Chief producer of SM highlights importance of YouTube at Google seminar

Lee Soo-man, chief producer of SM Entertainment, shared some of his insights on the future of K-pop in "Google for Korea," an online conference hosted by Google Korea, on Wednesday. Lee was one of the many guest speakers during the event..

Lee Soo-man, chief producer of SM Entertainment, shared some of his insights on the future of K-pop in “Google for Korea″ on Wednesday. [SM ENTERTAINMENT]

Lee Soo-man, chief producer of SM Entertainment, shared some of his insights on the future of K-pop in “Google for Korea,” an online conference hosted by Google Korea, on Wednesday.

Lee was one of the many guest speakers during the event, including Google Asia Pacific president Scott Beaumont, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and Google Korea country director Kim Kyoung-hoon.

The event celebrates the 18th anniversary of Google Korea, with the theme “The achievements that K-pop and YouTube have made, and the future.”

Lee mentioned that SM Entertainment was the first entertainment agency in Korea to open an official YouTube channel in 2009, while adding that YouTube is important to SM as it is an archive for all artistic content from the past until today.

“As Korean pop music has gotten successful by spreading throughout the world, it has become more easily accessible to global fans,” said Lee.

Lee stressed the importance of the prosumer era, referring to consumers who take content and make it their own, citing the example of the agency’s new project called “Pink Blood”.

“Pink Blood” promotes the work of fans who recreate the songs or choreography of SM artists, like aespa or NCT. Lee said that YouTube will “have a big role” for “Pink Blood.”

Lee introduced another upcoming project where the agency will release remastered versions of old music videos of its artists’ hit songs. “This meaningful collaboration with YouTube will show SM’s heritage, and the history of K-pop,” Lee said.

Finally, Lee ended his speech by emphasizing that the future of K-pop lies in not only releasing original content, but also sharing prosumers’ recreated content with one another freely, leaping into a “universe of limitless content.”

BY SHIN MIN-HEE [shin.minhee@joongang.co.kr]