Janice Min, 44, co-president and chief creative director of the Entertainment Group of Guggenheim Media, speaks on the sidlines of the annual music festival the MU:CON Seoul 2014 on Monday in Hannam-dong, Seoul. |
Top US entertainment media executive says K-pop should evolve to reach wider audience
By Kim Ji-soo
Janice Min, a top U.S. entertainment media executive said that K-pop is the best known product after Samsung right now, but it needs more authenticity to connect with a wider audience.
Min is co-president and chief creative officer of Guggenheim Media's Entertainment Group. In particular, she is in charge of the Hollywood Reporter and Billboard, two American entertainment media outlets that extensively cover K-pop.
Min was in Seoul to attend MU:CON Seoul 2014, which was held Oct. 6-8 at Blue Square in Hannam-dong, Seoul. MU:CON is an annual event on K-pop organized by the Korea Creative Content Agency. She gave the opening speech on Monday, after which she held a press conference. The Korea Times talked to her additional in a separate e-mail interview.
"K-pop, it's 360 degrees of entertainment. It satisfies everything at once," Min said at the annual music event. She said that Psy also changed everything for K-pop.
Min who is a Korean-American said young American men and women are into K-pop, which has a global appeal in this YouTube era.
"I would say the weakness of K-pop is that it feels inauthentic and prepackaged ... so there needs to be authenticity," she said, suggesting that the fans want to know that the artists are passionate about music, that they write their own songs and that their artistic expressions are genuine.
"Justin Timberlake became an authentic artist when he came to have creative freedom," Min said.
This was her first visit to the country since three decades ago. She was accompanied by her mother on the trip.
She said in America, there have been increasing attempts to cover all aspects of K-pop, including its dance, fashion and beauty. She said K-pop "is always on our radar." For example, the recent fatal car accident of K-pop girl group Ladies' Code was a huge story in America. The Hollywood Reporter has also written about the nightlife scene in Los Angeles's Koreatown, which is largely driven by K-pop.
When asked whether Billboard's K-pop chart, which was discontinued this May, will return, she said, "It will eventually come back."
Min started out as a writer for People in 1993 and made her name as a longtime editor of Us Weekly. Then, she made headlines when she was named the editorial director of the Hollywood Reporter in 2010. She was promoted this year as co-president and chief creative officer to oversee both the Hollywood Reporter and Billboard.
As a child, she never saw any Asian Americans in leadership positions in the media industry, and thus, she hopes that her position and visibility will be an inspiration to the next generation of Asian Americans.
Min revamped the Hollywood Reporter, which now boasts a quarter of a million readers for its weekly magazine and a record 12 million monthly unique visitors for its website, THR. Com, as of January 2014, a 900 percent increase since 2010. Since then, the Hollywood Reporter won 20 National Entertainment Journalism Awards (including Best Entertainment Publication). In 2014, the magazine was nominated for ASME's National Magazine Award for General Excellence,Special Interest.
When asked about how she successfully revamped these prestigious media brands, she said it took a lot of work but was easier than most people think.
"It is just about leveraging the contacts and respect and modernizing the content in ways that make it relevant to a larger audience," Min said. "It's about recasting insider information in ways that make it applicable to the widest audience possible," she added.
Regarding Billboard, she said the outlet's prowess comes from its massive data-collecting and the matrix that it uses for making the charts. She added Billboard still means something to artists and fans. "Talk to any artist, and having the top song on Billboard is their life dream. It's meant something for a long time," she said.
Min was also asked about what K-pop means to Koreans.
"K-pop seems to represent total youth culture to Koreans, for reasons both good and sometimes bad," Min said. "But I think there is a big national pride in the phenomenon that is K-Pop and the fact that it has traveled so far and wide in the world.
"K-Pop in some ways feels like a move forward among the new generation, who, for better or worse, won't harbor the painful memories (of the 1950-1953 Korean War) that so many older Koreans have. It's all about moving forward and incredibly optimistic in its presentation and lyrics and point of view," she said. "I have been struck by how amazingly modern Seoul is right now."
Min also addressed the looming questions on industry insiders' minds, such as how far the genre will go, whether fans from different countries and cultures will enjoy it and what it needs to do to last.
"I will think K-pop will morph into different versions," she said, adding that she expects one of the K-pop acts to make it big enough to illustrate that the genre does not have only one sound. However, she said she doesn't know which K-pop act will achieve this and why and how.
In order to win more of the American audience, Min thinks K-pop groups should look at the path that the Spice Girls, NSync or Backstreet Boys took.
She also cited the cases of Crayon Pop, who opened for Lady Gaga's U.S. concert in June, and G-Dragon's upcoming collaboration with Justin Bieber as steps that K-pop artists aiming for the U.S. market might consider.
"The fact that Lady Gaga promoted the act on social media was probably the most powerful thing any Western artist could have done for a K-pop artist. Collaborations also get a lot of attention," she said.
"The validation of a K Pop artist by a popular Western artist helps break through the clutter," Min added.
Min said she doesn't think the Korean government supporting the K-pop industry is a problem as the American fans are still in the process of discovering the genre. While she admitted that Korean-Americans are more likely to be interested in K-pop, she said she was "really gratified" to see how much young people of all ethnicities in the United States enjoy K-pop.
"The Internet and instant availability of other cultures and other music make geographic and cultural boundaries less significant," Min said.