INTERVIEW Makestar innovates K-pop industry with 'enter-tech' platform

Makestar's "poca albums" featuring different K-pop singers / Courtesy of Makestar Kim Jae-myun seeks to take leap forward with 'poca albums,' new boy band By Dong Sun-hwa As one of the founding members of the leading K-pop management company FNC Entertainment, Kim Jae-myun, also known as Jay Kim, witnessed the explosion of Korean music's global popularity first hand in the mid-late 2000s as the second-generation K-pop acts raised their international profile. FNC's boy band F.T. Island and many other groups like Girls' Generation and Super Junior captured the hearts of people worldwide, actively expanding their fan bases with their music and performances. To promote his company's artists, Kim often had to go abroad and analyze different markets to gain insights. However, as he continued his work, he realized one big thing: the number of international K-pop fans was massive, but there was no proper platform or channel connecting them to K-pop singers and their content. This is why Kim decided to build such a platform on his own, establishing Makestar in 2015 after leaving FNC. The CEO defines Makestar as an "entertainment-technology (enter-tech)" company that adds a touch of technology to entertainment to cater to both producers and consumers of K-pop. Makestar promotes K-pop girl group aespa's upcoming fan signing event. Captured from Makestar's official website "We attempted to go global from the very onset," Kim said during an interview with The Korea Times at the headquarters of Makestar in Gangnam District, southern Seoul, Monday. "Today, people from more than 230 countries use our service and approximately 80 percent of our sales are made in the global market. We actually have sustained consistent sales growth, recording 95.6 billion won ($70 million) in 2023. This represents more than a 20-fold increase from 2019." One of its main business models is crowdfunding, in which Makestar organizes different fan events or produces K-pop goods after identifying the fan's demands through surveys or voting. So far, the company has collaborated with more than 700 groups like BLACKPINK, aespa and Stray Kids to run over 2,200 projects, partnering with 369 record labels including K-pop powerhouses SM Entertainment and HYBE. "It was not a piece of cake to secure partnerships with major K-pop labels in the beginning, but we managed to do so after demonstrating our potential with the artists from smaller companies," Kim explained. At the moment, it is preparing a fan signing event for aespa, which will drop its first full-length album, "Armageddon" on May 27. Among those who purchase the album before its release, 50 of them will get the opportunity to join the event through a random draw. "We first started with a crowdfunding model as it was something familiar to people in the music industry where fans collect money to help singers put out their albums and host birthday events for them. We believed that engaging fans and allowing them to play more active roles in supporting their stars would be the key to creating a connection." A poca album featuring Soyeon of K-pop girl group (G)I-DLE / Courtesy of Makestar 'Poca albums' After making strides with the crowdfunding projects, Kim moved forward by developing a new type of album called, "poca album" — short for "photo card album" — in 2022, carving a niche in the K-pop industry. Covered with photo cards featuring different K-pop stars, the poca albums do not come in the CD format. Instead, they present NFC tags or QR codes through which people can listen to music on an mobile application created by Makestar. The application also provides exclusive photos and videos of the singers, along with fan communities for interaction. These innovative albums are environmentally friendly as well, as they reduce the use of plastic. To date, Makestar has sold more than 3 million poca albums. " Defying today's digital trend , the sales of physical K-pop albums are growing as fans collect them as goods," Kim said. According to the Korea Customs Service (KCS), export sales of K-pop albums reached a new high of $290 million in 2023 — a 25.4 percent jump from 2022. "But the mass production of these albums can prompt plastic pollution and threaten our planet. Some people even ditch the albums after purchasing them because they do not need CDs. So, we decided to only offer what they want — such as photo cards and other goods — and ended up making poca albums. Fans can still own them as digital collectibles while getting access to more diverse content through our application." Makestar CEO Kim Jae-myun / Courtesy of Makestar Kim stressed that one poca album is being counted as the equivalent of one physical album in the major music charts in Korea. It is also likely to be given the same status in global charts, he added. "Given that poca albums are swiftly replacing the CDs, their market share will continue to go up and lead the global charts to recognize them," he predicted. "International artists will consider releasing such an album as well, since they are also looking for something to replace CDs in this digital era. We already set up our Chinese branch to produce poca albums for the artists there, and we plan to head to Japan and the U.S. in the days ahead." Another big goal of Kim is to craft more poca albums without music for Korean actors, who are basking in immense popularity worldwide. It already made headlines for producing one for actor Jang Hyuk earlier this year, but Makestar plans to continue its project with more actors in the coming days. Makestar is actually home to several A-list actors including Park Hae-il, who starred in the movie, "Decision to Leave." With this romance thriller, filmmaker Park Chan-wook won the Best Director award at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. "There are many ways for Korean actors to amplify their global presence like K-pop stars," Kim explained. "But until today, not much has been done to promote them worldwide. That's why I think Makestar can get involved to apply our success formula. We will make more poca albums for actors, which will look similar to those of the singers except that they will not feature music." The contenders of KBS audition show, "MA1" / Courtesy of Makestar Venturing out with new boy band Makestar is seeking to create another breakthrough with the launch of a new boy band, aiming to build its own intellectual property (IP) and reach a broader audience. It has recently teamed up with the public broadcaster KBS to produce a new audition program, "Make Mate 1 (MA1) ," which pits 35 contestants against each other to single out the members for a rookie K-pop boy group. "Unlike most other audition programs that feature idol trainees from different agencies, most of our contenders are not represented by any companies," Kim said, noting that one of them is a defector from North Korea. "About 40 percent of them have never learned singing and dancing before. So, people will see how these boys next door gradually evolve into talented artists. They will also be able to feel more engaged as these boys grow up with their support. The new act is scheduled to debut in October and will actively make use of our platform to interact with its followers." Kim added, "Makestar embarked on its journey as a platform, but we will now widen our scope to build IP."