Hoopla Tips For J-Pop and K-Pop Fans (Updated)

I’ve already shared some tips for finding K-Pop and J-Pop music on Freegal. Now, I’m going to tell you how to do the same thing with hoopla, another library service that offers downloadable music.

Hoopla differs from Freegal in several ways. First off, hoopla offers other types of media besides music, which might pop up during your searches. Second, you download whole albums, not individual songs. Third, you can only borrow the albums you download for seven days.

With all of that in mind, let’s walk through some hoopla search techniques.

Search By Genre

Recently, J-Pop and K-Pop were added as official genres in hoopla. That means you can easily go directly to pages with albums in those genres now. The directions for how you do this differ between the phone and tablet apps.

Phone App Directions

1. Tap the “Music” tab near the top of the Home section. This takes you to hoopla’s Music section.
2. Scroll down the page until you see a big blue square labeled “Genres and Collections.” Tap it.

3. Search for the genre you want by either browsing the list on the Collections tab or by typing it into the search box:
   • Using the Collections tab
     1. Press the “More” link to the right of the All Collections section to expand the full list of genres.
     2. Browse the list until you see “J-Pop” or “K-Pop.” Once you tap the link for one of them, a page will open showing all of hoopla’s available albums from that genre.
   • Using the Search Box
     1. Type “Pop” into the search box at the top of the page.
     2. Choose the “K-Pop” or “J-Pop” link that appears after you hit enter. A page will load with all of the items in that genre.
4. Filter the albums from the other types of media
   1. Tap the Filter icon in the top left corner. A menu will pop up.
   2. Open the Format submenu on the Filter tab.
   3. Select “Music” from the options.
   4. Tap outside the menu to see the albums.

Tablet App Directions

1. Tap the “Music” icon at the bottom of the home screen to get to hoopla’s Music section.
2. Tap the Genres menu in the top right corner of the blue header. A list of genres will appear in a drop-down menu.

3. Scroll through the All Categories subsection until you see “J-Pop” or “K-Pop” link. Tap it to get to a page with all of the albums from that genre.
4. Filter out the albums
   1. Tap the Filter icon in the top left corner.
   2. Open the Format submenu on the Filter tab.
   3. Select “Music.”
   4. Tap outside the menu to see the albums.

And there you have it! You’ve searched by genre.

Filter By Language

For whatever reason, some J-Pop and K-Pop albums aren’t filed as such on hoopla. In those cases, you’ll have to filter the albums in the Pop, World, or Rock genres by language, which will allow you to separate the albums in Japanese or Korean from the rest.

Phone Directions

1. In the Music section, tap the big blue square labeled “Genres and Collections” in the middle of the page.
2. Switch to the Genres tab.
3. Select either “Pop,” “World,” or “Rock” from the list. A page will open showing all of the albums available in that genre.

4. Tap the Filter icon in the top left corner. A menu will pop up.
5. Open the Language submenu on the Filter tab. A list of languages will appear.
6. Choose either “Japanese” (for J-Pop) or “Korean” (for K-Pop) from the list.
7. Tap somewhere outside of the menu to see the results.

Tablet Directions

1. Tap the Music tab at the bottom of the home screen.
2. Open the Genres menu.
3. Select either “Pop,” “World,” or “Rock” link from the list of genres.
4. Tap the “See all ‘X’ titles” link, where ‘X’ is either “Pop,” “World,” or “Rock.”

5. Tap the Filter icon in the top left corner. A menu will pop up.
6. Tap the Language submenu to reveal the list of languages.
7. Select either “Japanese” (for J-Pop) or “Korean” (for K-Pop) from the list.
8. Touch somewhere outside of the menu to see the available albums in that language.

Voila! More J-Pop or K-Pop albums for you to enjoy.

Follow the Tags

Another great way to find J-Pop and K-Pop albums on hoopla is through the tags on the album pages. Tags are links. When you select a tag—which can look like an white oval with blue text, a regular blue link, or black text next to a right-pointing arrow—it will show you other related items on the service.

Every album page includes tags for the artist(s), record label, language, and genre.

Artist Tag

The main artist and all featured artists are listed on every album page. I call these the artist tags.

For example, the album page for Querencia has artist tags for Chung Ha, its main artist, as well as ones for its several featured artists. If you tap Chung Ha’s tag, you’ll get a list of her other albums or albums that she’s featured on that are available on hoopla. Meanwhile, tapping a featured artist’s tag, like fellow K-Pop artists CHANGMO or Colde, will show you results for their respective albums available on hoopla.

Most helpfully, the tablet app occasionally offers artist tags in a Similar Artists section. These tags are artists that hoopla recommends who make the same kind of music as the album’s main artist.

Genre Tag

Tapping the genre tag takes you to the same place as the “Search By Genre” method I discussed earlier, just by a different route.

But as I said before, it’s possible for an album to be tagged as a genre other than K-Pop or J-Pop. Therefore, you’ll get more accurate results going through the Language tag.

Language Tag

The language tag is analogous with the “Filter By Language” method from above. It indicates what language the album is performed in. So, an album with a “Japanese” language tag will lead you to other albums on hoopla that are in Japanese…which are probably J-Pop albums.

Although the language tag appears in both the phone and tablet apps, it is only an active link in hoopla’s tablet app.

Record Label Tag

Lastly, you can also search using the record label tag. It will show you other albums that were produced by the same company as the current album.

Following this tag will lead you to albums from that artist’s labelmates, some of which may be J-Pop or K-Pop artists as well.

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Notes:

1) This post has been updated from a version published in 2020.

2) While it’s possible to use the hoopla website, I only cover the mobile apps here. All examples are from hoopla’s Android phone app (v. 4.53) and iOS tablet app (v. 4.42.1).