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LOS ANGELES \u2014 At a K-pop store in Koreatown, Emma Salehi flips through shelves of CDs and albums. It\u2019s just one of the places her love for K-pop brings her.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI started listening to K-pop back in 2018, and ever since then, it\u2019s been a major part of my life,\u201d Salehi said. \u201cI started with posting about K-pop on social media, and now I really just love seeing it go global.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/center> For Salehi, part of the appeal is the way K-pop constantly reinvents itself.<\/p>\n \u201cFor me, and I think for a lot of other people, the performance aspect of K-pop is so dynamic and interesting. You don\u2019t just have them singing. You also have them dancing and rapping and producing. They\u2019re really all hands-on. Also, a big part of it is the fandom culture,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n That same fandom energy fueled the success of Netflix\u2019s \u201cK-pop Demon Hunters,\u201d\u00a0an animated hit that introduced many to the idea of virtual music groups.<\/p>\n \u201cI do find it fascinating,\u201d Salehi said. \u201cI think, at times, it\u2019s honestly safer for the artist to remain virtual, so it kinda creates a hub for people to like the music just because it is the music, maybe not for any other reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, Los Angeles could be the place where a new virtual K-pop group is born. Galaxy Corporation, the entertainment tech company behind global superstar G-Dragon, recently held auditions for its first fully virtual group. Contestants performed behind a massive screen, their voices and movements instantly translated into avatars through a simple phone. The judges never even saw their faces.<\/p>\n \u201cWe chose Los Angeles as the starting point for this global project because it\u2019s a cultural hub where music, entertainment and technology all come together,\u201d said GK, a Galaxy Corporation executive. \u201cIt\u2019s also home to such a diverse artist community, which really reflects our motto of respecting everyone\u2019s potential, no matter their background or experience.\u201d<\/p>\n GK, who spent a decade managing some of K-pop\u2019s biggest names, says the timing is right.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cVirtual artists have already found success in Korea. Groups like Plaive are hugely popular, and K-pop already has this energetic global fandom,\u201d he said. \u201cBuilding on that foundation, we believe the next global K-pop sensation can be a virtual group. That\u2019s why Galaxy Corporation is launching this competition as the first step.\u201d<\/p>\n The numbers back him up. Spotify reports that between 2018 and 2023, global K-pop streams surged more than 360%, proof the music\u2019s reach is still growing worldwide.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that whole concept is really interesting to me,\u201d Salehi said. \u201cI\u2019m really excited to see the surge of these groups.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source spectrumnews1.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" LOS ANGELES \u2014 At a K-pop store in Koreatown, Emma Salehi flips through shelves of CDs and albums. It\u2019s just one of the places her love for K-pop brings her.\u00a0 \u201cI started listening to K-pop back in 2018, and ever since then, it\u2019s been a major part of my life,\u201d Salehi said. \u201cI started with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2052744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[22694,22691,21741,362479,352834,71501],"class_list":["post-2052743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-app-arts-entertainment","tag-california","tag-entertainment","tag-rae-williams","tag-socal-what-you-need-to-know","tag-vod"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/The-popularity-of-virtual-K-pop-groups-grows.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2052743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2052743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2052743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2052744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2052743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2052743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2052743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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