The best of BTS on Disney Plus
At the start of their decade-long career, fans of Korean group BTS couldn’t just switch on a Western streaming service like Disney Plus and stream concerts or behind-the-scenes documentaries featuring their favorite musical artists. Not only did Disney Plus not exist in 2013, but the Bangtan Boys didn’t have the resources that allowed them easy industry exposure in Korea, let alone on the other side of the planet, in the world’s biggest music market. Back then, BTS was an underdog group coming out of Big Hit Entertainment, a small music company rather than one of Korea’s “Big Three” music corporations (JYP, SM, and YG) that got most of the mainstream exposure. Because of this, much of BTS’s early fan interaction — especially internationally — came via their own YouTube channel, where they connected with fans via vlogs even before their official “debut” as a group.
Today, BTS is the biggest band in the world — even as they take a break from group activities to focus on solo music and complete their mandatory military service. And their small music company, Big Hit Entertainment, has grown into a global media corporation called HYBE. They still release much of their content via YouTube (their global popularity also allowed HYBE to launch an entire web platform called Weverse), but have made the occasional distribution deal with other platforms. The biggest of these deals is with Disney Plus, which launched at the end of 2019 and is currently available in 60 countries around the world.
Last July, HYBE announced a collaboration deal with Disney that would see “five major content titles” from the Korean music company get distribution on the global streaming platform. Less than a year later, Disney Plus has released four of
Read more on polygon.com
