In March, BTS became the winners of the IFPI’s inaugural (and awkwardly titled) Global Album All Format Chart as Map Of The Soul: 7 was named the biggest-selling album globally of 2020. In the same month they were also named the winners of the IFPI’s Global Recording Artist of the Year Award, the first Asian act to ever win it. 

K-pop, of course, is much more than its most successful act and the latest YouTube Originals documentary series goes deep on it. 

K-Pop Evolution is an eight-part series, speaking to the artists and the industry players involved in a business it values at $10bn. 

The first episode, running to 24 minutes, arrived on 31st March and explored the genesis of the genre, placing it in the context of Korean politics and culture, noting how far things have progressed since President Park Chung Hee’s dictatorship and its harsh crackdown on youth culture and popular music during the 1960s and 1970s. 

“The series features never-before-seen personal stories of life as an ‘idol’ from some of K-Pop’s biggest stars and unprecedented behind the scenes access into how K-Pop groups and global hits are created,” says YouTube. 

New episodes will be dropped every Wednesday for the run of the series, although YouTube Premium subscribers can watch all the episodes immediately – suggesting a Netflix-style approach to boxsets of content. 

YouTube has been a key platform in breaking K-pop acts internationally, with Big Hit (the company behind BTS and many others like GFriend, TXT and Enhypen) having 52.5m subscribers on its YouTube channel while YG Entertainment (home of Blackpink, Treasure, iKON and others) has 6m subscribers. 

Given the omnivorous nature of many K-pop fans, this is also a way for YouTube to upsell viewers to YouTube Premium so they do not feel like they are missing out or catching episodes weeks behind everyone else. 

In K-pop, as in all pop, being the first to know is everything.