SM Entretainment

SM Entertainment is a talent agency, producer and publisher of Korean pop music, founded by Lee Soo-Man. Initially, "SM" was an abbreviation of the name of the founder of agency, but now means "Museum of the Stars" (Star Museum).

Once it was home to the best-selling popular groups like HOT, SES, and Shinhwa, your current list includes BoA, SNSD, TVXQ and Super Junior. SM Entertainment also co-publishes Avex Trax releases for Japanese artists such as Ayumi Hamasaki, Namie Amuro, and Kumi Koda.

The company celebrated its tenth anniversary with a party on February 15, 2006. Its current president is Kim Young-min.

History

After graduating from Seoul National University and seek his own career as a singer, Lee Soo-man, several teenagers surveyed about what they wanted to see the bands, then started the boy band HOT and the girl group S.E.S. . Both groups became popular during the 1990s.

Soon after, Lee created a boy band Shinhwa another, and once again the group achieved the same popularity and success. However, problems began to appear in SM Entertainment after the breakup of HOT. Some financial issues supposed to be the problem, but the real reasons have never been officially revealed.

S.E.S. was dissolved a year after H.O.T. , And a year later in 2003, SM Entertainment also see the departure of Shinhwa, but the group changed to a new direction instead of break and continue their success away from SM Entertainment.

In subsequent years, some of its newer businesses, such as Isak N Jiyeon and Black Beat, could not reach the popularity of the first artists of SM. The agency later found new success in acts such as BoA and TVXQ. Besides marketing the national public, the two artists have been aggressively promoted in Japan as part of the company's recent (blue ocean strategy) to export Korean talent to the major music markets abroad.

SM established a joint venture with Avex Trax to release the music of BoA, TVXQ, The Grace, Super Junior and TRAX in Japan. Super Junior and Zhang Liyin have been promoted heavily in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and other Chinese-speaking communities, the sub group Super Junior, Super Junior-M who sings in Mandarin Chinese and was created for the target audience who speaks Chinese.

Disputes

TVXQ Demand

In late July 2009, three members, Hero, Micky and Xiah, filed an application to the Court of Seoul Central District to determine the validity of their contract with SM Entertainment. Through their lawyers, members considered that the contract of 13 years is too long and that the group's earnings were not distributed equally to members. For early termination of his contract will cost 2 times the profit that the group is expected to earn for the rest of the contract term (more than ₩ 11 billion, or about U.S. $ 9.2 million) . The news was enough to cause the price of the shares of SM Entertainment to fall more than 10% in the Kospi.

The Seoul Central District Court ruled in favor of the three members. The Seoul Central District Court failed for members a three. They argued that the contract was unfair and members were outside the proper benefit sharing. In response, the EMS held a press conference and claimed that the demand is a great deception, indicating that the lawsuit was not about unfair contracts or human rights, but a scam motivated by the greed of the three members of cosmetics business. The three members remained silent, except to say through his lawyers that SM Entertainment expecting respect the decision of the court.

In response to demand, 120,000 fans of TVXQ filed a petition against the long-term contracts SM Entertainment of Seoul District Court. Cassiopeia also requested compensation for SM Entertainment SM Town Live Concert canceled because both SM and TVXQ initially claimed that the concert will go as planned, the concert was canceled a week before her due date.

M.net Asian Music Awards boycott

Before the show, SM Entertainment announced that it would boycott the Asian Music Awards M.net as MAMA believes SM will use a process similar to the way M MNET's music program! Countdown to select its winners, and SMEs do not trust or believe the method is fair.