05 JANUARY 2024
Welcome to this week’s edition of Culture Wire, a newsletter brought to you by Singapore-based pop culture and lifestyle marketing agency Culture Group.
Happy 2024, culture vultures! To kick-off our first newsletter of the year, we explore some key themes that should be on your radar in the coming 366 days (yes, it’s a leap year). How will they shape your marketing strategy?
In this week’s edition:
- Innovation of the Week: A Filipino music genre rides to new heights
- Fax, No Printer: How did Gen Z celebrate 2024?
- Regional Round-up: Key themes for 2024—from the experience economy to elections, copyrights to communities
Innovation of the Week
🎧BIG LOVE FOR BUDOTS
Budots, a Pinoy EDM genre you probably have not heard of, is bubbling up. Hailing from Davao City, budots first gained traction on the global stage last year when UK-based Boiler Room partnered with Manila Community Radio (MCR) to showcase the playful, vibrant sound (we covered this on Culture Wire too). The event featured DJ Love who, according to the directors of Budots: The Craze, is the creator of the genre. Since then, the Filipino boy band SB19 has brought budots to an even bigger audience with a Gento remix that’s been viewed more than 2.6M times on TikTok.
💡 OUR TAKE
Budots, which derives from the Bisyan slang for ‘slacker,’ isn’t a new phenomenon. As early as 2008, the genre was enjoying national acclaim thanks to Pinoy Big Brother and local politicians keen to showcase their ‘relatability’ and reach youth voters. But now, the influence is rapidly expanding and being legitimized—beyond the MCR x Boiler Room partnership, budots is making it into award-winning film soundtracks. Budots is increasingly recognized as an integral part of OPM (Original Pilipino Music), which has itself enjoyed a renaissance over the last few years.
Clearly, pop culture is bubbling up into the mainstream from surprising sources. Genres like budots refuse to stay in their lane. But here’s the thing: as grassroots movements gain traction, they attract new fans, resulting in more support and greater agency for pioneer artists.
While we expect budots to continue to grow in 2024, our message here isn’t to jump on the train (although you might want to consider it!). Let budots’ success serve as a reminder that niche, local subcultures can transition to—and be accepted by—the mainstream. It might not happen overnight, but global audiences are hungry for unique and authentic content. Are you scanning the horizon for other up-and-coming genres and formats that could make the niche-mainstream leap in the coming months?
A final point. Budots’ broader success story isn’t only the result of MCR and Boiler Room’s exposure. On TikTok, the budots hashtag has 465M views and counting. #Budotsdance has clocked up over 17M. Popular channels like DJ Sandy Remix (716K YouTube subscribers) just keep the genre fresh and help make it more accessible, with younger listeners becoming participants through sound bites and other mash-up collaborations. One consequence? A genre that’s always evolving while becoming more integrated into pop culture.
Fax, No Printer*
For those of you born before 1997, ‘fax, no printer‘ is Gen Z speak for ‘undeniable facts I agree with’
What was sold out in supermarkets on New Year’s Eve?
A. Firecrackers 🧨
B. Grapes 🍇
C. Champagne 🍾
Scroll down to the end of the newsletter for the correct answer!
Regional Round-up
🎥 In Singapore, the Orchard Road evolution continues apace with Nightflix Somerset. The outdoor cinema screens a movie every first Saturday of the month. Moviegoers just need to bring their mats and headphones to enjoy the experience—for free! This, plus the opening of Trifecta, Asia’s first snow, surf, and skate attraction, reveal the focus on driving commerce through culture. With retail experience being reimagined further in 2024, how will your brand harness the power of the experience economy?
🗳️2024 will be the biggest election year in history and politically-aware young people will play an active role—expect to see political conversations repackaged into memes and snackable content formats. We are not saying that brands should stray too far into politics, but there are opportunities to join the conversation in brand safe ways. In Indonesia, Tular Nalar 3.0 hosted an event for first-time voters, covering topics like election misinformation (likely to be heightened by generative AI).
♻️ Malaysian fans who attended Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres tour in Kuala Lumpur are calling on others to return their concert wristbands in an attempt to rank on the wristband recycling leaderboard. This friendly competition is just one way the band is attempting to reduce the carbon emissions of the tour. It’s a big year for live music in SEA, with roughly 1.2M concertgoers in Q1 alone (by Culture Group’s estimates). Can your brand set the stage to champion greener causes at live events in 2024?
✌️The Hybe-owned fan platform Weverse is growing: subscribers spent an average of 250 minutes per month last year, up 46% from 2022, and a total of 35M hours watching livestreams. Hybe’s expansion plans include US acts, paid membership programs and customized merch. While we’ll be watching to see how Weverse’s fandom plans develop, in the short term, the growth stats are just another signal of the continued relevance of bottom-up fan movements (read this newsletter for more on that).
👻 New year, new Mickey! Steamboat Willie, the earliest iteration of Mickey Mouse from 1928, just entered the public domain. Announcements for Mickey Mouse horror films and games were quick to follow, but this isn’t the first time a beloved IP has taken a spooky turn (see: Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey). It’s interesting to note that classic IPs are reimagined into darker versions, and we’ll be watching how new generations will continue making iconic characters their own.
This Week's Trivia Answer
B. Grapes 🍇
How did you countdown to 2024? On TikTok, a New Year’s Eve trend was underway—eating grapes under the table (12 to be exact) at the stroke of midnight. The viral trend with 118.5M views has roots in the Spanish tradition uvas de la suerte or “12 grapes,” where each grape represents a month and guarantees a lucky year if you eat all by the time the clock stops chiming.
Evidently, the TikTok community embraced this unique trend globally as grape sections were wiped out in supermarkets everywhere—spreading another obscure and country-specific tradition. This is a reminder that young people are inventing and reinventing pop culture on TikTok by the minute, and while there is no need for brands to jump on every trend, are you ready to keep up with their pace this year?
🚀 Over and Out!
What themes are on your radar for 2024? Hit reply to let us know! 🔮
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Your Culture Mavens,
Acacia, Angela, Kiko, Teri, & Vicki
