(Seoul) HYBE, the agency of BTS, the emblematic boy band South Korean K-pop style with global success, announced Wednesday that it had entered into an exclusive ten-year distribution contract with the American giant Universal Music Group (UMG).
“Universal Music Group will have the exclusivity for the next ten years of the global distribution of physical albums and digital music of HYBE groups”, both present and future, announced the South Korean agency.
The American label is the world number one in the music industry and its catalog includes Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber. South Korean media are speculating that BTS will resume its activities in 2025.
HYBE and UMG, who began collaborating in 2017 via a distribution agreement in Japan, began YouTube auditions last year intended to launch this year in the United States a group of girls trained in K-pop using the method HYBE.
The South Korean agency will also collaborate with UMG to offer the American label’s artists “a more direct link” with their fans via the Weverse platform that it developed, UMG announced in a separate press release.
HYBE is for its part a key player in K-pop, which it helped transform into a global phenomenon by launching BTS in 2013. The boy band then announced in 2022 that it would go on standby, notably due to the obligation for its members to complete their military service.
In September, HYBE announced, however, that the seven members of the group had renewed their contract with the agency, without giving further details.