Over the past few years, as European societies have competed more intensely for affiliates, they have cut the amount of money they hold back for online royalties. GEMA, the German PRO, is the last of the big three to do […]
Attendees of the Americana Music Conference who might have expected a heated debate during a fitting conversation on political activism instead encountered an impressive calm on Sept. 11, as a decidedly progressive panel called for a respectful response to the assassination of a controversial conservative personality.
America was dazed, confused and angry following the Sept. 10 shooting of Charlie Kirk, with people on both sides of the political aisle engaging in familiar verbal attacks online.
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But Americana artists Allison Russell and Margo Price avoided outrage, as Russell expressed empathy for Kirk and other members of the conservative movement responsible for taking rights away from women and immigrants.
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“The news was devastating,” Russell said. “The reaction I found, in some ways, even more devastating. When we lose our moral compass — out of anger, out of vengeance, out of grief — we become that which we repudiate. We become it. So when people say things like, ‘He deserved it,’ that’s not it. We can forgive… We cannot operate from a place of vengeance, of violence, of shame and blame. It just doesn’t work.”
The Americana Music Association announced the panel “Art & Activism” weeks before the convention’s start. Even if Kirk had not been shot, the discussion would still have been appropriate. It was moderated by Tennessee state Rep. Justin Jones, D-District 52, who gained national attention as a member of the so-called Tennessee Three, legislators who were punished by the Republican majority for their animated demonstrations in favor of gun regulation following a shooting at Nashville’s Covenant School in 2023. Lawmakers declined to enact any meaningful reform at the time.
Jones has modeled his efforts as an activist and reformer on the work of Civil Rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis, who was among the demonstrators at Nashville lunch counters when sit-ins broke out across the South in 1960.
The city now boasts the National Museum of African-American Music, located on the same block where Lewis boarded a bus for Alabama in 1961 to join the Freedom Rides, employing nonviolent strategies in a key milestone of the movement. While much of mainstream country’s audience, and many of its artists — most of them based in Nashville — are squarely conservative, a good portion of the industry’s executives are determined to expand the genre’s reach among minority populations, including Blacks, Hispanics and the LGBTQ+ community.
“Being in this country music space has been so challenging for me,” Price said. “People tell me that I can’t say things or to tone it down. [But] I think that we are at such a crucial time in the loss of our democracy. You’ve got to be able to sing truth to power. Let’s dream of a better world.”
Russell, an openly gay Black artist adopted by a white supremacist family in Montreal, recalled a visit with extended relatives in Edmonton, Alberta, when she heard Tracy Chapman’s a cappella “Behind the Wall,” a song about domestic abuse featured on the same album as breakthrough hit “Fast Car.” It was the first time that Russell realized she could change the trajectory of her life, and it informed her passion for songs that make a difference in the world.
“Anytime you’re singing a message, it’s kind of like that ‘spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down,’ ” she said, referencing a song from Mary Poppins. “It opens people up to receive, maybe, news that they would not otherwise take into their system.”
Russell referenced Bloody Sunday — a moment in 1965 when Lewis and others were beaten by state troopers while peacefully marching for civil rights in Selma, Ala. — and mentioned meeting an activist from that era who talked about extending forgiveness to his oppressors. Russell said that same spirit is required while progressive forces fight against the erosion of rights that’s taken place in America over the past decade.
“We have to learn to forgive the unforgivable in order to liberate ourselves from these endless cycles of harm and violence,” she said. “It’s the only way.”
Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Woody Guthrie and folk singer Odetta — artists who opposed the Vietnam War, racism and fascists in previous eras — were among those mentioned as inspirations for Price and Russell. Their support of blue-collar communities set an example that the “Art & Activism” panel encouraged today’s musicmakers to follow.
“These are very difficult times,” Jones said. “The saying that ‘democracy dies in darkness’ — I say that creativity dies in isolation, and fascism thrives in both. We are connected for a reason, and I know that we shall overcome.”
As part of our continuing efforts to serve the music industry and its creators, Billboard Pro now features a music industry events calendar for readers. The calendar will act as music’s most complete summary major national and international industry events, […]
The Recording Academy has established the Music Education & Professional Development Committee (MEPD). The committee, co-chaired by industry executives Nikisha Bailey and Riggs Morales, aims to enhance synergies and amplify the Academy’s efforts around mentorship and education among the organization’s […]
As mainstream interest in the catalog investment market grows and investors look for opportunities outside of traditional Western pop and rock, the runaway success of Netflix’s Kpop Demon Hunters — which has four songs in the top 10 of Billboard’s Hot 100 — has helped spur interest in K-pop catalogs.
The K-pop catalog market out of South Korea functions differently than that of the United States, however. So, Billboard asked Jinwoo Jo, CEO of South Korean investment firm Beyond Music — which has built one of the largest collections of Korean and Asian popular music, including megahits from BTS and BLACKPINK — to share his perspective on the current marketplace and some of the institutional wisdom that Beyond has learned over its four-year history.
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Founded in 2021, Beyond has invested around $250 million to acquire more than 35,000 songs, making it far larger than other Asian catalog investment firms and putting its portfolio alongside U.S.-based HarbourView Equity Partners in terms of number of songs in its portfolio.
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“We are like a specialized asset management company,” says Jinwoo, whose firm has reportedly raised more than $400 million from Korean private equity and institutional investors including Pax Capital and KB Securities. “We try to focus on what we are good at, which is K-pop.”
This year the Seoul-based firm acquired publishing rights from the independent K-pop songwriter and producer Bekuh Boom, including to BLACKPINK hits “Kill This Love” and “Ice Cream,” as well as a stake in BTS’ monster hit “Butter.” Beyond also has an extensive library of older Asian classics from groups like Panic and Kim Sung Jae, and it recently expanded into the Latin market with the acquisition of Yandel.
