Music fair MU:CON 2022 brings together industry experts to talk K-pop's expansion

On the second day of MU:CON 2022, an open session focusing on the subject of “Power Players Bringing Korea to the Global Stage" was held on Nodeul Island, Yongsan District, central seoul. [HALEY YANG]

MU:CON 2022 kicked off on Nodeul Island in central Seoul’s Yongsan District on Wednesday. The music fair features live performances by a lengthy lineup of artists, discussion sessions and business workshops over a three-day span.

Hosted by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and Korea Creative Content Agency (Kocca), MU:CON aims to serve as a bridge for global music exchange and business opportunities since it first launched in 2012. This year, the fair is finally back offline for the first time since 2019.

During the second day of the fair, MU:CON hosted an open session focusing on the subject of “Power Players Bringing Korea to the Global Stage.” The session was moderated by Priya Dewan, founder of music consultancy company Gig Life Pro, who has over 18 years of experience helping music businesses to grow globally in the Asia-Pacific market; speakers Tom Windish, executive vice president and head of business development and A&R at Wasserman Music; Tricia Arnold, senior vice president and global label management and sales at global music distributor The Orchard; and Han Kyoo Moon, managing partner of entertainment company UC Global. The four gathered to discuss the global expansion and distribution of K-pop.

“They [participants in the session] all come from very different backgrounds, but they’ve all helped Korean artists meet a global audience,” said Dewan.

“I started working with Korean artists about 10 years ago,” said Windish, a veteran booking agent who has developed the touring careers of big names including Billie Eilish and Lorde. “I get excited when I hear things unlike anything I’ve heard about before. Korea has a lot of things that are unique. One of the first [Korean] artists I started working on with was Hyukoh. They’re unique, amazing and know how to put on show.

“A lot of them [in the U.S. music industry] thought it was too much work to bring Asian artist over to the U.S. for a tour,” he continued, “but I thought these artists are great,”

The speakers have witnessed firsthand K-pop’s steady yet dramatic rise to global popularity.

“The Orchard has been looking for different opportunities in different regions for a long time,” said Arnold. “But when Korean music started getting on my radar was like 2015. When you’re working with stuff in different languages and you see spikes happening in places like Latin America, you think ‘What is going on here?’ There was something resonating with the audience in different countries even if they don’t understand the language. I thought there’s a real opportunity here. It wasn’t just a niche or within the Korean diaspora. Something real was going on.”

“There are people in all corners of the world who don’t necessarily understand the language but still find [the music] resonate with them,” she continued. “We did find in Latin America, Brazil and Mexico was really early adaptors. Of course it was a bit slower to catch up in the United States, but it has also become an important market. And K-pop has grown into Europe and the Middle East where things really resonate there.”

Han Kyoo Moon has been working on bringing foreign music to the Korean market for over a decade. He and his firm brought the electronic dance music (EDM) festival Ultra to Korea for the first time in 2012. He is now striving to bring artists from all over the world to the Korean music scene.

“One of my good friends was importing music shows from the U.S. to Korea and he saw electronic music becoming bigger in the Korean scene,” he said. “In 2012, there were only three or four EDM festivals in Asia: in India, Malaysia and Thailand.”

“The reason EDM was able to spread was that it became easier for those artists to go to those places,” Windish said, highlighting the importance of efforts to link different countries’ music industries. “It’s expensive for a band to go anywhere with the people and equipment.”

Although music is a universal language, Arnold pointed out the differences that music industry insiders must deal with in order for K-pop’s smoot expansion abroad.

“The U.S. became a focus market for K-pop, but there are just fundamental differences to the ways you have to release something in the U.S. if you’re looking for more sales or a spot on the Billboard chart,” she said. “In Korea, getting stock and distributing it out there is pretty quick. But if you’re looking for global distribution, even the U.S. alone is a huge country. If you want your product in Target or on Amazon, that timeline is so much longer than it is in Korea. So that was quite a challenge.”

Nonetheless, the advance of the internet and global interactions has made it possible for artists on the opposite side of the world find each other, and for international music industry to be more connected than ever.

“Nowadays, I see even if artists don’t speak each other’s language, they collaborate remotely, not actually in the studio,” Moon said. “I was fascinated by that [...] trying to cross promote each other in the fan base that they have. My end of it — contracting, licensing, management and legal matters — are the hard parts. But we try to meet the artist’s demands and make it happen.”

BY HALEY YANG [yang.hyunjoo@joongang.co.kr]