[Article] SKorea to spend 91 million dollars to bolster K-pop music

[nmskalmn]

Excerpt:

South Korea has unveiled a 91-million-dollar plan to bolster its music industry, which has been badly hit by illegal online downloads.

The Culture, Sports and Tourism Ministry said it would create a Korean version of the US Billboard Charts and a K-pop award evoking the Grammys in a bid to "globalise" the country's pop music.

Ministers hope the five-year plan will double the country's annual sales, online and in shops, to 1.7 trillion won (1.2 billion dollars) by 2013, they said in a statement.

Read it: SKorea to spend 91 million dollars to bolster K-pop music

[Luv ~Venus~]

It's about time. Gawd. The one month charts thingy wasn't getting it at all. K-music was ferious last year and I felt that a lot artists deserved so many awards. Sales were great last year but that was only for boybands. Wonder Girls "So Hot" single didn't even grace the 100k mark despite it being so freaking popular. Perhaps with the new Billboard and award ceremonies, it'll raise sales as predicted.

[Aisha_Angel]

I'd love to see K-pop music increase in sales...but I don't think the key to making that happen is spending more money. Since sales are so low in Korea, isn't that like spending money you don't have? And if it's money coming from the governement, it has to be money coming from another source that is producing revenue. If you borrow too much from that source, you'll end up having to borrow from another to cover the loss of it and continue the spiral...

But I'm not a business major, so I honestly couldn't tell you whether or not this is a good thing or a bad thing. Just a little common sense helped me to figure that out.

Either way, I hope everything works out well. (Hopefully it'll inspire the debut of TVXQ in oh, IDK...America?!)

[Chandrachan]

I think it's a good idea, as I've recently got into KPOP