— the acquisition of Atlanta hip-hop label and management firm Quality Control for $300 million. Running on little sleep as he worked across two time zones, meeting with his new U.S.
Bang founded Big Hit Entertainment as an agency in 2005 and engineered the debut of BTS a decade ago, assembling the band, writing and producing its music, and overseeing everything from its marketing to social media content, though success came slowly. Determined to break the act in the U.S.
And while it’s hard to entirely avoid the grind that comes with international deal-making, Bang avoids sticking to the type of schedule a typical record company chairman might keep. The fact that BTS is currently not active has an impact. When you look at the surveys regarding awareness, when you compare K-pop’s penetration and BTS’ penetration in the global market, BTS tends to have more penetration than K-pop itself. But when it comes to the sluggish growth of K-pop in the Southeast Asian market, I think there must be a particular reason.
We don’t plan to necessarily apply the pop methodology to those different genres. What we are trying to do is utilize HYBE’s operation systems as well as technology and acquire the top labels in each genre. We are looking for a synergistic effect. By doing so we seek to improve and increase our presence in the U.S. market. I’m not saying that we plan to create a country music boy group — that’s not what we’re looking for right now.
I think the success of girl groups is related to the zeitgeist. If you even look at the North American market, there has been noticeable success achieved by female artists in pop and hip-hop. With the strengthening of the girls-support-girls culture, female fans’ support for female artists is growing fast. HYBE has been locking steps with the trend by acquiring SOURCE MUSIC three years ago and launching a new label, ADOR.
Do you think you can build fan armies as organized and dedicated as K-pop’s for artists in other countries and genres? The amount of music being uploaded to streaming services is increasing exponentially, which squeezes everyone’s market share. Does that concern you?