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Dave was the big winner at the 2022 GRM Rated Awards, which focuses on the U.K. rap and grime scene. The rapper won four awards, including track of the year and video of the year for “Clash” (featuring Stormzy).
The Rated Awards were held on Saturday Oct. 22 at Magazine London and will be broadcast on E4 on Tuesday Oct. 25 at 10 p.m. BST. Big Zuu and Julie Adenuga hosted the show.
Dave’s second studio album, We’re All Alone in This Together, was named album of the year. It topped the Official U.K. Albums Chart for two weeks in August 2021. Dave also took home the award for male artist of the year.
While accepting the award for track of the year, Dave discussed the long journey that the song took to become a hit. The song reached No. 2 on the Official U.K. Singles Chart.
Joined by Stormzy on stage, Dave explained: “Back in 2019, I’d just finished my tour. My friend [Kyle Evans] who produced this song had just brought Jordan 1s and Jordan 4s so I freestyled ‘Clash.’ I played Stormzy the song in 2020 and then a year after that I got his verse! Four years of a journey to bring you guys this song.”
Breakthrough went to teenage British hip hop duo, A1 x J1. Little Simz added the female artist of the year award to her recent Mercury Prize win. Central Cee continued his global rise by taking home mixtape of the year.
Jamal Edwards, a British music entrepreneur, DJ and founder of the online R&B/hip-hop platform SB.TV, was posthumously presented this year’s legacy award. Edward died on Feb. 20 at age 31 of a cardiac arrhythmia caused by recreational drugs. The award was presented by Post, founder & CEO of GRM Daily, and Rashid Kasirye, founder of Link Up TV. The award was accepted by Edwards’ mother Brenda and sister Tanisha. The presentation included a special video created by Jamal’s team at SBTV to celebrate his life and legacy.
The Rated Awards were founded by GRM Daily, which has chronicled the U.K. rap and grime scene for more than a decade. With 5 million subscribers and an online reach of more than 9 million, GRM claims to be the most viewed British music platform in the U.K.
The nominations recognize achievements between June 1, 2021, and June 1, 2022.
Here’s the full list of nominations, with winners marked.
Album of the year
Cleo Sol – MotherWINNER: Dave – We’re All Alone in This TogetherFredo – Independence DayKnucks – ALPHA PLACEKojey Radical – Reason to SmileLittle Simz – Sometimes I Might Be IntrovertM Huncho – Chasing EuphoriaTion Wayne – Green With Envy
Track of the year
Aitch – “Baby” (feat. Ashanti)ArrDee – “Flowers (Say My Name)”Benzz – “Je M’appelle”Central Cee – “Obsessed With You”D-Block Europe – “Overseas” (feat. Central Cee)Dave – “Starlight”WINNER: Dave – “Clash” (feat. Stormzy)Potter Payper – “Gangsteritus”Russ Millions – “Reggae & Calypso” (feat. Buni & YV)SwitchOTR – “Coming for You” (feat. A1 x J1)
Video of the year
Aitch – “1989”Aitch – “Learning Curve”CASisDEAD – “Boys Will Be Boys”Dave – “Verdansk”WINNER: Dave – “Clash” (feat. Stormzy)Knucks – “Alpha House” / “Hide & Seek”Little Simz – “Point and Kill” (feat. Obongjayar)M Huncho – “Warzone” (feat. Headie One)Pa Salieu – “Glidin’” (feat. slowthai)Stefflon Don & Ms Banks – “Dip”
Female artist of the year
Cleo SolDarkooDreya MacFLOIvorian DollWINNER: Little SimzMahaliaMiraa MayMs BanksStefflon Don
Male artist of the year
ArrDeeCentral CeeD-Block EuropeWINNER: DaveDigga DK-TrapM HunchoPotter PayperRuss MillionsTion Wayne
Breakthrough of the year
WINNER: A1 x J1ArzBru-CClavishDreya MacKnucksNemzzzRimzeeSaintéSwitchOTR
Mixtape of the year
ArrDee – Pier PressureWINNER: Central Cee – 23D-Block Europe – Home Alone 2Digga D – Noughty by NatureK-Trap – TrapoK-Trap & Blade Brown – JointsM1llionz – Provisional LicensePotter Payper – Thanks for WaitingUnknown T – AdolescenceYoungs Teflon – All Eyes on Me Against the World
Personality of the year
Big ZuuChunkzHarry PineroWINNER: KSIMo GilliganMunya ChawawaNella RoseSpecs GonzalezYung FillyZeze Millz
Producer of the year
ChucksInfloWINNER: JAE5LiTek & WhyJayLUCIDP2JQuincy TellemVennaNathaniel LondonYoung Chencs
Radio DJ of the year
Charlie SlothDJ TargetHenrie KwushueWINNER: Kenny AllstarManny NorteRob BruceSir SpyroSnoochie ShyTiffany CalverYinka & Shayna Marie
A Turkish pop singer accused of “inciting hatred and enmity” with a joke about Turkey’s religious schools rejected the charge Friday (Oct. 21) during her first court appearance.
