More Bangtan For Your Buck
The Free Perks Of Being An ARMY
Anti-capitalism and hyperfixation on consumption have become the new buzzwords in stan culture. Buying as a way of showing love and appreciation is increasingly being framed as passé and selfish (Do you know how many people you could have fed with that money?)
Most recording artists only seem to acknowledge their fans when they’re trying to sell them something, after the album drops or the single has run it’s course the walls come up and the apathy leaks out.
Luckily for ARMY the moral dilemma is very easy to reconcile. When you are so inundated with free content from BTS that you’d need months to consume it all, supporting them monetarily is more communal than transactional.
On April 18th the day their planned 2020 Map of The Soul tour would have kicked off they aired BangBangCon, the two-day streaming event featured 8 separate concerts spanning from the group’s 2014 Red Bullet tour to the Love Yourself tour in 2018.
117 songs are available on SoundCloud, the 7 hours of free music includes 4 solo mixtapes from the rapline, solo original songs, sub-unit songs, remixes of group songs, and covers. Not to mention the entire catalog of their albums is available for free ad supported streaming on Spotify and YouTube.
Also on the band’s YouTube channel is a plethora of documentary content. 622 Bangtan Bombs, short behind the scenes clips of the members at award shows, music shows, events and live stages. 95 BTS Episodes, different from Bangtan Bombs these are longer format covering the experiences of the special day. 154 Bangtan Logs, where the members record their thoughts and feelings to share with ARMY. 7 Vlogs that the members took of their 2019 autumn break, even on vacation they still wanted to share it with ARMY. The group also shared planning meetings for their upcoming self directed album BE out November 20th.
ARMYPEDIA in Spring of 2019, a month long scavenger hunt to celebrate the memories made in the the 2100 hours since debut, culminated in an hour long talk show and stripped down performance of 3 of their early songs.
Festa, a two week long celebration of the group’s anniversary every June is stuffed to the brim with new free content, cover songs, original works, and music videos for b-side songs that are written for the fans. There wasn’t a dry eye in the fandom after this year’s animated We are Bulletproof: the Eternal was released.
31 cartoon shorts and 3 special episodes of BT21, animated avatars the members created themselves in a partnership with Line Friends. Tiny Tan, chibi animated versions of BTS have a 1 music video and 3 cartoon shorts so far.
112 Episodes of Run! The BTS variety show started in 2015 has the members for 30 minutes each episode perform comedy skits, play quiz games, or competitive activities at various locations. Often the losers have a penalty that involves wearing silly hats at the airport. The newest season of Run! started October 20th and airs Tuesdays at 10 pm KST/9 am EST
Learn Korean with BTS launched in March 2020, with contributions from the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies and the Korea Language Contents Institute. The ongoing 3-4 minute series aims to breakdown the language barrier between BTS and fans, teaching short basic phrases and in-jokes, there are currently 30 episodes available on Weverse.
Weverse is the global community platform owned by Big Hit where BTS communicate directly with fans. The boys post pictures or texts and even respond posts created by fans. Vlive is another community platform where BTS stream live and respond to fan messages in real time. BTS stream on live as a group after award shows and individually on birthdays, to give album breakdowns, after concerts or whenever they miss ARMY. Jimin’s latest live stream garnered over 9 million viewers in 30 minutes.
The quality and scale of all of the free BTS content puts lie to the criticism that they fabricate their personality and engagement to milk the fandom for money. If that was the case Bangtan Bombs would be on DVD in chronological order, Hopeworld, Mono and D-2 would have physical releases, and Ddaeng would be on itunes and Spotify.
Artists should be paid for their art, and when those artists are willing to give so much of it out for free it’s no hardship to continue supporting them.
