cousin.world is a regular newsletter on streaming and the global music industry.

Each week, I’ll update one of the following playlists with 10 ascendant tracks from global markets and provide analysis to explain how they’re breaking:

• run ⇡ — club tracks from euro & UK dancefloors

• cherry soda ⚭ — breaking k/c/p-pop, city pop and indie

• the grid ✚ — sounds of urbano, reggaeton, funk

• magnitude △ — afrobeat, dancehall and amapiano rising

This week, cherry soda ⚭ digs into the k-pop management companies, domestic pop talent from Indonesia and the Philippines and yet another anime adaptation sync storming the Japanese charts.

This playlist is dedicated to pop music with a particular focus on exports from the East Asian powerhouses. Next week, the grid ✚ highlights tracks from the booming LATAM markets as genres like funk and reggaeton dominate internationally.

I’m making this resource to hopefully demystify how songs are getting big internationally and inspire any artists, labels or teams looking overseas for their next collaboration or new connection.

If you have any thoughts on today’s mailer, please shoot me a reply 💌

cherry soda ⚭

1. IVE — ‘Baddie’ (South Korea)

IVE are a six-piece k-pop girl group signed to the South Korean management company Starship Entertainment.

The k-pop industry used to be more or less ruled by three big agencies: JYP, SM Town and YG Entertainment. When BTS became one of the biggest groups on earth, they took their management company Big Hit Entertainment (now Big Hit Music under HYBE corp) to the top with them. Since then, the landscape has somewhat diversified and there are now quite a few management companies with at least one major act on their roster.

Starship was founded in 2008 and became a subsidiary of Kakao Entertainment in 2013. Kakao owns the KakaoTalk app, essentially the WhatsApp of South Korea, along with various other culture and media properties. IVE made their live debut under Starship in December 2021 with the song ‘Eleven’.

Their latest single ‘Baddie’ is the third this year to claim the k-pop equivalent of the EGOT: what stans have dubbed a “Perfect All Kill”, meaning it debuted at the top of every single domestic music chart simultaneously, including all major DSPs. They now hold the record as the only group to have three perfect all kills in the same calendar year following this year’s previous hits ‘Kitsche’ and ‘I AM’.

2. (G)I-DLE, aespa, IVE — ‘Nobody’ (South Korea)

Speaking of IVE, this was just announced on Monday. One member from each of these three idol groups — (G)I-DLE, aespa and IVE — will break off to form a new “sub-unit” for a collaboration called ‘Nobody’ out Nov 16.

Sub-units are a pretty interesting piece of k-pop culture. The term refers to the practice of breaking down larger groups to create new ones, releasing separate-but-connected projects designed to improve profitability in various ways. For example, check out these mirrored versions of EXO’s single ‘Call Me Baby’ by sub-units EXO-K and EXO-M where the two groups rotate lineups and sing in either Korean or Mandarin to appeal to the Korean and Chinese markets respectively.

This comprehensive explainer on the phenomenon of sub-units on The Kraze highlights Super Junior-KRY as the first official sub-unit to debut back in 2006. The article goes on to callout LOONA, one of the wackiest sub-unit projects in k-pop, whose USP was to unveil a new group member or sub-unit every month for two years. In Korean, the group are called 이달의 소녀 or “girl of the month”. Over the two years, all twelve members were unveiled with solo singles and broke off to form three separate sub-units. Despite gaining a cult following among American pop fans, the group became embroiled in lawsuits against their agency Blockberry Creative. In June of this year, five of the twelve members won a suit to have their contracts with the company torn up.

Anyway, I will add this track to the playlist when it’s released on the 16th!

3. Nadhif Basalamah — ‘penjaga hati’ (Indonesia)

On November 1st, Music Ally published its latest Sandbox report on Southeast Asian trigger cities.

Trigger marketing refers to the practice of targeting influential streaming cities, mostly in Southeast Asia and Latin America, with activities designed to nudge songs into playlisting algorithms that will have both a regional and global effect. The report highlights Jakarta as one of the most influential trigger cities and the biggest consumer of new pop music from Europe and North America (per Chartmetric’s rankings) making it the perfect city to look to when building audiences abroad.

Despite this penchant for international pop, streamers in Indonesia are also fond of supporting homegrown talent. Nadhif Basalamah is an Indonesian artist currently topping the Top 50 Indonesia playlist with this track ‘penjaga hati’. Nearly 2m of his 7.2m monthly listeners are based in Jakarta.

4. Jed Baruelo — ‘Nahuhulog’ (The Philippines)

Alongside Jakarta as one of Southeast Asia’s most influential cities is Quezon City. The city is consistently one of the top 5 streaming cities on a massive array of international and domestic artists, thanks to the Philippines’ hyper-connected, young population, most of whom are listening on Spotify.

Jed Baruelo is a 19-year-old artist from Quezon City. This track ‘Nahuhulog’ was released last year but is still pulling huge numbers, now totalling 30m on Spotify alone, and sits atop one of the country’s flagship domestic pop playlists Tatak Pinoy.

You can also find out more about the Philippines in the aforementioned Music Ally Sandbox report here, though you do need to be a subscriber.

5. King & Prince — ‘MAGIC WORD’ (Japan)

My day ones will perhaps remember me writing about the power of Japanese TV syncs in the first edition of cherry soda ⚭ two months ago. The latest number 1 on Oricon’s daily top songs chart is by duo King & Prince with a track called ‘MAGIC WORD'.

‘MAGIC WORD’ serves as the theme song to a TV show called 今日からヒットマン or, roughly, Hitman From Today, an adaptation of the eponymous manga about a tortured-yet-sexy office worker turned hitman.

The official video for this track has already pulled 2.2m views since it was uploaded to YouTube 3 weeks ago. The success of the track solidifies trends in Japan of anime and manga TV adaptation syncs providing not just massive domestic success but a portal to international success among anime’s global consumer base.

+ Five More…

6. SEVENTEEN — ‘God of Music’ (South Korea)

The newest entry in the Billboard Korea Songs chart is this from SEVENTEEN, taken from their new EP SEVENTEENTH Heaven: the 11th mini-album. Its second week in the chart finds it at number 2. Read more about SEVENTEEN on TIME.

7. OFFICIAL HIGE DANDISM — ‘Tattoo’ (Japan)

This track, released back in April, is currently #1 on the flagship j-pop playlist J-Pop Hits from Spotify Japan.

8. Flowstrong, DaBao — ‘HOT SAUCE’ (Taiwan)

This track is currently topping an Apple Music editorial playlist focusing on new Taiwanese artists called Made In Taiwan.

9. Cyndi Wang — ‘Sentimental’ (Taiwan)

A new album from Taiwanese pop star Cyndi Wang is currently topping streaming charts across the region. This track is currently number 1 on the regional DSP KKBOX’s Daily Singles Mix — in fact, tracks from the album make up the entire top 5.

10. Jung Kook — ‘Standing Next To You’ (South Korea)

The most popular member of the most popular group in the world (citation needed) released his new album last week, chock full of big name international collabs like Major Lazer, DJ Snake, Latto and Jack Harlow. This is the latest focus track from the album and I imagine it will be as record-breaking as all the others.

The Playlists