It Costs Over $1,000,000 USD To Debut A K-Pop Group, Here’s The Breakdown

According to JYP Entertainment‘s statistics, it can cost up to a staggering ₩900 million KRW (about $786,000 USD) just to train a new K-Pop group!

These numbers are based on a hypothetical 5-member boy group. If each of the members trains for an average of 3 years, this alone would cost JYP Entertainment between ₩700 million KRW (about $611,000 USD) and ₩900 million KRW (about $786,000 USD).

A comeback for an existing group isn’t much cheaper. A mini-album with three songs costs ₩12 million krw to record and ₩15 million krw to produce. That’s a total of ₩27.0 million KRW (about $23,600 USD), just for three songs!

A single music video can cost ₩150 million KRW (about $131,000 USD). If the company were to release a music video for just half the tracks on a typical 6 track mini-album, it would cost them ₩450 million KRW (about $393,000 USD), plus the album’s jacket shooting cost of ₩20.0 million KRW (about $17,500 USD) !

… And the price of a mini-album is nothing compared to the marketing costs. Promoting an existing group’s comeback through music broadcasts costs ₩500 million KRW (about $437,000 USD)!

That ₩500 million includes: ₩50.0 million KRW (about $43,700 USD) for choreography,₩100 million KRW (about $87,300 USD) for backup dancers, ₩170 million KRW (about $148,000 USD) for stage outfits (worn for 6 weeks of promotions, to 4 music shows a week), and ₩10.0 million KRW (about $8,730 USD) just for stage makeup! Viral marketing costs another ₩150 million KRW (about $131,000 USD), while processing and other miscellaneous costs run up to ₩2.00 million KRW (about $1,750 USD).

If a group costs ₩900 million to debut, ₩197 million for a mini-album and related costs, and ₩500 million for their first comeback, that comes to over ₩1.50 billion KRW (about $1.31 million USD) just for one K-Pop group!

K-Pop is, at its core, a wildly competitive and lucrative business. Companies pour funds into their stars because they expect a sizable profit in return.

Idol groups that don’t live up to the company’s expectations can expect to rack up over ₩1 billion won in debt, if they signed with a company other than the “Big 3”.