South Korea's music industry is thriving ? and Sweden's biggest hitmakers are keen to learn the tricks of their trade
For decades, songwriters have focused on getting their work covered by British and American artists. The three biggest music markets in the world have traditionally been the US, Japan and the UK (last year the UK was overtaken by Germany), and while British and American artists have traditionally had a hard time breaking Japan, they can usually count on selling in the rest of the world once they break their home territories. But for the past few years, major songwriters and producers such as Will.I.Am and Sean Garrett have been shuttling back and forth to South Korea ? and it's all because of the K-Pop phenomenon.
K-Pop is a genre that sounds a bit like the Black Eyed Peas ? only in Korean. A few English words are added to create meaningless song titles: Chocolate Love or Hurricane Venus, for example. Sometimes they even make up their own words, like Mirotic. Chances are you've never heard of BoA, Girls' Generation and TVXQ, yet they've outsold many major-label acts in the UK and US.
Universal Music Publishing's European A&R executive, Pelle Lidell, started working with SM Entertainment (SME), one of the larger Korean indie labels, three years ago. He says pretty much every song he's delivered to the company ? usually one or two a month ? has become a hit. Lidell, who supervised the rise of Swedish pop factory Merlin in the 90s and early-00s, and has masterminded hits for Britney Spears, J-Lo and Jessica Simpson, says SME has taken the pop-factory concept to a whole new level. The company has buses travelling the country scouting for talent. Young teenagers who are deemed gifted and attractive enough are admitted to SME's talent academy, where they get regular education as well as singing and dancing lessons, and are trained in how to be an artist.
After a couple of years, some of them form groups and are launched into superstardom with the help of songs that are often written by Lidell's roster of British and Scandinavian writers. Every group represents one particular demographic. Girl bands rarely have only three or four members. SME's Girls' Generation have nine, Super Junior 12 ? each with his or her own fan club. Minutes after Girls' Generation released their single Hoot, it was No 1 on all the country's downloading sites. Meanwhile, the video clocked up 2m hits on YouTube within 24 hours (it now has over 11m hits).
SME's biggest artist, BoA, has sold over 24m albums so far. She often sings in English, as seen here in her video I'll Eat You Up (written by Scandinavians Remee and Thomas Troelsen) and has even toured the US.
"They're in a Lady Gaga class of artists," says Lidell. "Meanwhile, artists like Gaga can't compete over there; they've got no relevance. I went to Seoul's Olympic stadium watching an SM Entertainment extravaganza ? seven hours of their hit acts. The place was packed. It was like the Beatles, with young girls screaming consistently. The show itself was of the standard you see when Justin Timberlake or Madonna play live, when it came to the production. They even flew over the crowd from the top of the stadium on to the stage."
Part of the reason acts such as BoA and Girls' Generation, unlike most western artists, have managed to break the Japanese market is that they learned the language before going there. They often release a Japanese version of their singles, with new videos too. They also work hard. When Girls' Generation launched in Japan they did three shows in one day at a 12,000-capacity venue ? 2pm, 5pm and 8pm ? and all sold out.
Last year, Lidell organised an SME writing camp in Sweden called Camp Fantasia, which housed six studios and included some of Universal's best writers. One of SME's most senior bosses and the head of A&R joined the writers for a week, going into the studios and making suggestions like "skip the pre-chorus", says Lidell.
Though having a hit with a K-Pop act may not rate as high in the cred-department as getting a cut with, say, Rihanna, the royalty payments more than make up for it. Chinese royalties are terrible, due to rampant piracy and bad collection, but Japan still pays 25% more in mechanical royalties (for sales) than the UK. In Korea it's 20% less, as the PPD price for records is lower. "But if you add it all up you're usually on a 103-104% mechanical royalty, compared to Europe," says Lidell.
British songwriter Alex James, who has had successes with Jason Der�lo and Alexandra Burke, among others, has had mega-hits in Korea, including Hoot and Run Devil Run (which sounds a lot like his Burke hit Bad Boys). The latter has had 21m hits on YouTube. Lidell's Norwegian writing team DSign make hundreds of thousands of pounds from K-Pop each year. "Even streaming pays in Korea" he adds.
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