Here are three takeaways from Billboard’s conversation with Jinwoo.
Struggling Korean management companies are looking to sell catalogs.
Jinwoo says Korea’s music management industry is going through a changing of the guard with much leadership and artist roster turnover, and several companies are looking for ways to shore up their finances.
For management firms that are struggling financially, Beyond Music offers a way to liquidate part of their catalog and reinvest in their company.
“It’s pretty much like an industry-wide issue at this point,” he says. “It’s a winner-takes-all situation. If you don’t have a BTS or a BLACKPINK, what are you going to do? The long tail of those management companies has a pretty significant existential issue. We are a liquidity and solution provider to them.”
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Although Korean management companies are structured like one-stop shops with songwriters on staff, Jinwoo says acquisitions happen nearly the same way they do with Western music companies. Beyond negotiates with the songwriters to acquire publishing rights and the company to acquire masters. He says the primary difference is that, because the catalog investment market is nascent in Korea, getting a Korean songwriter to sell their rights “requires much more [and] deeper trust, handholding and a greater sensitivity to cultural nuances.”
Name, image and likeness rights, which Pophouse used to create the ABBA Voyage virtual concert in London, and that Primary Wave used to make Nirvana merchandise like heart shaped boxes and special edition Converse shoes, do not exist in South Korea.
Beyond’s catalog is comprised mostly of publishing rights and master recordings, and while it has explored name, image and likeness deals with the catalogs it holds from outside of South Korea, Korean law is still evolving around the right to one’s image as it relates to music.
Beyond generates returns in other ways, including through synch placements in Korean dramas, films and advertisements. One recent success came from the Japanese beer company Asahi Super Dry, which used BLACKPINK’s “Kill This Love” in a global ad campaign — a deal Beyond timed to coincide with the girl group’s most recent world tour.
The company also collaborates with social media influencers.
“First thing every morning, we look at our internal data system, and it will show that [for example] 78 songs moved very dramatically over the last 48 hours,” Jinwoo says. “We try to figure out why, and maybe it is because an Indonesian TikToker used our song in a dance challenge in Jakarta for the last two weeks. So, we will contact her and say we have 25 more songs and are willing to invest $10,000 in an event to make it bigger and encourage her to do to more frequent dance challenges.”
While the recency of K-pop megahits makes forecasting potential revenue generation less predictable, Beyond says it has been more surprised by a pop in streaming revenue from Korean classics.
Jinwoo says Beyond’s strategy focuses on owning and working both new K-pop hits and older Korean and Asian evergreen songs, and the revenue generating trajectory of the latter category has been surprising.
Many of the K-pop hits in Beyond’s catalog are less than seven years old and still enjoying current popularity that is boosting their streams. Managing the decline of those songs’ popularity through synchs is a top priority, Jinwoo says.
“We believe, from our experience, actually, you can slow down the decay curve and somewhat defy gravity,” he says. “Not all the time, but most of the time.”
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What’s surprising, he adds, is that vintage songs in Beyond’s library have seen streaming jumps in recent months. Company analysts are still working out why, but Jinwoo says he thinks it’s due to many of these catalogs recently becoming available on streaming platforms. Korean management companies and artists have lagged Western markets in putting older songs on streaming platforms, he says.
“Many songs in our catalog older than 10 years old are starting to grow. It’s a big kind of a structured tailwind story for us.”
Bang Si-hyuk, the creative force behind BTS and chairman of K-pop powerhouse HYBE, appeared before the Financial Crimes Investigation Unit of the Korean National Police Agency on Monday (Sept. 15), marking a major development in his first-ever investigation by authorities.
Bang is suspected of deceiving investors in 2019 by claiming he had no plans to hold an IPO for HYBE, before allegedly inducing them to sell their shares in the company to a private equity fund associated with him. After HYBE went public, the fund reportedly cashed out. Under a pre-arranged shareholders’ agreement, Bang received 30% of the profits — around 190 billion KRW (approximately $13.7 million) — in what police describe as unjust gains. Bang’s representatives have flatly denied the allegations, insisting that no false information was given to early investors and that the profit-sharing terms were proposed by the investors themselves.
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The current fraudulent trading allegations began in 2024, with police receiving intelligence on the case late last year before launching an investigation. In late July, police raided HYBE’s headquarters in Yongsan, Seoul, and chairman Bang returned to South Korea on Aug. 11, where he has remained since.
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Speaking briefly with reporters outside the agency on Monday, Bang apologized for “causing concern” about the matter, adding, “I will fully cooperate with the investigation today.”
Before his return to the U.S., Bang sent an internal company email stating: “I am fully aware that I cannot allow my personal issues to continue burdening the company and the industry. I will continue to cooperate sincerely with the ongoing investigation and provide a thorough account once again. I hope that this process will clarify the facts, and I will humbly await the authorities’ judgment.”
On the day Chairman Bang was summoned by police, HYBE’s stock closed at 286,500 KRW (approx. $206), down 5,500 KRW from the previous day, showing little significant fluctuation. It still boasts the highest stock price among K-pop entertainment companies, surpassing SM Entertainment’s stock price (141,600 KRW) by more than twofold. HYBE reached its all-time high of 421,500 KRW (approx. $300) on November 16, 2021.
Founded as Big Hit Entertainment, the agency behind BTS, HYBE now operates under a multi-label system. Its roster includes leading groups such as SEVENTEEN, TOMORROW X TOGETHER, and ENHYPEN, as well as NewJeans, which is currently embroiled in a legal dispute over its exclusive contract.
Meanwhile, many Korean media outlets and members of the public focused on Chairman Bang’s noticeably slimmer appearance as he stood before the photo line, showing keen interest in his first police questioning.
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