South Korean band BTS Photo: VCG

K-pop has been a sweeping power in the music industry for yet another year. Outstanding bands like BTS and Blackpink have earned international fame and frequently dominate the trending lists on social media around the world.

The nominees for the 34th Golden Disc Awards were announced on Friday. The annual South Korean music awards were established in 1986 to honor bands or individual entertainers who make prominent achievements in the industry. Referred to as the South Korean Grammys, its main competition units this year are the digital song division and album division. The nominees for the two categories must have released a new song or album between October 2018 and October 2019 and the winners will be decided based on data collected from the Gaon Music Charts.

The 34th Golden Disc Awards also announced the nominees for the Popularity Award on Friday, which is determined by online voting. It is worth mentioning that the official voting platform this year is TikTok, a short-video sharing platform owned by Beijing-based company ByteDance. 

Voting, which started Friday, will end at 11 am on December 27(South Korean Time). China's NetEase Cloud Music will carry out a similar vote for K-pop bands and entertainers on its platform at the same time in China. 

NetEase Cloud Music has divided the nominees into male and female competitors. As soon as NetEase began the voting, Chinese ARMY (the nickname for BTS fans in China) members called for other ARMY members to vote for BTS and push the band to the top. 

As of Sunday night, BTS unsurprisingly stands at the first spot among the most popular K-pop boy bands and entertainers on NetEase with 151,214 votes, more than three times the votes for the second place contender Seventeen. In third place is GOT7, which is only a few dozen votes behind Seventeen.

When it comes to the most popular K-pop girl bands and entertainers, singer-actress Lee Ji-eun (known as IU) is in first place with 71,468 votes, more than double that of Blackpink, who is at No.2. Interestingly, Lee didn't make it onto the nomination list for the 34th Golden Disc Awards outside China.

Who do you think will rise to the top of the most popular K-pop bands and entertainers? Who will you vote for?