CJ E&M
Wanqi Shen
I believe it is not an easy job if CJ E&M wants to do further business in the US. The US market is a great place to start a business, but it is not the best place for K-Pop. As the author said, CJ E&M would like to export the Korean culture in a whole, they called it as a “lifestyle” which contains “K-Drama”, “K-Movie”, “K-Food”, etc. “K-Pop” is only a part of the business chain, and I believe if CJ E&M decides to start a music business, they have to cooperate with other Korean music groups like SM, YG, or JYP which means CJ has to share the revenue with other companies. Someone may say, like the author said, CJ owns PSY, who is the most popular Korean artist to make a splash in the U.S. However, I don’t think PSY is a music content creator, and after “Gangnam Style”, he gets lesser attention due to his cliché musical works. When People watched the “Gangnam Style”, they seen it as a phenomenon, a funny video clip, but not a musical work. And as far as I know, most audiences know and watch his video only on YouTube or other video platforms. “Most K-pop consumption in the U.S. was on YouTube”. And the main audience group is teenagers, like the fans of other K-Pop groups.
However, the “Gangnam Style” gives us a hint, for the US consumers, they need some “culture phenomenon”. Because the US consumers hold a different personal identity, culture background and aesthetic standard with the Asian consumers. I discussed some K-Pop groups with my US domestic friends, they thought those girls (like Girls’ Generation) and boys are lacking self identity, and their exteriors are not attractive. After I read some data about CJ’s audiences, I think my hypothesis is right—most of their audiences are Asian, even they start their business in the US. The language barrier and culture differences are main reasons to fail their business. K-Pop is not like K-Movie, language problem can be solved by subtitles or dubbing, and the culture barrier will be a wow factor in the film industry.
Just as the article said, CJ doesn’t have “fan convention” in Asian, but they need to wary about hosting an event like “KCON”. They met some hurdles when they are looking for sponsorship, partners, and setting the ticket price. As the artist lineup of KCON 2012, most of them are lesser-known artists, facing the competition of domestic artists, they have to lower their ticket price to attract those jobless teenagers. We can see it fails in the economy perspective, CJ lost $390,000 in the end in 2012. It may be an alert to CJ E&M, K-Pop is not a cure-all. When the US people want to taste something from Korea, give them a bowl of bibimbap.