K-pop stars are increasingly experimenting with their sounds on streaming platform SoundCloud. Boy band members are especially using the site to share music beyond their group work.
As the clock struck midnight in Seoul on May 3, new song Monroe by Taeyong of NCT 127 and featuring Exo member Baekhyun, dropped on the music site. The pair work together in SuperM, a group featuring artists from across South Korean company SM Entertainment’s boy band roster.
The Marilyn Monroe-inspired tune leans into jazz, R&B, and typical pop sounds to create a vibrant tune that blends the pairs’ voices as they sing about classic love tropes and passion.
Monroe is the fifth original song Taeyong has shared through his SoundCloud account since he opened it in mid-March. He also uploaded a remix. Since being uploaded, Monroe has been streamed over 800,000 times; his other songs each have anywhere from 1 to nearly 4.5 million streams.
Taeyong is one in a long line of K-pop boy band members who have used the platform to share solo projects. Others include Got7’s JB, Exo’s Chanyeol, Stray Kids’ producer trio 3racha, Day6‘s Jae, NCT and WayV’s Kun, Pentagon’s Kino, and Monsta X’s Joohoney.
Far fewer female K-pop stars use SoundCloud, although soloists such as Baek Yerin and some members of girl groups Lovelyz and Dia have accounts.
Several K-pop groups, including BTS – who have a long history with SoundCloud releases – and Seventeen, share joint SoundCloud accounts where members share songs, remixes and snippets of music that haven’t made it onto albums or been released formally through paid-for digital streaming platforms.
Occasionally works from SoundCloud get incorporated in other releases.
In general, K-pop stars remain part of their bands even while pursuing their own solo careers and releasing individual albums, but SoundCloud, which is free to use and an alternative to YouTube, provides an opportunity for artists to develop and showcase their musical style as it develops in a more raw form than is typical.
K-pop stars with SoundCloud accounts often share deeply personal projects that are usually self-produced or co-produced, and use the streaming platform as a place to show how they are exploring different genres or performance styles than the music they produce within their primary bands.
For some artists, it provides a place to explore not only different musical styles but also explore their own tones; rappers such as Taeyong, for instance, can showcase their singing, even though on NCT and SuperM releases he rarely, if ever, gets the opportunity.
SoundCloud does have optional paid-for and premium channels, and recently launched a fan-powered royalties programme. But the site is not typically a revenue-making platform for many artists. It is not known whether any K-pop artists profit from their personal accounts.
Along with original work, K-pop stars often share covers on the streaming platform, as well as on YouTube – where many artists, including some who use SoundCloud, also share work that doesn’t generate royalties.