K-POP’s first quarter Big 3: IU, OSTs, and solo singers

Seoul, Korea – Up until last year idol groups were in control of the k-pop charts; however, 2011’s first quarter music market was dominated by IU, solo singers, and OSTs.

Soribad, a music service enterprise, put together a list of 2011 first quarter’s “best ten.”

IU was the most noticeable singer in the list. IU ranked number one on the chart with her solo “A Good Day.” Her songs “Someday” and “The story only I didn’t know” ranked 4th and 7th respectively as well. It was obvious to anyone that she had dominated the k-pop industry this first quarter.

It was also surprising to see that during the first quarter, OST songs accounted for 20.8 percent of all the weekly top songs; that is about 25 songs of the total 120 songs. Some of them are Sung Shi Gyoung’s “You are my spring,” Baek Ji Young’s “That girl,” and Yoon Sang Hyun’s “Here I am.”

One may also notice the impact solo artists have had this year, considering their unpopularity from last year. G.Na and Lee Hyun for example have successfully entered the “best ten” chart. G.Na ranked number six with her song “Black and white,” while Lee Hyun ranked number nine with “You are the best.”

K-Will also took Soribada’s weekly best top spot during the fourth week of January and third week of March with his song “Speechless.”

Also, Idol groups were popular as ever. A female group, Secret was able to rank number three with their song “Shyboy,” and was the most popular female group during the first quarter. Big Bang was the only group to take the weekly best top spot two weeks in a row with their song “Tonight,” and ranked number 8 on the quarter’s “best ten” chart. G-Dragon and Top also ranked number 10 with their song “High high.”

A Soribada personnel said, “Singers with vocal skills were more popular than those who were performance oriented during the first quarter of 2011.” He added, “This is probably because the general public are trying to ‘listen’ to the artists rather than trying to ‘see’ them. This trend of music selection will probably continue in the near future.”