On December 2nd, artists under YG Entertainment attended a press conference held in Hong Kong to officially announce the collaboration between YG Entertainment and Tencent’s QQ Music.
QQ is one of the most widely used instant messaging platform for the Chinese, and since YG Entertainment is one of the top 3 entertainment companies in South Korea with the largest number of hip hop artists, the partnership between the two big companies of Korea and China brings great significance.
With the collaboration, QQ now has the rights to provide an exclusive music streaming service of YG Family artists’ songs, bringing quality music to the Chinese audience. The two groups also hope that this move will be a stepping stone for future developments, providing new possibilities for the growth of YG Entertainment’s artists, as well as a hope for increased collaboration between the Korean and Chinese music industries. YG Entertainment’s representative also announced that they are planning to create a new program with Tencent, providing a platform to discover and develop music talents.
A new homepage was launched celebrating the collaboration, which is the exclusive official site that plays the music videos of the songs by YG Family artists for Chinese nationals.
Artists under YG Entertainment include Epik High, 2NE1, BIGBANG, PSY, Lee Hi, Akdong Musician, WINNER, and iKON. The artists who represented the company to attend the press conference in Hong Kong were BIGBANG’s GD and Taeyang, WINNER’s leader Kang Seungyoon, and iKON’s Bobby. While iKON’s B.I was also invited to the press conference, he was not present for the event and made an appearance with Bobby through a video on screen instead. GD also uploaded a friendly photo taken with his labelmates onto his Instagram and Weibo accounts.
Tencent QQ (more popularly known as QQ) is a messaging service that has evolved to incorporate many elements of a microblog and beyond with services including online games, shopping, music, and group chat. The Tencent group has recently been looking to expand the music aspect of its platform and has actively pursued partnerships with large music companies. Since October, Tencent has announced that it has reached copyright agreement with big name labels such as JVR, Huayi Music, Warner Music, and most recently YG Entertainment, in hopes of creating a platform that will span across Korea, Taiwan, Europe, Hong Kong, and China.
Although the financial value of the agreement between Tencent and YG Entertainment was not disclosed, it is speculated to be of an high amount since artists of the South Korean label are extremely popular in other parts of Asia. Meanwhile, SM Entertainment and Chinese search engine Baidu also announced their partnership earlier this year.
According to Senior Vice President Tang Daosheng, Tencent aims to create an open platform with these new copyright agreements that links the QQ Microblogging site, QQ video games, QQ video, and other online platforms to television, stereos, car radio, and even smart homes, with music at the core of their digital music ecosystem.
YG Entertainment also recently partnered with Yuehua Entertainment, which is based in Beijing, to debut the new boy group UNIQ.
Meanwhile, YG Entertainment’s CEO Yang Hyun Suk recently made an apology for the mishandling of YG’s scandals, while two new hip hop groups under YG’s Hiphop Project have just emerged from the label.
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