SM Entertainment founder Lee Soo-man on K-pop future, running business

It can be been far more than 3 many years considering that Soo-male Lee founded SM Entertainment, a single of South Korea’s new music organizations identified for bringing K-pop to the entire world.

The entertainment corporation, originally started as SM Studio in 1989, grew to become 1 of the initially to kickstart the world Hallyu wave — much better regarded as the Korean wave.

But Lee’s music was not always dependent off Korean pop music.

“I turned a singer when I was 19. While I was renowned, I understood that the audience was really quiet when I sang for the reason that I sang folks songs,” he told CNBC’s Chery Kang in an interview for The CNBC Dialogue.

“But when foreign bands occur to [South Korea to] execute, they completely took around the stage and fans went wild. When I went to examine out the concert, it seemed like the admirers were being extra enthusiastic than in mine,” reported Lee, who is founding chairman of the firm.

Lee stated which is when he began to consider about taking South Korea’s pop songs to the earth.

“As I researched in the U.S., I learned a ton and considered it would be great to boost Korean songs and singers overseas. Which is the start out [of SM Entertainment].”

Above the years, the 70-year-outdated designed a procedure he phone calls “culture technologies” — by way of which he recruited and nurtured talent in a systematic way of casting, instruction, making, and management.

The system is at the rear of the tune generation of SM Entertainment’s K-pop top rated bands — this sort of as Tremendous Junior, Girls’ Technology and Red Velvet. 

“There is a published ‘culture technology’ manual somewhere in my business office,” he explained, detailing that it combines the two lifestyle and technological know-how in a “logically formulized” way.

“The manual will allow for workers to understand and transfer ‘know-how’ out of it. For the reason that I’m an engineer, it is to be understood by logic. It lays out formulation,” Lee stated, sharing that he has a Master’s degree in laptop engineering.

“So, I can say that I am an engineer fairly than an artiste.”

Even as SM Entertainment’s audio carries on to go world wide, Lee claims it truly is essential to continuously innovate and remain forward of the opposition in the music market.

“We require to be at that world course amount, and we are concentrating on what is lacking and what kind of distinctions we can make” from other genres of new music,” he advised CNBC.

Lee will work with producers and songwriters from the U.K. and U.S. on accompaniments, keep track of music, kick drum and bass, which he adapts to South Korean and Asian culture.

As for the importance of China’s affect in the K-pop market, Lee admits that dollars will have a “highly effective impact,” but stated he stays self-confident creative imagination that comes from manufacturing will have “infinite worth.”

The issue of psychological well being is a thing that continues to be a emphasis for his firm, Lee states.

“‘Be humble, be sort and be the love’ is what we train our skills and men and women in SM … Things are a good deal far better now and world-wide management businesses are striving to find out about it.”

Lee also reported his company is “connecting them to counselors and medical professionals so that they can get enable at any time. We might not have the exact same economies of scale like CNBC, but we uncovered these factors are extremely important.”

As for the future of K-pop, “I imagine the metaverse that everyone is talking about these days is the long run,” Lee says.

SM Enjoyment founded a metaverse earth called SM Society Universe, and released its first metaverse female band, Aespa in 2020. The group is produced up of 4 serious-lifestyle customers – Karina, Wintertime, Ning Ning, and Giselle – and their corresponding digital counterparts.

“SM Amusement is setting up ‘Play-2-Create’… people today can find their innovative facet and create in the metaverse. They will notice, ‘Oh, I can produce. I can make music. I can make dance moves. I can make dresses. I can design and style artists.'”

To notice the concept of “Enjoy-2-Generate,” the company partnered with metaverse organizations like The Sandbox before this year.

Gamers can build NFTs and game titles encompassing “K-content” in SMTOWN LAND, a digital land in The Sandbox less than SM Entertainment. NFTs are non-fungible tokens which are exceptional electronic assets, like artwork and sports activities investing cards, that are saved working with blockchain technological innovation.

Lee thinks that any nation can produce a thing as effective as K-pop, but the metaverse will be vital.

“You simply cannot develop a style by copying K-pop. All people will watch it as K-pop. Now, you need to demonstrate it in the metaverse.”

“I think we just want to enable the fans turn out to be producers and shoppers at the same time. Let them create… Younger folks will have the large pleasure of development and will end up creating significant quantities of mental home and articles.”

For all those aspiring to become K-pop artists some day, Lee has this piece of assistance: “Self-evaluation is really essential.”

“Without the need of on the lookout at you in the mirror, you have no notion what you’d appear like when dancing, even if you danced genuinely difficult … It is when you can see and sense what you really don’t do properly that you study.”

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