Blog: Label services

HYBE kicked off the month with new leadership and a new plan to bring the Korean entertainment company into its next era of growth. In a letter to shareholders , outgoing CEO Jiwon Park and new chief Jason Jaesang Lee were refreshingly open about HYBE’s past weaknesses as they laid out a plan to prepare for market shifts and bring the “K-pop system” to new genres and regions.

One of the biggest stories of the past few years is the rise of self-releasing artists, who number 6.4 million in 2022, a 16.8% growth from 2021. Everyone wants a piece of that growth, which is part of the reason why distributors like Stem and TuneCore increasingly offer much more than distribution, major record labels are opening (or acquiring) their own label service operations, and there is a growing roster of what Music Business Worldwide has termed “inside-out majors” , like the recently-launched Gamma.