All hell has broken loose around the world today when netizens found that K-Pop entertainment agency, Cube Entertainment’s artistes’ music videos were being blocked for international fans. Cube Entertainment is home to popular K-Pop idols/idols groups such as 4Minute, B2ST, G.NA, and HyunA and also label liaison with Universal Music Group.
Reports from K-Pop fanbases said that Universal wanted to keep K-pop in Korea and was subsequently blocking videos in the U.S. and U.K. with other countries soon to follow.
The online pandemonium first took place with the Twitter hashtag #giveuskpop taking over the popular social media platform. “UMG” also became a worldwide trending topic:
Soon after, the mob of angry K-Pop fans started a petition against the sudden K-Pop music videos ban, with some netizens stating, “UMG has no right to be blocking KPOP videos from YouTube. They can’t tell us what music to listen to and therefore, they can’t tell us whether or not we can listen to KPOP or not” and “These videos are the only way we can connect with our idols. We as international fans barely even see these idols for heaven’s sakes and by blocking these videos you’re just basically destroying our only connection and our love of kpop!! This is just so racist! I thought the world was all over this racism issue!”.
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All that retaliation was enough to put the music videos back online – namely, HyunA’s “Bubble Pop!”:
[youtube id=”bw9CALKOvAI” width=”600″ height=”350″]
Upon further review, Billboard found Vevo accounts for 4Minute, G.NA, B2ST, and HyunA and realized that those were the accounts that had certain music videos blocked for certain countries but the original YouTube accounts still have the videos available.
Conclusion? The music videos weren’t irrationally blocked. UMG could’ve just been trying to redirect traffic to the Vevo sites in order for their company to get money for each view. And it may be a transitioning move to actually make K-pop more visible in the U.S. market as Vevo is the largest U.S. website for music videos due to their connection with YouTube.
(Source)
