I had no idea K Pop Music was such a big deal, to be honest.

K Pop is short for Korean pop music. (A stretch, I know.)

I listened to a few songs and, I think, K Pop looks and sounds like an eastern version of American teen pop from the 1990’s.

Somewhere between the Backstreet-boys, NSYNC, and Destiny’s Child…

Just because this made me interested, I looked up the top 10 music markets by size:

• USA
• Japan
• Germany
• UK
• France
• South Korea
• Canada
• Australia
• Brazil
• China

I would think China would be higher on the list, just based on population, but what do I know?

And if China should be there, where is India?

THANKS IN NO SMALL part to Chairman Lee, K-pop has become a fixture on pop charts not only in Korea but throughout Asia, including Japan—the world’s second-biggest music market, after the United States. Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia are major K-pop consumers. South Korea, a country of fewer than 50 million, has somehow figured out how to make pop hits for more than a billion and a half other Asians, contributing $ 2 billion a year to Korea’s economy, according to the BBC.

-John Seabrook, The Song Machine