‘A Performance Powerhouse’ Is Different…YG and the Power of ‘Experiential Music’ Built Over 30 Years
[헤럴드뮤즈=박서현 기자] YG Entertainment concerts are regarded not as simple showcases of accumulated hit songs, but as real-life embodiments of an artist’s musical universe. Placing greater value on ‘experiential music’ beyond ‘music to watch,’ YG has continued to innovate in order to break away from standardized domestic stage production and breathe together with audiences.
YG’s pioneering of the global concert market is closely tied to the expansion of K-pop. The starting point was SE7EN’s activities in Japan in the 2000s. Before it became common for male K-pop solo artists to enter the Japanese market, YG chose an aggressive strategy of touring major local cities and meeting fans in person.
Having laid the foundation, YG fired the starting shot for full-fledged global tour expansion with BIGBANG and 2NE1, widening the touring radius of K-pop artists, which had largely remained within Asia, to the entire world. In fact, BIGBANG’s first tour, ‘ALIVE GALAXY,’ encompassed 48 shows in total, covering not only major Asian cities but also China, North America, and Europe. 2NE1’s first tour, ‘NEW EVOLUTION,’ remains the first world tour by a Korean girl group. Performing in cities such as Newark and Los Angeles in the United States, they turned the possibility of girl groups expanding into the global market into reality.
Since then, BIGBANG and 2NE1 have continued to hold overseas tours, both as groups and solo artists, while YG artists such as WINNER, iKON, EPIK HIGH, and BLACKPINK have met global fans beyond Korea. This has helped build strong trust in the quality of performances by YG artists, leading to goodwill toward TREASURE and BABYMONSTER, who are currently active. TREASURE set a record for the largest audience turnout by a Korean artist on a first Japan tour with 300,000 attendees, while BABYMONSTER is making remarkable strides on the global stage with records such as holding the fastest world tour after debut among K-pop girl groups.
YG also went a step beyond artist tours to establish a milestone in the meeting between Korean popular music and music festivals in the English-speaking world. The first step was EPIK HIGH’s appearance at Coachella, the largest music festival in the United States, in 2016, and BLACKPINK also became the first K-pop girl group to be included in the lineup in 2019. BLACKPINK later elevated K-pop’s status even further by headlining both Coachella and the United Kingdom’s representative music festival Hyde Park in 2023.
BLACKPINK became the first K-pop girl group to be named in this festival lineup, drawing major attention from global music fans.
Through these varied attempts, YG gradually expanded the scale of its performances and set numerous records. BIGBANG, in particular, achieved unprecedented accomplishments at the time, including drawing the largest audience for a single tour by a K-pop artist with 1.5 million attendees, becoming the first overseas artist to hold a six-dome tour in Japan, recording the largest K-pop artist audience and the most cities for a tour in China with 250,000 attendees across 13 cities, and staging the largest-scale North American tour.
BLACKPINK’s trajectory lived up to the title of ‘world class.’ After setting a new K-pop girl group world tour record by drawing about 470,000 attendees on their first world tour, they broke their own record with about 1.8 million attendees on their second world tour. On their third tour, they opened a new chapter for K-pop girl group world tours by centering the tour around major stadiums in North America and Europe, including becoming the first girl group in the world to sell out two days at SoFi Stadium in the United States and the first K-pop girl group to enter Wembley in the United Kingdom.
YG’s next-generation artists are continuing that momentum. TREASURE’s cumulative audience for solo concerts in Japan is nearing 1.5 million, while BABYMONSTER drew around 440,000 people through solo tours alone in one year, combining their first world tour and fan concert tour in 2025.
Through this performance, TREASURE became the first Korean artist to enter Tokyo Dome with a first fan meeting tour in Japan.
YG chose collaboration with global partners in order to realize a level of concert quality that works on the world stage. It held BIGBANG’s first world tour together with Live Nation, the world’s largest concert promoter.
YG’s collaboration with overseas creative personnel was another strategy to raise the quality of its performances to a higher level. Through major tours by its artists, YG actively worked with world-class staff members who had created stages for global pop stars such as Beyonce, Michael Jackson, and Rihanna, combining global pop concert systems with K-pop to enhance an international sensibility. In 2021, when online concerts were booming in the aftermath of COVID-19, YG also signed the world’s first livestream concert partnership with YouTube Music and presented BLACKPINK’s online concert ‘THE SHOW.’
Through this, YG has shared performance grammar that maximizes the strengths of the K-pop genre and a high level of understanding of local environments, while overseas teams have contributed production know-how and fresh perspectives accumulated in global pop concerts. YG explained, “The principle behind our collaboration with global partners has always been mutual growth. Both companies are feeling the results of that, and we continue to create sustained synergy through long-term partnerships.”
BABYMONSTER is enjoying explosive popularity, drawing around 440,000 people in Japan through solo tours alone over one year, combining their first world tour and fan concert tour in 2025.
The consistent standard that runs through YG’s global tours is the ‘upward leveling of quality.’ Recreating the quality of a show that begins in Seoul at the same level in every city around the world is the principle YG’s concert production team values most when designing a tour.
To that end, YG secures more generous pre-production periods for tours than other agencies. For large-scale projects, more than six months are devoted to pre-production alone. This is to raise production quality to a level that can encompass both domestic and global markets, while preparing for variables that can occur in indoor and outdoor venues, as well as medium-sized and large-scale concert halls. In fact, BIGBANG’s 20th anniversary world tour, scheduled to take place in August, began preliminary design early this year.
On-site sound is the essence of performance that YG never lets go of. For example, BLACKPINK’s [DEADLINE] Goyang concert required great care to minimize the deterioration and loss of sound that often occur at outdoor concerts, and to maintain consistent sound pressure even across a vast space. In particular, YG introduced the high-end line array system COHESION CO-12 for the first time at a Korean concert to overcome outdoor environmental variables, and delivered clear sound to every seat through specialized software tuning. As a result, not only fans but also on-site engineers and industry insiders gave high praise for the sound quality.
With this tour, YG fired the starting shot for full-fledged global expansion.
In addition, YG introduced live bands ahead of the time when band live performances became common at K-pop concerts, building a unique performance grammar. At its core is the perfect synchronization of carefully pre-adjusted digital sources and live band sessions on site. As tracks responsible for the precision of the original songs and the powerful performance of the band are transmitted simultaneously at the venue, audiences experience both the perfection of the recorded sound and the vividness of live performance.
YG stated, “The on-site connection shared by artists and fans is just as important as stage production. Artists constantly strengthen their abilities for flawless live performances, and pour their energy into every moment to breathe more deeply with audiences. Live-centered planning and a sense of presence are the essence that YG performances seek to uphold,” adding, “We will continue taking on challenges to give fans an experience that goes beyond simple viewing.”
2026. 7. 29.
