A new generation of female songwriters who have made their way onto the K-pop scene – a genre in global growth – is pointed out as an important factor behind Sweden's continued success story in music export, shows a report from the copyright organization Stim.
Since 2018, song revenues from K-pop have increased by about 1,000 percent. Of the ten largest Swedish music exporters in K-pop, based on income in Swedish kronor, half are women. When it comes to the ten largest in all genres, they are all men.
K-pop has dominated the music world globally thanks to bands like BTS. What's fascinating to me is that Swedish songwriters are behind this upswing. So they're not just writing for the Korean market, but for Korean artists whose songs are played all over the world, says Will Page, who has produced the report.
As an example, he mentions Ellen Berg, who, among other things, wrote the hit song "Peek-a-boo" for the K-pop group Red Velvet. Her latest contribution to the K-pop scene, "Do the dance”, was released on Monday and has already 20 million views on Youtube.
But it's not just about one or two female songwriters, we're talking about hundreds, which is fantastic, and it's just going to keep growing.
The trend is not new, but has according to Page exploded in recent years.
K-pop record companies have worked with Swedish songwriters long before 2018 thanks to songwriting camps where Korean artists have been introduced to Swedish songwriters. The lyrics are in Korean, but the melody is Swedish. That's where the magic happens, he says.
