My favorite musician, and the only one I follow closely, is Kim Bada. One day as I was searching him, I discovered that the name “Kim Jaejoong” was on the related searches. I thought, Huh? Why would a singer like that be associated with Kim Bada?
When I clicked on the news I saw that Kim Bada had participated in the creation of Kim Jaejoong’s new mini album. I was so surprised! A collaboration like this is very unique and I was curious as to what type of music they were able to fashion together, so I went to hear the songs.
The vocal quality, the songs themselves…It can be summed up in one word: “DaeBak”.
I felt overwhelmed as I was listening to this music. There is no other way to describe the feeling.
Kim Jaejoong has a great voice, but I thought that because he is an idol he would not be very interested in music. But when I listened to his songs, I saw the passion and lyrical sense that even Kim Bada praised.
And thanks to this new music, my whole night was busy trying to find and listen to Kim Jaejoong’s past solo songs: Maze, Protect the Boss OST, Dr. Jin OST, Sunkyungkwan Scandal OST.
These new songs; created by the musician that I love so much, lyrics written personally by Kim Jaejoong, arrangement done by Sean who works with all of the hottest indie bands… their combination was incredible. I think this music should be heard by more and more people. I’m sure these songs are ones you can’t forget easily.
Even though I think regular idols have no interest in music, I know that promotions are the most important time for them. While looking up Jaejoong on Naver I saw some people in his fandom wondering about how to promote him properly, and being a fan of a rock artist I am used to unconventional promotions.
Even if a fandom is great enough to be able to buy a large amount of albums and make news, there is still a limitation to those the music itself can reach.
The most important thing is to post the songs on public boards and sites. The sound of this song is good enough that even with one listen, the general public will take interest.
Because I am a rock fan, I am not very familiar with the typical problems and promotions idols face…things such as control by an agency or various members doing different activities on domestic broadcasting shows.
But I think domestic broadcast have even less of a reach than getting a top 10 spot on Melon, because it reaches just idol fans. On the internet, spreading the song to all places is important.
I think many Jaejoong fans will agree with me.
That is not saying that broadcast is not important, though, because it does help with promotions.
But because broadcasting might be slightly tricky, there are other things that can be concentrated on…
Since these songs were composed by Kim Bada, they have an intense rock sound that might be foreign among Kpop.
Because the rock sound is something that is very different from the usual, you may feel as if you will have some problems with promoting.
Usually idols put out only ballads or dance tracks. And while one of Kim Jaejoong’s songs was a rock ballad, I think the other is a much more hardcore rock song.
But in the Korean popular music scene, where everyone hears dance song after dance song, this sort of rock can be just the change they need.
The only rock that popular music fans are used to listening to is Nell, and Nell is usually all their rock awareness consists of.
In comparison…
Kim Jaejoong’s song “One Kiss” is similar to that style so it can easily win over people who are already fans of popular music.
However…I think maybe you worry that the reaction towards hard rock might be…bad.
Fortunately for the fandom, when I watched the teaser for “Mine”, I found not only my reaction, but also the reaction of muggles who are not in rock fandoms, to be positive.
Kim Bada is a popular musician that is known in all circles, and along with the music and the one line of singing we could hear, [Jaejoong's song Mine] gave the feeling of a powerful and modern rock song.
Because One Kiss seems to be so different from Mine, it’s safe to say that Kim Jaejoong’s new music can appeal to fans of all musical genres…
When searching Kim Jaejoong’s name, there were many articles about One Kiss ranking. I think there will be similar articles coming out later this week for Mine.
Jaejoong fans, know that even if TV promotions are hard, promoting over the net can be equally or even more effective. Do not give up streaming or watching the videos or buying the songs.
The more you listen to the songs, and the more work you put in; the greater the results will be. Here is some advice from a person who, because of my rock fandom, is used to promoting solely over the net.
1. Find the country’s most popular community sites and create topics on there where you can share the song. Even though these sites and boards are not about music, as you know, people post about music often on them. (T/N: the poster goes on to list some popular sites/boards, such as boards about soccer, gaming, and general free topic message boards)
You can also post the songs on the most popular galleries for rock artists (t/n: once again, the poster lists the most popular gallery sites). The fact that Kim Bada composed the songs and Sean is the one who arranged them will be publicity enough to get the attention of rock fans.
When the fans go onto the galleries and see Kim Jaejoong’s name there, they will instantly get curious and listen to the songs…and just like that you will have a whole new set of fans fans.
I see that on galleries that are popular with women, there have already been a few posts about One Kiss and the new teaser video. On these sites, usually just the name Kim Jaejoong itself is publicity enough .
However, the boards that cater more towards the muggle men are an even bigger target you should look into. The “I Love Soccer” board has over 1.2 million subscribers while the MMA boards has 800 thousand. Both sites have hundreds of thousands of people visiting every day…can you imagine a better way of promotion? For us rock fans, we have been posting songs from our favorite musicians on these sort of boards for years and we always get positive replies and interest.
But because these are grown men and they do not usually like to hear idol songs, it’s important how you promote Kim Jaejoong’s songs. You should emphasize that the song is composed by Kim Bada and arranged by Sean.
Because these are two rock musicians who are well known, people tend to be curious to see how they work together so they will click on it. And then once they hear the songs, they will become fans of Kim Jaejoong as well, ignoring the idol stigma.
For us Kim Bada fans, this is the way we have always promoted. Both the boards targeting towards females and males help us give our artist more exposure and have even increased album sales for Kim Bada.
2. Though you are all probably already aware of this, having a song ranked within the top 10 of Melon is a great source of publicity because the top 10 songs are publicly displayed to anyone who visits the Melon site to download any music.
Jaejoong gallery is such a large gallery so you have a great number of people who will stream songs already.
But I am here to tell you all that myself and my friends on the Kim Bada and Sean galleries are willing to help you as well. In fact, they even asked me to come here to tell you that they would like to stream for Kim Jaejoong too.
The fans of Kim Bada have raised funds to pay for all the streaming, so you do not need to worry about that.
The fans of Sean as well are teaming up with us.
Because rock music almost never enters within the 10 ten spots, for us this is something that we are excited to try and we think that Kim Jaejoong’s songs are worth the effort. So please look for us in the coming week. Hopefully we can help make the official release of his songs daebak!
The full mini album will be released on January 17th and I think from then on your fandom will be busy with all the promotions. I hope that these songs will be a big hit amongst muggles and that all your promotion efforts will be a success…!!
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Translated by: Yule @ PrinceJJShared by: PrinceJJ