 In case you haven't heard, K-pop is a global phenomenon. Online, the addictive tunes and big-budget videos are reeking in billions of streams and gathering fans from across the globe. I'm surrounded by non-Koreans singing Korean. All kinds of people, all singing their songs in Korean. Everything's online, but this genre has an advantage that took it from South Korea to selling out stadiums and headlining festivals around the world. You guys have one of the most dedicated fan bases in the world, hands down. I mean, they made us. What do your fans mean to you, Mark? They mean everything to us, so we have a special bond with them. Fans are my inspiration. The history of K-pop outside of Korea is really closely tied to the spread of the technology that people use to discover it and to listen to it. And when it comes to taking K-pop global, there's one site that has been essential. YouTube. On YouTube. On YouTube. YouTube compilation videos. Yeah, one group usually leads you to the next, to the next, like that. Thanks to voracious fan bases, K-pop crushes on YouTube with crazy levels of engagement. And as you'll see, this doesn't happen by accident. Wolfgang Gangnam Style. I was not expecting for there to be a massive group of Monsta X fans in Sugarland, Texas of all places. But everyone here is a mega fan. There are no lukewarm Monsta X fans in the crowd. I went backstage to talk with K-pop group Monsta X, who have collaborated with American producer Steve Aoki. I heard you guys have an intro that you do. Yeah. You want to see it? Let's do it. Let's go, Monsta X. Hi, we are Monsta X. Do you think that YouTube has been really important with bringing K-pop to America? Of course, because it's really easy to get inside of that channel and watch whatever you want. And you can see some video what is related with that video too. So I think it's really important to us. This doesn't mean that music from every country is spreading just as fast on YouTube. K-pop is perfectly crafted for the platform. And the numbers don't lie. Half of the biggest 24-hour debuts on YouTube are all K-pop groups. If you sort of adjust for the amount of overall viewership and you compare the top 10 K-pop songs on YouTube and the top 10 non-K-pop songs, the ratio of likes is almost double for K-pop. And for comments, it's like five times more. And so if you look at the top 25 most watched K-pop groups over the past year, 90% of the views are coming from outside of South Korea. What is different with K-pop and its music videos compared to other styles of music? So I think it's another material to express our story about that song to make it more easy to the audience to understand it. And plus, especially K-pop is more than just music because we always prepare our choreography with the stage. So it could be just listening and watching. That's why we are preparing a music video every single time. K-pop is as much about the visuals as the audio. The choreography is super important and acts like Monsta X develop new routines for every single video and often upload dance practice videos for fans to learn the song's moves. We're a multi-sensory being. Like the way our brains are, we need as many senses being covered, you know? As I'm working on the drop, I want to imagine these guys dancing to the song because that's like 50% of the song is like the visual part of it. Yeah. And then they asked me to be in the video, which is dope. The video is sick. I'm not a great choreographed dancer, but I can shuffle, do a couple of things here and there. K-pop videos are designed to hook people in the first few seconds, even if the person watching doesn't understand the lyrics. They use things like quick cuts, fast zooms, tons of locations, and of course, impeccable performances. And then of course there's all the other types of content that exist around the official content that is produced. What do you mean by that? That is behind the scenes videos. Videos that highlight different members of the group, videos that you can watch to learn the chants that you're supposed to use, you know, when you're at the show. So you have all of these different things that sort of play into the behaviors of the fans. And so being a fan, you know, at sort of a deeper level with these artists means connecting with them in ways that go beyond just listening to the music. They're the Olympian athletes of the pop world. Whether it's like in media training, they're dancing, they're singing, they're trained athletes of what they do. I saw them on YouTube, I saw Hero. Honestly I was like, okay, so they dance. And then I like went down a hole and saw them sing live and I was like, oh, they can sing! The official videos that are produced by the biggest K-pop acts are incredibly reference dense. So watching a video as a fan gives you all of these things that you can then really glom onto. There are tons of Easter eggs in the Play It Cool video, including the words airplane mode appearing in Korean. That's a reference to the lyrics in the Korean version of Play It Cool. Hidden symbols are popular in K-pop videos, and it's up to the fans to figure out what they all mean, which is often done online in forums or in comments. What it is? Addicting? One of the places that these communities can gather is in the comments. And they will both be debating things, but they'll also be pointing out things in the video to each other or giving you a pathway into something that they've noticed to help you appreciate this thing as the work of art that they see it as. And then of course there's lots of fan videos, lyric videos, and things with a long history on YouTube of people creating their own videos that help you access the content even if it's in a different language. Such as reaction videos. This is so cool! Where are they? Wait, this is really cool. I swear I was going to do this. Dance cover videos. Fan cams that follow individual group members during performances. These fans also host online streaming parties to watch video premieres together and help their favorite acts break YouTube streaming records. It's time for the Monsta X Take 2 We Are Here listening party. They even provide lyric translations in other languages. I'm learning Korean as well. I guess I want to understand the music more so I won't have to look up the English version and look up the lyrics and stuff like that. So I want to actually understand what they're saying at first. Being a K-pop fan is a community effort. The fandoms, we consider each other family. We have met so many people through coming to all these different concerts all over the country, people that have traveled to Korea. We've just learned a lot of things and met a lot of people. It's been really awesome. People discover music differently now. And K-pop makes the most of this. YouTube is the space to watch, listen, and connect with other fans all in one place, allowing K-pop to take it from URL to IRL. I think the world is just getting ready for our genre K-pop these days. We hope the world gets ready for us. Thanks for watching. This video is brought to you by Aloft, different by design. Is there anything that you've personally learned from working with K-pop groups that you've incorporated into what you do personally as an artist? I need to get more polished skin. Their skin is so shiny. Oh my god. I need some better moisturizer.