K-pop in 2026 and New York Punk Circa 1980: Fan Economies, Opposite Blueprints

A K-pop fan in 2026 and a New York punk kid around 1980 have one thing in common: in both scenes, the audience does much of the work of moving the music. Punk relied on zines and self-run labels. K-pop relies on bulk buying, collectible culture and full arenas. Beyond that, the two scenes are built on opposite plans.

The fan-powered part

New York punk had its rooms. CBGB was the center of the city's scene, and Max's Kansas City shaped it just as much. The Ramones played their first CBGB show in 1974, on bills with Television, Patti Smith and Talking Heads. Their debut album came out in April 1976, so this year is punk's 50th anniversary.

The scene spread through paper. Orphiq writes that punk's communication network was zines: photocopied, hand-stapled magazines that covered local scenes, reviewed records, ran interviews and listed upcoming shows. Maximumrocknroll, Flipside and hundreds of smaller titles added up to a national underground press. A band could mail a demo tape to a zine writer and find listeners in another city with no radio play, press coverage or label backing.

Those homemade zines helped carry punk from coast to coast. Some ran out of money within a few years, and others lasted for decades. Historian Kevin Mattson's book We're Not Here To Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan, and the Real Culture War of 1980s America describes a counterculture that took hold almost simultaneously in dozens of American cities, producing Black Flag, Dead Kennedys and the Minutemen.

K-pop's fan engine runs through the physical album. Kelly Kyuu wrote on Medium that fan habits such as bulk buying and collecting have heavily driven physical sales. In the U.S., Billboard reported that K-pop album sales rose 77% in the first seven months of 2023, citing Luminate. Most of that growth came from physical copies, almost all of them CDs, and K-pop acts held five of the top 10 physical albums in the country.

Both scenes also started out as outsiders. Bernie Cho, president of DFSB Kollective, told Billboard that a decade before 2023, acts like BIGBANG and EXO were "doing insane numbers, but they were considered outsiders or outliers."

Where it falls apart

The split is over who owns the system. According to Orphiq, independent labels before punk were mostly seen as a path to a major deal. Punk labels were ideological and existed to get around the majors entirely. SST Records, run by Black Flag's Greg Ginn, pressed its own records, arranged its own distribution and built its own touring circuit for Husker Du, Minutemen and Sonic Youth, because no major would sign them. Dischord Records in Washington, D.C., started by Ian MacKaye and Jeff Nelson to put out Minor Threat, never used contracts and split revenue 50/50 with its artists.

K-pop is moving the other way. SM Entertainment, JYP Entertainment, YG Entertainment and HYBE are preparing a joint venture to launch a global music festival, working title "FANOMENON." J.Y. Park leads the project. He is also co-chair of the Presidential Committee on Popular Culture Exchange, an advisory body that coordinates Korea's cultural export strategy directly under the president. Billboard wrote that the structure matters more than the festival: four rivals working within a public-private framework would mark the clearest sign yet that K-pop's next phase of growth is being planned by the industry as a whole, not by individual labels.

The money is on a different scale too. Music Business Worldwide reported that HYBE earned record concert revenue of KRW 763.9 billion ($537.5 million) in FY 2025, up 69.4%, from 279 shows in 53 cities with 12 artists. SM's fourth-quarter concert revenue rose 53.6% to KRW 34.5 billion ($23.8 million), driven by tours from NCT DREAM, aespa and RIIZE.

Media works differently as well. Punk zines let bands get past radio altogether. Kyuu wrote that slowing domestic album sales and signs of saturation in Korea's core fanbase have pushed K-pop companies toward the global market: more international tours, collaborations with global artists and a focus on platforms with worldwide reach.

The industry's next step has a date. FANOMENON is set to debut in Korea in December 2027 and to expand to major global cities from 2028.