Curious about streaming and voting culture in the K-Pop fandom? Here’s what to know!

When beginning my early highschool years it was no doubt that they were some of the most awful and confusing times of my life but I also can’t deny the fact that they were some of the best years of my life to, and encouraged a lot of discovery and finding out what music truly was. Downloading my first music app ever and discovering more and more genres within the ‘mainstream pop’, and ‘mainstream’ artist or through diving into other peoples public playlist to find something to listen to that day. Music has always been that interesting and magical world to me even at a young age. There was no genre or language I wouldn’t try to listen to at least once to be honest. Slowly like many fans I would come across K-Pop through group discussions on forums, artist suggestions and playlist suggestions, later I would go down the curious rabbit hole that is the world of K-Pop, Twitter, V-Live, K-Pop Slang Terms, Memes, Meme Culture, Sub Labels and Sub genres within ‘K-Pop’, streaming, mass streaming, getting into K-Pop, mass voting, voting, what is K-Pop, music shows, music award shows, year end music awards, voting culture and etiquettes, voting guides, voting teams, and so so much more. 

Within this seemingly short year of my life would I come across different teams, communities and well put together accounts that would teach you the important of doing such activities like this, and why it was important to South Korean artists for their audiences to take part in. 

When it comes to K-Pop the culture itself is fruitful and full of success, although there is always downfalls to every positive out there, you can always find those passionate individuals supporting their artist from afar no matter where they may land within the world. No matter what genre of music you enjoy or the artist you enjoy, it could be very similar to K-Pop in terms of seemingly curated communities, guides, and groups with their main focused on streaming a certain album’s title track, performance or voting for a certain award show to get a win for that release. 

Similarly within K-Pop and throughout its global upbringing, the culture towards these activities have grown their own organized structure and community upon various apps. These communities however can be largely found on popular social media apps such as Twitter and WeVerse due to easy interaction between fans, easy set ups and easy ways to promote your ‘tweets’ or ‘posts’ towards a further global audience. 

Because of this, they are seemingly the more popular ways these days to promote an artists comeback and to aim for music awards. Depending on how big the ‘fandom’ or ‘fan group’ are, certain fans will create various accounts such as ‘Ateez Voting Team’ for example, to help push these activites to fans with an ideal goal or goal they want to help set for the fanbase and for keeping fans on track with reminders, station head or youtube group streaming to promote community within the fandom during these activities. 

Each promotional period varies per group but often time, both International and Korean fans are focused on the 6 weekly shows that air on Korean television: Show Champion, The Show, MCountDown, Music Bank, Music Core and Inkigayo. They are some of the most respected shows and have big name acts that perform on the show, each show has different qualifications which is why the fandom does different activities during these period. 

On the popular social media app ‘WeVerse’, and on the artist’s community for Tomorrow by Together and usually for each release, the fans or the weverse staff of the community create ‘events’ where fans can win special awards for completing these tasks. Sometimes depending on the staff post, it could be a certain piece of content, or a signed photocard by the artist (which varies). 

For YeonJun’s solo debut, fans would use different hashtags when promoting their tasks and showing other fans that they have taken part in the activity. During this, its popular on weverse to show your weverse account and or profile during your ‘proof’ as to have other people not ‘steal’ the photo. In a sense, its also real time proof that you have done it and it isn’t just photoshop. 

Voting Reminders, Voting Guides and more. 

When it comes to voting, and general fan etiquette, there has always been improvements to the ‘culture’ with each year. Although some might take it to far with certain mass streaming activities and put streaming in front of their health instead, there’s no doubt and no guide that can’t offer you guidance in this crazy world of voting, music shows and year end shows that are included in K-Pop. 

Fandoms often organize guides for each group/artist depending on the song itself. From activities like streaming, voting and taking place in activities such as mass or group streaming on apps like stationhead, its also essential to note that voting and streaming is not everything, and you simply cannot vote for everything or every show that is out there. But its also worth noting, it can be done reasonably if you can put your health first.

Check your artist company’s social media accounts or pages to see if their staff is already posting guides or helpful tips to voting for Korean shows or important events! 

While for some K-Pop might just be a fun hobby to enjoy in their free time, K-Pop can also be that hobby that allows you to pick up a new hobby or re visit an old one. For many, that includes making edits of your favourite clips, journaling, dance covers, making art of different artists and releases or running fan accounts that promotes different content to other fans. A lot of time these activities actually help promote the artist to different communities or expand their reach to a new audience.  

It’s also a good thing and a good reminder to enjoy the music and to enjoy the ride. K-Pop is a hobby with many avenues of creativity, its also good to recognize your own boundaries and how you want to healthy do the hobby.