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Singer-songwriter Gulsen was charged and briefly jailed over the joke she made during a concert in April, when she quipped that the “perversion” of one of her musicians came from attending a religious school.
The 46-year-old singer, whose full name is Gulsen Colakoglu, was taken away from her Istanbul home in August after a video from the concert began circulating on social media, with a hashtag calling for her arrest.
She was jailed for five days and later spent 15 days under house arrest despite having apologized for any offense she caused religious school graduates. She now faces up to three years in prison if found guilty of the incitement charge.
In her testimony Friday, Gulsen said she had teased a band member who was nicknamed “Imam” but had not attended a religious school.
“It was just a joke between two people. It was not a statement,” Milliyet newspaper quoted the singer as telling the court. “I did not display an attitude that would incite the people to hatred and enmity.”
“I did not target a third person, a social class or section of society,” she said, requesting an acquittal.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and many members of his Islam-based ruling party are graduates of religious schools called Imam Hatip, which were originally established to train imams.
A 48-page indictment against Gulsen had 702 complainants, including from individuals, a pro-government women’s rights organization and a religious school association. Some of them withdrew their complaints on Friday, Milliyet reported.
Turkey’s penal code criminalizes incitement of hatred and enmity against different groups in society based on class, race, religion or sect, requiring a prison sentence in cases that lead to threats against public safety.
Gulsen previously become a target in Islamic circles due to her revealing stage outfits and for unfurling an LGBTQ flag at a concert.
The court on Friday lifted an obligation for her to register at a police station every week but retained a ban on her leaving Turkey. It adjourned the proceedings until Dec. 21.
“If you had asked me 50 years ago what I would be doing in a year, I wouldn’t have had an answer,” says Michael Rother over Zoom from his partner’s house in Pisa, Italy. Although he would never have imagined it when he recorded the first Neu! album, Rother will soon begin a short tour to mark the 50th anniversary of the band, which he formed with drummer Klaus Dinger. There’s also a box set of the band’s three albums and a collection of remixes. All of which, Rother says, would have been almost impossible to imagine back in 1972.
When Neu! went into the studio to record its self-titled debut album with Conny Plank, who worked on many of the era’s iconic Krautrock albums, “we were very ambitious with the intention to create a new music,” Rother says. At the time, traditional German pop sounded backward, sometimes even tainted by the country’s history, and the Anglo-American rock that was popular globally seemed obviously imported. Along with other Krautrock pioneers, Rother, who had already played in Kraftwerk, wanted to develop a new kind of pop that would be formally innovative but also accessible – think rock with Mitteleuropean characteristics.
“It was the result of very clear thinking about moving away from Anglo-American rock and pop,” Rother says. “But whether it could become influential didn’t even cross my mind. The first objective was to be happy with the result.”
He was. When Rother returned home to Düsseldorf, he played it for his mother, brother and girlfriend and realized “it sounds really good,” he remembers. “That was my memory.”
It was more than “good” — Neu! sounded revolutionary. From the first track, “Hallogallo,” the music was driven by Dinger’s propulsive drumming, which came to be called the motorik beat. Rother and Dinger, who died in 2008, freed the musical vocabulary of rock from the verse-chorus-verse form and let it soar – sometimes, as on “Hallogallo,” in a way that could also be catchy.
