I’ve spent the past week wondering what to write about for today’s blog entry. I don’t want to start writing about specific groups or even specific genres for another couple of weeks, so I was wondering for most of the week what I could write about. It’s one of those things where there’s just so much to write about that you end up not knowing what to write at all because you don’t even know where to start

I have that problem a lot XD

But when I signed on today, I found that a couple of artists that I like have released digital singles, and so in that I have found my topic for today 😀

Digital singles – tracks that you can legally download from the artist’s/label’s website – are something that certainly aren’t exclusive to the Korean music industry, but this was where I first realised of their existence, and it seems to be quite a popular thing for artists to do.

I’ve seen them used in a variety of situations, and even though they’re free, I think they’re a pretty clever marketing strategy.

In the case of a new artist, maybe one that hasn’t debuted yet or hasn’t released a full album yet, digital singles are a good way to get exposure with new listeners who may not want to spend money on someone that they haven’t heard much of before. It’s also a handy way to gauge popularity and interest, from being able to see how many times the digital single has been downloaded.

In the case of an already established artist, it’s a good way to keep the interest of the fans between albums. Being frequently in the spotlight is something that is pretty important for continued success, and each country’s artists achieve this in a different way. While the Japanese artists release several singles between albums, Korean artists seem to act in dramas and sitcoms, or appear frequently on variety shows, showing their sides as entertainers rather than just singers. They just don’t seem to release a lot of singles between albums. Some do, but most of the time the artists simply put out a full album, and pick two or three tracks to make MVs of and do performances of, and promote the album as a whole for several months, and then put out a new album. Digital singles are a handy way to fill in the time between albums, especially if the artist is likely to take more than a year to release their next one, or isn’t going to be heavily promoting. It’s also pretty handy if the artist is currently busy with other activities. It’s kind of like “I’m still here guys, don’t worry!”

It’s also a handy way to make special little releases, for special seasons such as Christmas, or for special projects or commercial campaigns, such as 비’s promotions for BMW with the Still Believe digital single, or Drunken Tiger and Jaurim’s collaboration for Spray Love, a campaign (I think with The Bodyshop?) to promote AIDs awareness.

Digital singles also allow the artist and their management to see how things lie with the overseas fans. I’ll use Super Junior’s U single as an example for this one. Although later released as an actual CD single with three tracks, it was first released on SM Entertainment’s website. There were two songs, released seperately over the course of four days. The first track was U, which was downloaded over 1.7 million times. This is a huge amount, considering the fact that Korean albums by the most popular artists very rarely break the 300,000 or 400,000 mark in domestic sales. And through the stats of the downloads, SM Entertainment was able to see the extent of Super Junior’s overseas fanbase.

So, there you have it 😀 I think digital singles are a really, really smart thing, for a lot of reasons.