LOEN Entertainment to Split Their Artist Division into Multiple Labels

LOEN Entertainment, one of the biggest music distribution companies along as being the chief producers for artists such as IU, Fiestar, Sunny Hill, and History, has recently announced that they plan to separate out their artist production arm into multiple brand names or labels. The implications of this could be that LOEN Entertainment is planning a bigger push into the artist production business and to increase the visibility of their own brand.

First off, LOEN Entertainment currently consists of three separate business areas. LOEN Entertainment labels them as the “MelOn Biz,” “Contents Biz” and the important one for today, “LOEN Artist.”

MelOn Biz is the music distribution service “MelOn,” which is one of the most popular digital music distribution platforms currently available in South Korea.

“Contents Biz” is LOEN’s content production arm and is responsible for, according to LOEN, “For the distribution of over 300 titles per year and working with capable agencies to discover good albums and invest in the production of music content.” Essentially, this is the arm responsible for assisting agencies with album production, whether that be cash investment, CD production, album distribution and anything else required to get an album from the recording booth on to the shelves.

Finally, we have “LOEN Artist.” This is LOEN Entertainment’s internal artist arm and is thus the agency for artists such as IU, GAIN (when she is doing solo work), ZIA, Sunny Hull, Fiestar, History along with actors Kim Suk Hoon, Jo Han Sun and Lee Jang Hyuk. Up until now, these artists were marketed under the general “LOEN Entertainment” label, but now LOEN Entertainment wants to make their artist arm more distinct and has announced that they will be splitting this arm into multiple separate labels lead by two prominent names in the music industry.

LOEN Entertainment has explained that “We are looking to expand our artist production business by making constant investments in the system along with splitting and reorganizing the current production arm responsible for general artist management into separate labels.” 

Now for the most important part, LOEN Entertainment will be splitting their “LOEN Artist” business into the following two labels: one of them will be “LOEN Tree,” which will be responsible for IU, Sunny Hill, and History, along with all their actors. This label will be lead by current LOEN head of music production, Jo Young Chul. The label “LOEN Tree” isn’t really new for LOEN Entertainment. It has been the label they have been using to describe their artist production arm for quite some time now. They used the label a while back when they produced the joint song “Sea Of Moonlight” with IU and Fiestar. 

The second label is called “Collaboddari Label (romanized name).” I’m using the romanized name for now because LOEN Entertainment has yet to clarify what this name means exactly, but I currently presume that the label is eventually going to mean “Cola Package Label” just going by the most logical way of splitting that name to actually mean something. Anyway, the most important part of this label is who is going to be leading this label, and it seems that LOEN Entertainment has lined up someone very interesting to be this leading this label.

Composer Shinsadong Tiger, famous for songs such as 4minute‘s “Hot Issue,” BEAST‘s “Fiction,” T-Ara‘s “Roly-Poly,” A Pink‘s “NoNoNo,” Secret‘s “Magic,” and many other hit songs, will be leading this new label on LOEN Entertainment’s behalf. In terms of artists, the new “Collaboddari Label” will currently be responsible for ZIA and Fiestar. LOEN Entertainment has not mentioned if Gain would go under either of these two labels.

LOEN Entertainment has also stated that “By diversifying our business into unique individual labels, we hope to create music content in a wide variety of genres and colors so that both the labels and LOEN Entertainment prosper together.” They went on to say that “We are currently planning to create additional labels behind the labels that are currently in use. We will then make preparations to enter the global market.” Very ambitious dreams and an interesting twist to the K-Pop industry.