Neu! sold decently in what was then West Germany, and Rother and Dinger followed up with Neu! 2 in 1973 and Neu! ‘75 in, yes, 1975. The albums won a small but dedicated following in the U.K. and then the U.S. as well. Along with some other German Krautrock bands – Can and Faust, most prominently – they brought an inventive, experimental approach to psychedelic rock at a time when it was starting to feel stale.
All three Neu! albums are collected on the 50th anniversary box set, along with an album of remixes, which Rother is celebrating with a series of concerts – Oct. 26 in Berlin, Nov. 3 in London, followed by shows in Barcelona and Paris, and maybe more – with different guests in each city. Neu!, once considered somewhat obscure, is arguably as influential and important as ever.
More than other Krautrock bands, Neu! became something of a myth, partly because their albums fell out of print in the ‘80s and ‘90s as Rother and Dinger had a falling out. Dinger, who started the band La Düsseldorf after Neu!, became known as a genius who was eccentric, sometimes hard to get along with.
One day, Rother remembers, he received a fax that a new Neu! album was coming out in Japan – which he hadn’t approved. Meanwhile, the rights to the group’s original three albums were stuck in legal limbo. They were reissued in 2001 thanks to the efforts of Herbert Grönemeyer, a mainstream German rock star who runs the Grönland label. “He was told, this band is these two German guys, they fight about everything, they will never release the music,” Rother says. “But I think this spurred his determination.”
He first got Dinger and Rother to agree to include solo songs from each, plus a Neu! track, on a compilation of German rock he produced, then started asking them about reissues. “I think it took him one and a half years of meetings, talking like a psych therapist to us,” Rother says.
Rother has always been active – he joined Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius from Cluster in the band Harmonia, which released two iconic albums in the mid-1970s, then started a solo career. From 1977 to 1987, he steadily released solo albums – which sold well in the German-speaking world but barely at all outside it.
“Neu! was more popular outside Germany and my music was more popular in Germany,” Rother says. “Harmonia was ignored but my music took off like a rocket.” He pauses. “Well, the comparison with a rocket is a bit misleading. A slow-burning rocket. A tractor-rocket.”
Rother’s last two albums – the 2020 solo set Dreaming and the 2021 duet with his partner, Vittoria Maccabruni, As Long as the Light, came out on Grönland, which has also released two box sets of his solo albums. But he’s also looking forward to revisiting his history. “I feel fortunate that I met all of these musicians,” he says, “and I feel fortunate to have that history.” He pauses. “It’s 50 years,” he says. “Sounds a bit strange.”
For months, South Korean politicians have been scrambling to find a solution to the forced breakup of BTS, the biggest cultural export their country has known over the last several decades.
On Monday (Oct. 17), the boy band’s label Big Hit Music, a subsidiary of HYBE, appeared to put an end to the handwringing, saying that each of the BTS members would, in fact, serve their mandatory military service. That means, before long — Jin turns 30 in December — the group will not be able to perform with its full seven-member lineup until 2025.
While the timing will vary for the members — Jin, RM, J-Hope, Suga, Jimin, V and Jungkook — based on their age, the departures will create yet another challenge for Seoul-based HYBE. The company, which went public on the South Korean Stock Exchange in October of 2020, has been working to diversify its roster and silence financial analysts who said the company had the look of a one-hit wonder with BTS, the act that has landed six No. 1 songs on the Billboard Hot 100.
HYBE had already been dealing with the stress put on the company by the act’s joint announcement in June that it was taking an undetermined break from group activities to pursue solo projects. But no amount of lobbying by politicians or HYBE itself has helped BTS avoid the responsibilities that all able-bodied South Korean males from 18 to 28 have to serve at least 18 months in the military, though the length of service may vary. In December of 2020, the South Korean National Assembly passed the so-called “BTS law” to allow K-pop entertainers to postpone required service until the age of 30 with a recommendation from the culture minister.
For now, the market seems to have priced in the reality that either through military service or their own desire to work on their solo careers, this version of BTS would not be able to stay together for much longer.
HYBE’s stock, traded on South Korea’s stock exchange, fell 2.54% to 115,000 won ($80.40) on Monday, with other K-pop companies’ stocks staying within 1% of their Friday closing price.
Mandatory military service issue has been a divisive issue in South Korea in recent years as K-pop’s popularity has grown worldwide. While many, including some lawmakers, say the musicians’ contribution to the country’s global recognition should qualify them for an exemption, others that include the defense ministry have opposed the move.
