This characteristic has progressively shifted from a December to a November custom, leaving extra space for subsequent month’s sprawling end-of-year countdowns. Over the following few weeks, I’ll be a lot of Ok-pop’s largest businesses and providing my ideas about how their 2022 went. Following SM Leisure, YG Leisure‘s and JYP Leisure‘s evaluations, it’s time for the final of the “large 4.” Yep, it’s HYBE Labels.
As typical, the ideas are my very own and aren’t aware about any insider data. The aim of those articles is to find out how effectively Ok-pop businesses are serving their artists and followers. Due to the timing of this put up, I’ll be together with the previous couple of weeks of 2021 as a part of my evaluation.
The Good
HYBE has change into such a sprawling empire that it nearly exists by itself taking part in subject. With at least six main subsidiaries, HYBE is now house to over a dozen main acts. The company grew even bigger in 2022 with the debut of two new woman teams. I’d like to start out by specializing in them.
LE SSERAFIM and NewJeans have each change into instantaneous successes. They adopted totally different paths to get there, however their music and picture are rapidly defining this new era in Ok-pop. And given the inventive management and focus of their particular person subsidiaries (Supply Music and ADOR, respectively), the teams arrived with a definite id and goal. Worldwide enchantment has at all times been an enormous a part of the HYBE model, and these woman teams appear particularly adept at capturing followers of assorted nationalities and cultural backgrounds. The longer term is trying vivid for them.
Equally, fromis_9 have benefited drastically from being swept up in HYBE’s umbrella. Their gross sales skyrocketed this yr. Now, they simply want that one large hit to cement them within the public’s thoughts.
Although I’m important of HYBE’s total affect on the Ok-pop market, there’s no denying it was a sensible transfer to gobble up different profitable businesses over the previous few years. With their largest act (BTS, in case you’ve been residing beneath a rock) as a result of start navy enlistments, HYBE has a large – and extensively profitable – bench of artists to fall again on. Boy teams TXT, ENHYPEN and Seventeen proceed to be very talked-about. None of them had a very nice 2022 in relation to music, however they’re an imposing trio while you take a look at gross sales. A future with out BTS group actions doesn’t really feel almost as unsure because it did simply two years in the past.
Talking of BTS, 2022 lastly gave us extra solo work from the fellows. This has been a very long time coming and opens the door for brand new sounds and concepts inside BTS’s prolonged discography. Up to now, efforts by J-Hope and Jin have been met with success and it is going to be fascinating to see what the opposite guys do – particularly those that haven’t launched solo mixtapes up to now.
Many Ok-pop headlines had been constructed round a “will they or received’t they?” strategy to BTS’s enlistment this yr. I’m unsure the company or members had an precise alternative on this from a authorized standpoint, however I feel the compelled hiatus is perhaps good for them in the long term. There’s an actual danger of oversaturation, whilst the speed of latest BTS music has slowed. This pause ought to give them an opportunity to leap off the hamster wheel and assess the place they need their careers to go sooner or later.
HYBE artists proceed to be fashionable throughout the globe, however the firm appears to be making a concerted push into the Japanese market. Along with Japanese albums from its current roster, the brand new Japanese group &Crew is about to debut quickly. And with LE SSERAFIM scheduled to carry out on the celebrated Kōhaku Uta Gassen (member Sakura is already a bonafide star in Japan), HYBE appears well-positioned to increase its tentacles into Japan’s music trade. Now, they simply want to verify the music is respectable.
The Dangerous
HYBE is a monetary juggernaut, and that continued in 2022. However, this was at all times going to be a troublesome yr for them. BTS’s hiatus has already taken its toll on their market share and is even estimated to harm the Korean economic system as an entire. I don’t assume HYBE are in any actual bother, however their funding in different acts might be important over the following few years.
Musically, HYBE’s output was a blended bag. Other than the buzzy debuts of LE SSERAFIM and NewJeans, most acts felt like they had been caught in a holding sample. BTS punted with a compilation album led by a single that acted extra like a fan track, whereas TXT and Seventeen principally repeated sounds and concepts they’d coated with larger creative success up to now. There was no large standout track from any of those teams – no 0x1=LOVESONG that everybody appeared to rave about.
In TXT’s case, this comes right down to a scarcity of precise music. One mini album appears unfair for a bunch of their rising standing. Submit-pandemic, each Ok-pop act appeared to tour in 2022 and I perceive this makes it troublesome to schedule a number of comebacks. However, TXT have at all times suffered from a dearth of comebacks when in comparison with friends from different businesses. I ponder in the event that they’d be higher served beneath their very own subsidiary in the way in which that Belift Lab manages ENHYPEN. Possibly BTS’s group hiatus will enable TXT to get extra promotional consideration.
HYBE subsidiaries weren’t with out their share of criticism this yr. From Kim Garam’s bullying scandal to the styling and ideas given to its underaged performers, the omnipotent empire appeared to play protection simply as typically as they performed offense. Managing woman teams comes with totally different set of intricacies than boy teams, and HYBE don’t have an awesome monitor document on this regard. We’ll see what the longer term holds, however 2022 was undoubtedly a yr of rising pains.
What I’d prefer to see in 2023:
- An elevation of a few of HYBE’s youthful acts (TXT, ENHYPEN, fromis_9)
- A various set of BTS solo tasks
- The solidification of LE SSERAFIM and NewJeans as the brand new woman group vanguard
Earlier years: 2021 // 2020 // 2019 // 2018 // 2017
