As for recruiting, I believe that SM just does yearly auditions or something. But I know that they - and a lot of other Korean agencies - have fairly recently started to do their talent hunts overseas for Asian artists abroad, everywhere from China to America, which is really cool. Like, in Super Junior they've got HanGeng from China; in Super Junior M they've got well, HanGeng, but also ZhouMi from China, and Henry from Canada; then f(x) has Victoria from China and Amber from America; a few of the SNSD girls were brought up in the States I believe; then in another company, 2PM's leader/former leader (lol, there's an epic scandal in itself!) was American-Korean, and another member is Thai, etc. So I guess it makes them easier to send them abroad for shows when so many of the acts are from abroad anyway.
It's not all roses for foreign-born in Korea though - until recently there was a law restricting how many TV shows a foreign artist could do, so I know both HanGeng and solo singer Zhang LiYin, despite both working under SM, could only sign up for a couple of TV stations, and had to keep going back to China to get fresh entertainment visas or something. HanGeng used to sneakily perform in a mask and hat to hide himself (until Heechul de-masked him one day, HA). Then there was the recent 2PM scandal - long story short, Leader says dumb-shit anti-Korean stuff in his Myspace just after arriving in Korea to train (so presumably going through massive culture shock) - four years later, comments are leaked, super-nationalistic Korea flips its lid over his comments and tells him to GTFO, pop-music meltdown follows. A few days later it was revealed that a few years after he made pro-Korea comments in the Myspace and everyone felt bad. >_>
My opinion on the Korea vs Japan music market is that Korean acts tend to be more slick and cookie-cutter than the Japanese ones. I guess because in Japan the major idol manufacturing machines are pretty much JE and to a lesser degree Hello Project. You don't really hear about any others. But Korea has SM, JYP and YG as the big three, then with smaller but also fairly aggressive agencies also fighting for a piece of the pie. So when a trend appears, everyone seems to follow it - eg, Korea has been inundated with girl groups this year, because they've been selling well, to the point that the market is well and truly saturated, but the idol factories keep pumping them out. And while I feel that Korean idols generally are better singers and dancers, they can all kind of seem like clones of one another too, so you have to sift through to find the gold, or at least your favourite group.
Also, sales seem to be significantly less, despite the idols being (IMO) worked harder, and having less of a claim to their own lives. I suspect this is because Koreans are WAY more technologically literate than their Japanese equivalents, and so music piracy is a bigger thing there. Also, digital-only singles and such seem to be used in Korea far more than Japan, so there is less moving of physical units. And maybe they're just not as good at 'collecting' as Japanese fans are - I don't really see Korea releasing like, 8 different editions of albums at the same time the way Japan does, with the fans picking up each edition all at once. Instead they seem to go in for 'repackaged albums' - a month or two after a release, they'll do repackage with a couple of extra songs, or different versions or something. But rather than buying again, I suspect Koreans tend to download instead.
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branchandroot
Re: Oh shit, lol, this turned out really long...
Date: 2009-10-04 02:56 pm (UTC)It's not all roses for foreign-born in Korea though - until recently there was a law restricting how many TV shows a foreign artist could do, so I know both HanGeng and solo singer Zhang LiYin, despite both working under SM, could only sign up for a couple of TV stations, and had to keep going back to China to get fresh entertainment visas or something. HanGeng used to sneakily perform in a mask and hat to hide himself (until Heechul de-masked him one day, HA). Then there was the recent 2PM scandal - long story short, Leader says dumb-shit anti-Korean stuff in his Myspace just after arriving in Korea to train (so presumably going through massive culture shock) - four years later, comments are leaked, super-nationalistic Korea flips its lid over his comments and tells him to GTFO, pop-music meltdown follows. A few days later it was revealed that a few years after he made pro-Korea comments in the Myspace and everyone felt bad. >_>
My opinion on the Korea vs Japan music market is that Korean acts tend to be more slick and cookie-cutter than the Japanese ones. I guess because in Japan the major idol manufacturing machines are pretty much JE and to a lesser degree Hello Project. You don't really hear about any others. But Korea has SM, JYP and YG as the big three, then with smaller but also fairly aggressive agencies also fighting for a piece of the pie. So when a trend appears, everyone seems to follow it - eg, Korea has been inundated with girl groups this year, because they've been selling well, to the point that the market is well and truly saturated, but the idol factories keep pumping them out. And while I feel that Korean idols generally are better singers and dancers, they can all kind of seem like clones of one another too, so you have to sift through to find the gold, or at least your favourite group.
Also, sales seem to be significantly less, despite the idols being (IMO) worked harder, and having less of a claim to their own lives. I suspect this is because Koreans are WAY more technologically literate than their Japanese equivalents, and so music piracy is a bigger thing there. Also, digital-only singles and such seem to be used in Korea far more than Japan, so there is less moving of physical units. And maybe they're just not as good at 'collecting' as Japanese fans are - I don't really see Korea releasing like, 8 different editions of albums at the same time the way Japan does, with the fans picking up each edition all at once. Instead they seem to go in for 'repackaged albums' - a month or two after a release, they'll do repackage with a couple of extra songs, or different versions or something. But rather than buying again, I suspect Koreans tend to download instead.