In a country that has superpower neighbors such as China and Russia, as well as a saber-rattling North Korea, many South Koreans believe that the military requirement serves as a social equalizer. And attempts to avoid mandatory service have suspended or derailed the careers of several entertainers and other public figures. Boy bands such as 2 PM and Bigbang have significantly limited their public appearances or paused group activities after its members entered the military.
Jin, the group’s eldest member, turns 30 in December and is expected to start his military service by the end of the year if no sudden amendments are made to the country’s compulsory draft legislation. Jungkook, the youngest member, is 25 years old.
For HYBE, the big question remains: Has the company done enough to diversify its artist roster to account for a potential drop in revenues from a less-active BTS. Since acquiring Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings in April 2021, the share of HYBE’s revenue BTS accounts for, which was 85% in 2020, has fallen to about 60% in 2021, according to one analyst estimate.
Bernie Cho, owner of Seoul-based DFSB Kollective artists and label services agency, says HYBE “has silenced naysayers by rolling out a deep K-pop artists roster that goes beyond BTS,” including new acts Seventeen, TXT and ENHYPEN. Combined, the three groups, which debuted in 2021, accounted for 7.7 million album unit sales — more than half of HYBE’s 2021 total K-pop album sales worldwide, according to company filings. And this year, two girl bands – Le Sserafim and NewJeans – have joined their male labelmates as “some of the best-selling artists of the year,” Cho says.
Nevertheless, earlier this month, NH Investment & Securities, one of South Korea’s largest securities firms, lowered its target stock price for HYBE by 19% to 250,000 won ($177) citing a “delay in growth even after acquiring Ithaca Holdings.”
BTS fuels tremendous merchandise sales in Korea, along with physical CDs and is essentially the flagship act for a growing global K-pop industry. Attention around BTS helps generate some $3.54 billion in visits from foreigners and exports of consumer goods like clothes, makeup and food, according to the Hyundai Research Institute. One Korean politician, Sung-Il-jong of the ruling People Power Party, has estimated that a No. 1 song on the Billboard charts can create a halo effect that generates an economic boom of $1.38 billion for the South Korean economy.
Twelve full months of revenue from HYBE America — which houses artist management and Big Machine Label Group, which manages top international acts like Justin Bieber — are expected to further strengthen HYBE’s income statement.
The company also will try to cobble together BTS-like sales and streams from BTS solo projects. In July, J-Hope was the first to release solo material with the album Jack in the Box, which featured singles “MORE” and “Arson.”
The members, for their part, seem to want to try to stay together as BTS. At a special free concert on Saturday in Busan, South Korea, where 55,000 fans attended, Jin teased a solo project as the members pledged to carry on group activities well into their careers. “We will continue for 30 years,” Jimin said, “and even perform when we are 70 years old.”
But it was J-Hope, the first to open up about the group’s future, who seemed to signal that military service was looming — and that the group could be entering a challenging period. “I think we’re in a phase where we need your trust,” he said.
Additional reporting by Jeyup S. Kwaaak
Japanese record labels historically haven’t felt the need to venture beyond their country’s shores to boost revenue. Japan’s recorded music market, the second largest in the world, has been big enough to sustain companies like Tokyo-based Avex Inc., considered a fourth major label in Japan.
But a rapid market shift in Japan — along with South Korea’s surge onto the global scene with K-pop —have created new impetus for Japanese music companies to try to penetrate the toughest of markets: the United States.
Last year, Japan’s sales of physical CDs and vinyl still made up 68% of the 283.2-billion-yen ($2.46 billion) recorded music market. But digital sales jumped 14% to 89.5 billion yen ($624 million) — the fourth-consecutive year of double-digit growth in the category, which is now 83% streaming, according to the Recording Industry Association of Japan.
Avex, an entertainment conglomerate founded in 1988, has developed legendary J-pop talents like Ayumi Hamasaki and Namie Amuro, and forged a live-music partnership with AEG Presents to co-promote artists in Japan. But it has struggled to create new superstars, or to successfully expand to the U.S. and China.
A 2016 effort to set up a U.S. operation fizzled after about two years. Now Avex is trying again. This time, the brass in Tokyo have turned to Naoki Osada, an 18-year company veteran with an M.B.A. from UCLA, a passion for West Coast hip-hop and several years of familiarity with the U.S. music business.
