The BTS fans investing in their favourite K-pop band

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Rei

Rei is a former trainer and a 44-year-old stay-at-home mom. She’s an enormous fan of BTS, the seven member boy band that has turn out to be the face of Ok-pop. She has travelled abroad to see them in live performance. And he or she is even a member of ARMY, the official BTS fan membership.

She can also be one in all many followers who plan to take a monetary stake in BTS, when the group’s company Large Hit Leisure formally goes public on 15 October. It will simply be one share, and it is much less about investing than for a way of belonging and feeling nearer to the band.

“Undoubtedly I’m not promoting as soon as I get one. That is for eternity. I wish to present my coronary heart by having that one inventory,” she says.

When Large Hit makes its debut on Korea’s inventory trade, will probably be one of many nation’s most anticipated Preliminary Public Choices (IPOs) of the yr. Each traders and followers will probably be chasing a chunk of Ok-Pop’s hottest and most worthwhile group. And it’s a uncommon instance of pop fandom turning into participatory capitalism.

‘You may share each second’

BTS are usually not the one Ok-Pop band with precision choreography, slick movies and a seemingly inexhaustible provide of pop earworms. However they’ve a uncommon knack for connecting with followers.

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Kim Younger-mi

Whereas some would possibly dismiss the fresh-faced boy band because the stuff of teenage ladies, their older followers beg to vary. Kim Younger-mi is a 59-year-old professor who teaches portray, and even commits an occasional BTS scene to canvas. She loves their current single Dynamite, an upbeat, disco-laced monitor.

“Oh how a lot I loved Dynamite. The disco! Disco is my technology! BTS is a magician bringing time backwards and forwards,” she says. She wish to purchase shares too, however is just not certain she will afford it.

Above all, she loves their willingness to have interaction with followers: “BTS endlessly talk with their followers at each nook of this world, small tiny quotidian particulars of their each day life, their artistic course of, their achievements. You may share each second with them.”

This potential to attach is perhaps their biggest asset, says Prof Suk-Younger Kim, director of the Centre for Efficiency Research at UCLA, and creator of a e-book on Ok-Pop: “Ok-Pop idols are superb at making their followers really feel like they know you.

“Extra broad fan suggestions is straight away mirrored upon their efficiency, ranging from trend selections to what they are saying on stage. So in a manner they take heed to followers, they replicate it of their efficiency, and there is that thrill of this trade.”

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• BTS to become multi-millionaires after label goes public
• BTS break YouTube record with Dynamite video

For followers who’re already this emotionally invested, maybe the considered investing monetarily would not seem to be an enormous leap.

Does it translate?

Korean traders would be the first to have the ability to purchase into Large Hit. However US followers have an interest too. And given BTS’s present recognition, it isn’t laborious to see why. Topping the US charts is a uncommon feat for any group that principally would not sing in English. Solely 20 predominantly non-English tracks have ever cracked the highest ten in its 60-year historical past.

Three of them are BTS tracks, and now they’ve lastly had a primary single (though it was sung in English). US followers have responded in droves to BTS’s infectious, danceable pop – and to their willingness to have interaction significantly about points affecting their followers.

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“BTS at all times emphasizes the significance of kindness and compassion and speak about lots of the identical experiences, fears, and desires that all of us expertise sooner or later in our life. This brings so many followers, like myself, a way of consolation and belonging,” says Michelle Gutierrez, a 26 year-old graduate pupil from Texas, who’s hoping to take a position when shares turns into obtainable within the US.

Primary debut?

Large Hit’s itemizing has seen eager curiosity from traders. About 20% of its shares have been supplied to traders, elevating $822m – and valuing the corporate at over $4bn. Large Hit’s chief government Bang Si-hyuk, who owns 43% of the corporate, is about to turn out to be an immediate billionaire.

The seven BTS members will obtain 68,385 shares every, making all of them very rich, though they already make a lot of cash. In line with Forbes, they earned $50m final yr, with their street present grossing $170m.

However by some measures, their contribution to South Korea’s economic system far larger. One current research by the tourism ministry and a authorities tourism institute calculated that their single Dynamite would generate a staggering $2.4bn in financial exercise and practically 8,000 new jobs – coming not simply from direct gross sales however from gross sales of cosmetics in addition to meals and drinks.

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The attraction for traders is straightforward: BTS are a world pop music juggernaut, and so they’re more likely to ship returns. Dynamite was so well-liked that it was the primary ever video to clock up 100 million YouTube views inside 24 hours. Album gross sales are robust, even within the age of digital streaming. Stay reveals promote out in minutes, and BTS have amassed an enormous variety of model partnerships, starting from automobiles to cosmetics.

It is uncommon, nonetheless, that followers have a possibility to purchase into a selected musical act. David Bowie issued “Bowie Bonds” in 1997, which gave traders a reduce of the royalties from his catalogue. However even then, they had been snapped up for $55m by Prudential Monetary moderately than being supplied to extraordinary followers.

Extra typically, traders purchase into companies proudly owning the publishing rights to a secure of musicians. Within the case of Large Hit, 88% of its revenues got here from BTS within the first half of this yr. So traders and followers alike see an funding in a single as an funding within the different.

That is given some followers pause. At 23, Tina Lamoreux is a veteran of Ok-Pop fandom. She’s listened since 2012, earlier than BTS had even shaped and when followers in her house state of Oklahoma “had been often outcasts or thought of bizarre”. Though Ok-Pop is now vastly well-liked, she worries that the generally fickle nature of fame would possibly make for a dangerous funding.

“Particularly within the music trade artists can lose fame and get ‘cancelled’ so simply that I’d really feel it will be a danger,” she says.

Others disagree. MIRAE Asset Daewoo analyst Park Jeong-yeob says the group has proven endurance within the US market.

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“In contrast to previous cases the place Korean songs had been propelled to success by short-term buzz, BTS’s achievement is predicated on the long-term growth of a world fan base.”

True ARMYs

However this additionally poses a dilemma, as a result of there’s some doubt about the way forward for BTS. By legislation, all able-bodied Korean males aged between 18 and 28 should serve within the nation’s navy for 20 months.

All seven members will probably be required to enroll inside the subsequent few years. Discovering a option to break up up their navy service won’t be useful both.

“BTS is just not BTS if it loses one. Seven ought to stay intact collectively,” Rei says, who nonetheless thinks BTS shouldn’t be exempt.

However Prof Suk-Younger Kim says the IPO may assist Large Hit diversify its portfolio. And actually, over the past 18 months the corporate has purchased two different labels. Some followers, although, assume {that a} temporary hiatus will not dampen enthusiasm for BTS anyway.

“True ARMYs like me will always remember BTS simply because they do not present for couple years,” says Rei.