Zutter is a weekly podcast that looks at Asian pop culture as an industry, reported from London. Each episode takes a single story from the Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Thai or Filipino entertainment business — a contract, a label's strategy, a tour or a chart — and explains why it happened using the numbers and documents behind it. It examines who paid for it, who profits and what much of the coverage got wrong. New episodes are released every Friday, with sources and companion articles available at zutter.co.uk.
Episodes
The Longest Shot: The Full Story of Jay Park
In September 2009, the leader of 2PM flew out of Seoul with most of the country telling him not to come back. Sixteen years later he has founded three labels, sold one to CJ ENM, launched a soju brand and built a K-pop boy band on purpose. This is the full story of Jay Park, and of who owns a career in Korean music.Paola walks through the MySpace scandal and the four days that ended his time in 2P
MAD TSAI INTERVIEW: From TikTok to a Record Deal
Labels offered him $1,000 for his masters after his first viral song. He said no, paid off his student debt with streaming royalties and spent five years building a pop career without a label. We sat down with Mad Tsai over tea in London, after the last show of his first European tour, to talk about the business behind the music: night shifts at a poke shop, a stolen song he never saw a penny from
BIGBANG 0 to 20: Twenty Years of the Boys Who Became Legends
This is the full BIGBANG story: the survival show, the song that changed what a Korean idol group was allowed to be, the Japanese dome years, the parts nobody wants to talk about, and the 20th anniversary comeback that's happening right now.No skipped chapters. No legend maintenance.