The new entity, which features a publishing arm, a record label and an investment fund, is based in Los Angeles, where Osada holds sway at the Avex House, a recording studio and artist-producer hangout, which has an infinity pool and a rooftop deck with 360-degree views of West Hollywood. During the pandemic, Osada oversaw extensive renovations to the five-bedroom house, which the company says it is renting.
“One of the reasons why we weren’t successful in our past endeavors to expand into China and the U.S. was that we didn’t have a clear mission, an agenda that we shared across the entire company,” Katsumi Kuroiwa, Avex’s CEO, tells Billboard from Tokyo, adding “we weren’t able to pick the right person to expand the business outside of Japan.”
This time Kuroiwa believes the company has gotten it right — and he has given Osada, who serves as president of Avex USA, a longer runway: five years to make the U.S. entity a success.
Naoki Osada the Japanese exec is leading the project/entity Avex USA.
Caity Krone
Avex started its latest U.S. effort with publishing. The initial focus is on building U.S. intellectual property with U.S. and Canadian songwriters through songs that can be placed with U.S. pop stars like Justin Bieber, and Japanese – and even Korean – artists. Osada created a publishing joint venture with Brandon Silverstein, manager of Normani and Brazilian star Anitta. Silverstein was looking for financial backing for his S10 Publishing and says he bonded with Osada over his vision to make the Avex House into a creative hub. Osada also hired Lucas Thomashow, 29, a Google-trained data and social media marketing specialist, to run Avex USA’s new label, SELENE, which is named after a Japanese spaceprobe that orbited the moon in 2007.
Avex has 13 writers on its U.S. roster, including six signed jointly with S10 Publishing: HARV, who co-wrote Bieber’s hit song “Peaches” (before S10 signed him); Jamaican dancehall artist Shenseea, who shared the stage with Anitta in Las Vegas during the Billboard Music Awards week; Cxdy (Internet Money), who works with The Kid Laroi; Toronto-born David Arkwright, who co-wrote “Build a Bitch” with Bella Poarch; Belizean artist Kosa; and Declan Hoy.
One challenge is working both globally and locally. “There’s that double edged sword where we’re always thinking strategically about how to bridge that gap [between Asia and the U.S.], because there’s a lot of cross over,” Thomashow, Avex USA’s senior vp, tells Billboard, sitting with Osada by the Avex House pool one morning. “And that’s whether it’s our U.S. writers and producers putting together hits for some of the biggest Japanese or Chinese artists, or how do we think strategically about Japanese artists.”
In one of the publishing arm’s biggest overseas successes, Arkwright and J. Que co-wrote a debut single for Japanese-American singer CAELAN (real name: Caelan Moriarty), “Forever With You,” which went viral with CAELAN’s sprawling Asian social-media fanbase, hitting No. 1 in China on the Weibo Asia New Songs Monthly ranking in September of 2021.
SELENE, meanwhile, has signed five artists so far, notably Austin George and 19-year-old singer-songwriter Sadie Jean, who had a TikTok open verse challenge hit with “WYD Now,” which counts over 200 million aggregate world-wide streams across all DSPs (she has more than 88 million on Spotify). The label says Zach Hood’s three singles on SELENE have generated more than 150 million aggregate streams. Sophie Holohan’s “Butterfly Effect” has 120 million hashtag views on TikTok, and the artist has more than 322,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. In finding rapid streaming success for newer artists, the label, says Arkwright, “is doing something that major labels, in my opinion, kind of wish that they could do with that kind of efficacy.”
(Sadie Jean is the only SELENE artist with any Billboard chart history. She spent seven weeks on Billboard’s Emerging Artists chart, peaking at No. 35 on the Dec. 25, 2021-dated chart. “WYD Now” spent a week at No. 91 on the Billboard Canadian Hot 100.)
Lucas Thomashow the American exec leading the new U.S. based Avex label, SELENE.
Caity Krone
Silverstein has built a relationship with Avex founder and chairman Masato “Max” Matsuura back in Japan, but credits Osada for the initial progress out of Los Angeles. “We’ve gotten our successes based on [Osada’s] support from Japan, given the writers that we’ve signed,” he says.
