the Big 3 SM, JYP and YG entertainment are
famous for not charging idols for their training fees, which is good, right?
But again
the company will get their money back. The way they do is (by) paying idols a reduced income
upon debut as a group gets older and becomes more successful, the larger that paycheck gets
Perhaps this is why you see some k-pop idols even from big companies
get help from their parents as far as giving them money to live for expenses and other things they want to do and there's a
coincidence here
A lot of k-pop idols come from rich
families
Families that are able to pay for their training and pay for them to go out of country to study and things like that
That is another topic I want to talk about later rich families in kpop
but anyways
What about TV show appearances?
Commercials and Live
performances and tours
You would think that would make a lot more money for the idols, these activities that they do all over the place
But due to their label doing all the footwork and booking their groups
the company makes most of the profit. The artist is just there to perform or meet with fans. Ok
Here's a little test think of some of the most popular household names in kpop right now
you're probably thinking about BTS, Twice, EXO, Red Velvet, Seventeen, GOT7,
Mamamoo, all of these groups are successful and they probably paid off their debt and become pretty rich already
But we also have groups like NU'EST,
Pentagon, Momoland that just made it into fame either by appearing in a popular survival show or
surprised everyone with a viral hit song, that did nothing but thrust them into k-pop stardom.Groups like these are in the
middle tier and they're on their way to paying off that debt. Now
I hear you're saying all of this sounds pretty bad
The K-pop companies are taking advantage of the talented k-pop idols. Yes, that's kind of true
but in order for the kpop economy to survive this system was created and needs to continue to exist because
it works. When I talk about this reduced income upon debut
Like, what the Big Three do, they do this because of the cycle of re-investing most if not all the profits into
continuous promotion take a group like Twice for example
Their debut was in the hundreds of thousands and sure they debuted pretty successfully and were growing really really fast
But again, Twice was receiving small paychecks in the beginning
That is because JYP was taking most of the profit early on in Twice's career to pump into reality shows, special stages
concerts, fan meetings and more comebacks
There's more activity for k-pop groups in k-pop than any other music genre in the world. There is so
much content produced for k-pop fans. I mean we're kind of spoiled
Okay, tons of reality shows, documentaries and even vlogs.
Self-produce vlogs by k-pop idols and the company, all of it works because they're re-investing everything into the k-pop idols
appearance for the public. The more their faces are out there
the more people are gonna remember them. Now, here is the most dangerous spot, any aspiring idol can find themselves in a medium
to smaller company. There are endless stories about horrible living conditions
stolen money and overworking because of exhausting schedules. This is where the term "slave contract" began to take shape
Because these companies are small, they don't have the money to re-invest back into the group
they are just one mistake away from going bankrupt and
the k-pop idol will be left without a group and without the job, but some idols didn't take this laying down
Idols and groups began to fight back with their lawsuits against their own companies like the Chinese Exodus from EXO
Citing mistreatment between them and Korean idols discrimination and unpaid wages B.A.P vs. TS Entertainment
Block B vs. Stardom Entertainment and probably the worst case scenario, The East Light vs. Media Line
Entertainment due to these landmark cases building upon each other.
Slowly more things are coming to light about the k-pop industry and slowly things are also changing. Ok
It's pretty dark in here, and I apologize for that
Let me shed a little bit more light on the topic this proves one thing to me
K-pop idols don't become idols for the money and the fame
because odds are you won't hit it big.They do it for the love of it for the passion of
creating music they do this to entertain, inspire and uplift lives of fans. Luckily,
there's a way that you can help as well . Just support them
,give them love. If you want to buy their albums. You can do that as well
but if you ever get the opportunity and I hope I do too
Let them know how much they do for us because at the end of the day
They're here for us and we're there for them
That's it for me guys, thank you so much for watching
Hope you enjoyed if you did. Please hit that like and remember only 14% of people that watch me are subscribed to the channel
So why not hit that subscribe and the bell so you don't miss a new video. What do you think about this?
I think I want to turn it into a series because I've seen a lot of people say "I'm new into k-pop." I don't necessarily
understand the terms of like a comeback or like all-kill
So, I'm thinking of creating this series called k-pop explained, where I select a topic or
terms or whatever and then explain it to everyone
And for the k-pop fans that are already veterans out there that know everything about kpop. I want to make it
entertaining as well. I want to put a twist on it to make everyone want to you know
Watch it, and enjoy it
Maybe make it a bit more funny and change up the editing style like I've done for this video
But let me know what you think and let me know what topic you want me to cover next in a k-pop
explained down in the comments as well and let me know what you think about this video and slave
contracts. I feel at this point in time, slave contracts aren't necessarily
that existent but I think for smaller companies they do take
wayyy much of an advantage on their artists, then the medium to bigger tier and I think that's where slave contracts still
exist and persist there, but ay Twice is coming up boys
I don't know what I'm gonna do
But I want to do something special reaction video, a whole video about Twice
I have planned, So stick around. Be sure you're subscribed and hit the bell. So, you know when I upload that video and
Yeah, guys. We're on the race to
200k we are almost there like less than 5,000 away right now, and I uh you know guys
Thank you so much for that
Also big shout out to the people on patreon for supporting me there, if you want to help out head over there as well
But I also have a Twitch that I stream on somewhat regularly
I am waiting for my Elgato to come in so we can stream, some gameplay of some games
aside from just me talking about k-pop, but I will still have those streams
in the pipeline, so if you're not following me on Twitch, go ahead and give it a follow
But anyways guys, thank y'all so much for watching have a fantastic weekend and I'll catch you guys in the next one. 안녕(Annyeong, means Goodbye)