Large Agencies Are Pioneering The K-Pop Market— Without Koreans

Large entertainment companies are pioneering the K-Pop market without Koreans. This is why K-Pop, which shows intense immersion and consumption, has limits to expansion and must continue to expand the market.

SM Entertainment announced recently that it has signed an agreement with British entertainment company MOON&BACK (hereinafter referred to as M&B) and will begin producing a new British boy group.

M&B is an entertainment and television production company based in London, England. Producer of the world-famous boy group One Direction and famous TV programs such as Britain’s Got Talent, Nigel Hall, James Grant of England, media group designer Russ Lindsay, former senior vice president of Yahoo and CEO of Getty Images, Dawn Airey, are known to be co-founders of the company.

It is expected to attract the attention of the global market as it is the debut of a joint boy group for the first time between Korea and the UK, the “home of pop”.

SM CBO Jang Yoon Jung said, “This project is significant in that it is our first step into Europe,” and added, “It will play a pivotal role in accelerating the global growth of the K-pop industry.”

SM Entertainment has already introduced WayV, a group made up of members from China.

HYBE’s chairman Bang Si Hyuk is preparing to enter the Latin music market. On the 13th, HYBE announced that it would establish HYBE Latin America corporation in Mexico and enter the Latin music market.

HYBE Latin America will be a bridgehead for our artists to enter the Latin market and a base for developing new artists and content. We plan to carry out artist management and new talent discovery and development projects.

HYBE appointed Isaac Lee, founder of Exile Content, as chairman of the Latin American board of directors. Chairman Lee is known to have served as the chief content officer of Univision Communications and Televisa, the world’s largest Spanish-language content TV channels.

Chairman Bang Si Hyuk is expected to focus on expanding the scope of K-Pop by pioneering the Latin music market.

JYP Entertainment has already attempted a localization strategy once and succeeded. In 2020, JYP Entertainment introduced the girl group NiziU, whose members were all Japanese. This group was created through the Nizi Project, a survival audition program jointly planned with Sony Music Japan.

As soon as NiZiU debuted, they swept the Oricon charts with their first full-length album, U, and their second full-length album, COCONUT, released in July, also achieved great results by reaching number one on the Oricon Daily chart. The large-scale solo concert held in 2022 attracted 330,000 viewers, showing the presence of a popular Japanese girl group.

Attention is being paid to what the K-Pop market, which continues to expand, will show in the future.