Osada, who was previously in charge of corporate venture capital for Avex back in Tokyo, also oversees Avex USA’s Future of Music Investment Fund, which has $25 million to spend on seed and Series A startups, mostly music-tech companies like WaveXR, a VR music platform that created Bieber’s 2021 avatar concert. (The fund has also attracted investment from Bieber and his manager, Scooter Braun.) He sees his Avex USA role as “half investor, half music executive.”
Trying to Catch The Koreans
While Avex executives say they don’t see the Korean labels as direct competitors, they nevertheless want to emulate their formula for success. With a much smaller domestic market than Japan, the Korean music industry naturally had to look outside for growth, which led acts to work harder to create global fanbases. “The Korean companies are at this stage more superior and advanced in terms of breaking global artists,” says Kuroiwa. “Unfortunately, Japanese artists haven’t been able to gain fans around the world like South Korea…and that’s where we have to learn.”
The Koreans labels have also been making moves in the U.S. over the past few years. JYP Entertainment and HYBE, home to BTS, have set up offices and entities in Los Angeles, and even created joint-venture labels like HYBE’s imprint with Universal Music Group’s Geffen Records, which plans to launch a girl group together.
Back in 2014, Avex surprised the industry when it beat out Sony Music for the largest mid-year share of the recorded music market in Japan at 16.1%, according to the Soundscan Japan. More recently, however, Avex held an 8.6% share of the Japanese market in 2019, placing them in third place behind Sony and Universal Japan. The Japanese company’s total assets have been declining in value for four straight years, according to company filings.
Among its challenges, sales of the company’s biggest J-pop artists, Hamasaki and Koda Kumi, peaked more than a decade ago. “We’re in the middle of trying to create a next generation of artists,” says Kuroiwa.
The pandemic also hit the company hard. Avex recorded a net loss of 1.1 billion yen ($10 million) in fiscal 2020, which led Avex to downsize staff and sell its 18-story Tokyo headquarters. The sale price of more than 70 billion yen (more than $673 million in late 2020) generated a profit of 29 billion yen ($279 million), a company spokesperson says.
Sales rose 20.7% to 98.4 billion yen ($686 million) in fiscal 2022, while net income fell 92.8% to nine billion yen ($62.7 million). The income drop-off followed a surge in net income to 128 billion yen ($892.6 million) in 2021, which related to the sale of the building.
Escaping the Past
Avex’s previous foray into the U.S., in 2016, involved Universal Music Japan executive Kimi Kato, former Warner Chappell Music Chairman and CEO Richard Blackstone and Avex executive Ryuhei Chiba. The trio spent about $30 million buying content, including a worldwide publishing deal for a Bruno Mars album, two people familiar with the matter tell Billboard. Matsuura, upset the group had blown through so much money, rallied the board to fire Chiba and then shut down the U.S. entity, the sources say. (A spokesperson for Avex says the $30 million was not restricted to buying content and noted that “the strategy in the U.S. didn’t change because Matsuura got angry, but Avex did decide to change its approach in the U.S. to [a] lean startup model.”)
Osada says the previous team was “trying to do too much at the same time,” including bringing U.S. artists to Japan and launching local businesses. “At that time the company was more about aiming for support to the headquarters’ [Japanese] artists,” he says. “We had a dream, but we didn’t actually try seriously to be successful as a U.S. company. I was like, ‘Why don’t we try to expand the business here because that eventually supports the global operation of Avex?’”
Osada, who started at the company in 2004 as a newly minted J-pop A&R manager fresh out of college, had a front-row seat on the legendary tussle between Matsuura and Tom Yoda, Avex’s co-founder. Yoda wanted to expand Avex into other entertainment-related ventures, including movie production. He accused Chiba, then the company’s executive director and president, of pursuing personal profit from some of the label’s biggest artists, according to Japanese media reports.
The Avex board backed Yoda’s bid to get Chiba to resign. Matsuura resigned along with Chiba, who denied any fault. Osada recalls a staff meeting with about 300 people where Chiba and Yoda were screaming at each other from across the auditorium. “I saw the battle [play out] in front of me,” he says.
But with the support of the staff and artists, including Hamasaki, who said she would leave the label (a declaration that led Avex’s stock price to dip by 16% in one day) – and the threat of bankruptcy looming – Yoda resigned. Matsuura and Chiba later rejoined the company.
