In South Korea, a viral tweet accused a certain someone or something of “ruining” K-pop thanks to three changes:
- Removing bridges from songs
- Introducing renewable fan club memberships
- Shortening songs to around two minutes so they’ll go viral on TikTok.
While the post didn’t name names, many fans pointed their fingers at HYBE.
This argument has been around for years. HYBE has become one of the biggest companies in K-pop. Artists like BTS and NewJeans have influenced what the genre should sound like. Does that mean HYBE is actually responsible for these trends? Or are they just catching the most heat for what K-pop as a whole has evolved into?
The Case Against HYBE
Originally, K-Pop songs were between 3 to 4 minutes. They followed a familiar formula of having two to three verses, chorus, bridge, and chorus again. Now it’s common for popular artists to release songs that are barely 2 minutes long. Even if the song is longer, there’s no guarantee it’ll have a bridge or an extra chorus. This change in particular is despised by many fans. They feel like most songs feel incomplete without a proper “ending”.
Fanclubs were also non-renewable. You had to join at a specific date and that was usually it. This blocked casual fans from joining only to get perks or attend concerts. Now, fan memberships can be renewed and even offer perks like attending sound checks. Recently, HYBE’s Weverse rolled out new paid membership tiers with extra benefits for superfans. These trends have fans worried that K-pop is losing the passion that launched the genre onto the global stage.
These Trends That Were Bound to Happen
While HYBE helped normalize some of these trends, none of them actually started with the company.
Shorter song lengths didn’t become mainstream in K-pop until around 2023. This was around the time that more Western/U.S. music fans were taking notice of the genre. By then, 2 minute songs had been popular in the U.S. for years with K-pop labels adapting over time.
HYBE artists like NewJeans and LE SSERAFIM helped bring short, catchy songs into the mainstream, but so did artists from other labels. Cube’s i-dle, JYP Entertainment’s TWICE and Stray Kids are some of the more popular artists to have short songs. Yet, they don’t get nearly the same level of criticism as HYBE artists.
In fact one could argue that YG Entertainment was the one to normalize strange song structures in K-pop. BLACKPINK’s biggest songs are between 3–3 1⁄2 minutes but often don’t have a bridge or an extra chorus. If anything, YG opened the door for “non-traditional” K-pop, not HYBE.
Why HYBE Gets Blamed Anyway
Part of why HYBE catches so much criticism is because of how inescapable they are. HYBE has multiple sub-labels under their umbrella.
They’re everywhere. Ranking on music charts. Appearing on variety shows. Winning on music shows. When the biggest player makes a move, the rest of the industry tends to play catch up. That creates an illusion of control.
To be fair, HYBE’s approach is more business-forward than most. The company’s focus on global expansion has changed how K-pop interacts with fans. The launch of Weverse pushed monetization and fan management into a new phase; one that other labels adopted.
So yes, HYBE plays a role in pushing trends to the mainstream. That doesn’t mean they’re the sole architects of change. It’s just that when they do something, everyone notices.
The Reality of Evolution
Blaming HYBE for every new trend that K-pop fans hate is giving them too much credit. K-pop was never going to stay frozen in the early 2010s. No genre ever does.
The rise of streaming, global recognition, and TikTok made these changes inevitable. HYBE just happened to be in the right (or wrong) position to accelerate what was already happening.
Also, most fans ignore the fact that it’s only a handful of artists releasing short songs. TripleS, Jay B, and almost every SM Entertainment artist are just some of the artists with songs that are 3 minutes long or have a traditional song structure. There’s room for both styles but some people seem to forget about that.
