As the interest towards K-Pop all around the world has noticeably increased one of the largest music festivals in US held a panel on Friday for an hour about K-Pop’s movement transition and crossing over to America.

During the South by Southwest (SXSW) an annual music, films, and interactive conference and festival is held for ten days in Austin, Texas. The event draws artists, industry leaders and fans every year to discuss, trade information and more.

This year the panel was held with the question, “Do Music Moguls Know a Secret about K-Pop?”

According to Billboard, a music agent David Zedeck who arranges K-Pop groups like Girls Generation for Creative Artists Agency, are now selling out 1,700-2,500 capacity venues in US in record time. He added, “We could take any one of these groups and do 16 to 18 real arena dates in North America.”

A columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Jeff Yang, revealed during the talk as the K-Pop fan base is emerging immensely in America and Japan, the genre now have developed a bigger non-Korean audience.

Yang added, “All sorts of things are happening that are establishing this opportunity for K-Pop to crossover. It could be essentially like Latin music for the Asian immigrant community or immigrant-plus community. I don’t even feel I can bet which way it’s going to go right now.”

Sang Cho, chief operating officer of Korean TV company Mnet mentioned that in the past the response and interest towards K-Pop by US companies were merely courteous however “it’s a different dialogue now.”

The article also includes the competitive nature of the K-Pop industry and growing interest around the world for K-Pop.