
Music Group Big Ocean Emerges as First K-Pop Boy Band With Hearing Loss
Music group Big Ocean is breaking ground in the music industry, cementing itself as the world's first K-pop boy band with hearing loss.
Formed in April of last year, the three-member group is made up of Lee Chanyeon, PJ, and Kim Jiseok, who all have hearing disabilities and hope to break-barriers within performance and music.

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12 hours ago
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Listings on an online Singaporean marketplace range from $5 to $25 per photo card. K-pop shops in Singapore also sell exclusive photo cards for $15 to $20 a piece. The photo card feeding frenzy is just one branch of the sprawling landscape of K-pop, with its seemingly infinite supply of boy and girl groups debuting every year. Seventeen has been around for 10 years, and their peers at parent company Hybe, BTS, are set to return this month in full force for the group's 12th anniversary. Though K-pop stocks dipped in 2024, Goldman Sachs analysts projected in a June 5 report that "Mega IPs" — bands like BTS, that perform in stadium-sized venues — would continue to buoy the companies this year. Concerts, albums, and merchandising are all part of the monetization mechanism for bands under Hybe. In 2023, Seventeen, per statistics compiled by Goldman, notched an all-time high of 4.5 million albums sold in week one of release that broke the Grammy-nominated BTS's record of 3.3 million copies. Photo cards aren't the only factor driving physical album sales. "In the early years, fans used to buy more albums to collect additional photo cards. Nowadays, they often trade or sell them among themselves," said Stephanie Choi, an assistant professor in ethnomusicology at the University of Colorado-Boulder. "There are so many different reasons for album purchase, and photo cards are one of the many reasons," Choi added. Fans may want to mass-buy albums to clinch spots at exclusive events or just to help their idols chart better. Still, it's fair to say that Seventeen's fame isn't built on a house of cards. "While photo cards are crucial for immediate sales, digital strategies and continuous online engagement are indispensable for long-term fan base growth and sustainable commercial success," Koo, the marketing expert from Korea University, added. Hybe's stock is up 43% in the last year. Read the original article on Business Insider Sign in to access your portfolio