Asia News: Japanese Promoters, Ones To Watch, HYBE & More

The 10 music promoters who formed a consortium several weeks ago have successfully lobbied the Japanese government to amend its COVID compensation scheme to support foreign artists entering Japan to perform at concerts and festivals. The main aspect of the consortium’s request is easing visa restrictions for foreign artists so that they can enter Japan without having to go through the mandatory 14-day quarantine period that is currently in force for all citizens and residents who enter the country from overseas. (Tourists are still not allowed to enter at all.) 

Though Smash Corporation has already announced that its Fuji Rock Festival set for August will only feature domestic artists this year, there is some hope that other festivals tentatively slated for summer or later will be allowed to book foreign artists, now that the state of emergency has been lifted. Under the revised compensation plan, the Japanese government has said it would subsidize things like performance fees, production fees, venue fees and operating fees. 

However, it should be noted that since the state of emergency was lifted at the end of March, there has been another rise in infections that point to a fourth wave, so the consortium’s optimism may be premature. 

In any case, the Olympics are the priority for the government at the moment, not live music.

Live Nation has announced that it is bringing its artist-discovery platform, Ones to Watch, to China, Digital Music News reports.

The company created the platform in the U.S. in 2017 as a means of boosting careers of promising artists and has since helped boost the worldwide success of people like Halsey and Dua Lipa. 

The Chinese version of the platform, called Xing Xian Kan, will “focus on artist discovery,” says Live Nation. The first artist they will promote is the rock band Orange Ocean, which is based in Qingdao and performs in English. 

In a statement, Edward Liu, managing director of Live Nation China, said, “Through the expansion of Ones to Watch to China, Live Nation is committed to developing local emerging artists, not only by exposing them to new audiences but also providing platforms for their professional development within the music industry.” 

The timing is fortuitous, since, according to Digital Music News, China’s music market has shown signs of heating up, with various major players in China’s music scene forging alliances with international music-related brands. 

South Korea’s Big Hit Entertainment, which manages BTS and is changing its name to HYBE, has invested about $950 million in its U.S. subsidiary to acquire Ithaca Holdings LLC, the company headed by music impresario Scooter Braun. As a result, Braun will join HYBE’s board of directors and the Carlyle Group will sell its minority stake in Ithaca. 

Braun said that the merger would create “exponential” opportunities for new and current Ithaca artists, including Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande, who would also be shareholders. For his part, HYBE Chairman and CEO Bang Si-hyuk said the deal was “inevitable” and that it would “break down cultural barriers.” In addition to BTS, Bieber and Grande, the new venture would also represent J Balvin, Demi Lovato, TXT and Seventeen. 

The Korea Herald reports that there are some risks in the venture. An expert told the newspaper that Big Hit’s success so far has been thanks almost completely to the success of BTS, whose members are slated to do their mandatory military service in the near future, thus causing a possible pause in the company’s forward motion. However, the expert also said that the new venture will provide invaluable opportunities for other K-pop acts under the HYBE name to expand outside of Korea. In addition, HYBE is boosting its use of virtual space for things like online concerts and mobile game development.

South Korean production company Pop Music has announced it is developing a stage musical based on the hit Netflix series “Crash Landing on You,” about a romance between a South Korean heiress-company president and a North Korean army officer. Originally developed for South Korean cable station tvN, the show gained the highest ratings in the station’s history and has been a continual Top Ten contender on Netflix’s various Asian platforms. 

According to Soompi news, Pop Music and T2N Media have signed global production rights with Studio Dragon, which produced the TV series, and plan to launch a stage music version in Seoul sometime in mid-2022. In a statement, Pop Music’s CEO said, “We concluded the deal for publication rights with Studio Dragon, and we plan to start choosing the main staff and begin casting. Since it’s a project in which the fame of the source intellectual property is very large, we’ve already received inquiries from many actors and foreign production companies.”

The annual K-pop event, Busan One Asia Festival, will take place as usual next month after being cancelled in 2020, though, as with so many other concert events, it will be held online due to concerns over COVID-19. The local tourist organization for the South Korean port city says that viewers can stream the festival online from May 6 to 9. 

It will be presented in three parts: A K-pop Concert, a Park Concert and BOF Land.  The K-pop Concert’s headliners will be NCT, The Boyz and WEi. The Busan One Asia Festival is one of the biggest K-pop festivals in the world.