Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
South Korea’s Big 4 entertainment companies — HYBE, SM Entertainment, JYP Entertainment, YG Entertainment — have announced that they’re joining hands with the goal of creating a global music festival. The quartet of corporations have reportedly submitted a merger notice to the Fair Trade Commission to establish the venture.
The joint venture is expected to be established with equal investment from the four companies, though details regarding leadership and governance structures have yet to be finalized.
It aims to focus on concert planning, to launch a large-scale music festival, tentatively titled “Fanomenon,” in South Korea in 2027. The event would feature artists from all four agencies.
Most notable to me is that their ambitions are apparently surpassing Coachella — especially notable after HYBE reportedly offered BTS‘s entire comeback tour to AEG Presents for half ownership of the festival — but while this would hypothetically debut in South Korea, the goal would be to expand it to a global touring event. That very much doesn’t sound like Coachella, but very much does sounds like a supercharged KCON that the companies will get to reap all the profits from. Smart audience that you are, I know that you knew that’s what it was ultimately about, not like some shit for music lovers or promoting South Korea or whatever they’ll spin it as.
Then again, this is still in the very beginning stages, and given how quickly things evolve or devolve you should very much put this to the very back of your K-pop headspace until even any details start to come out about this actually happening.