A few years later it was Matsuura who gave Osada his instant blessing to study business administration in Los Angeles, at a time when the physical music industry was still in freefall from piracy site Napster. Not only did he avoid the chaotic company restructuring happening back in Tokyo, Osada says he was able to immerse himself in Los Angeles’ music and startup cultures, and inadvertently train himself for his current assignment.
Harv at Avex House
Courtesy Avex
At the Avex House, Osada holds lunch for writers and producers, and his Friday night dinners have drawn an eclectic group of artists and industry types. Thomashow fondly recalls the night Normani‘s cousin cooked authentic New Orleans food for a small group. Events there have drawn the likes of A$AP Rocky and James Blake. Harv hosted Bieber’s “Peaches” release party at the house. (On one evening, Billboard met DJ Richie Hawtin and Dean Wilson, Deadmau5’ manager, along with music executives from Meta.)
The house has also become a magnet for artists, writers, managers and A&R execs to connect and collaborate. Blake, Normani and Anitta have worked on songs there. Arkwright says he’ll sometimes grab an acoustic from the wall of Gibson guitars hanging in the living room and head up to the roof to jam with artists like Austin George, and then pop down to one of the three studios to lay down a track.
“It’s just like this beautiful hang spot that you don’t get very often,” Arkwright says.
Additional Reporting By Rob Schwartz
SEOUL — South Korea’s Intellectual Property Office has thrown up a roadblock to HYBE’s efforts to trademark the iconic “I purple you” term BTS member V created during a fan meeting six years ago.
The KIPO says that HYBE’s trademark application for V’s “I purple you (Borahae) cannot be registered as its application has been filed against the principle of good faith,” according to a notice sent to the company.
The patent and trademark office essentially says that HYBE, the parent company of BTS label Big Hit, is not allowed to trademark the phrase that V uttered, even though he is signed to HYBE, because he used it first.
V, real name Kim Tae-hyung, first created the phrase “Borahae” during a Nov. 13, 2016 fan meeting, when he said, “Borahae, like the last color of the rainbow purple (bora), means we will to the end trust each other and love each other for a long time,” the KIPO said.
“I purple you” has become synonymous with BTS. So much so that McDonald’s, in its collaboration with the group, has used the term on the side of its purple-packaged BTS Meals, which have become yet another collectible for fans.
In 2018, after BTS launched its “LOVE MYSELF” campaign, Henrietta H. Fore, the executive director of UNICEF, used the term in a special video thanking the group for its work in helping raise money for a campaign to end violence against children. “We here at UNICEF purple you,” she said at the end of her speech.
In explaining its refusal to allow HYBE to secure a trademark, however, the KIPO sided with V as the creator: “We accept that the applicant has filed a trademark that is similar to or the same as a trademark used by a different person that has a contractual or working relationship such as partnership or employment.”
It cited article 34, paragraph 1, subparagraph 20 in Korean trademark law.
V, who is known to be among the quieter members of BTS, has been active on his Instagram since the notice to HYBE became public knowledge, but hasn’t commented on the case.
An official at the KIPO, who requested anonymity because they aren’t authorized to comment on an ongoing case, tells Billboard that its decision is not final. HYBE has been given two months to file an addendum that strengthens the company’s claim, and that period could be extended further, without an explicit limit, the official says. “Citation of the subparagraph 20 is very rare, and as far as I know there are no precedents involving BTS,” the person says.
The case follows an earlier unsuccessful application by LALALEES, a Korean cosmetics company specializing in nails, to trademark the “Borahae” term in 2020 under the classification of soaps, fragrances, essential oils, cosmetics, hair products, polishes, and other cleaning agents. After the rejection caused an uproar among fans, the cosmetics company issued an apology.
K-pop companies are known for trademarking names and phrases associated with their artists. When boybands leave their management companies they often cannot perform under their previous name because the companies have registered and own the rights to the boyband’s name.
In 2015, the idol group Shinhwa reclaimed the rights to their name after a 12-year battle with agency ShinCom Entertainment and June Media (formerly known as Open World Entertainment). In that case, Shinhwa’s original agency, SM Entertainment, gave the rights to “Shinhwa” to a new agency, Good Entertainment, and then trademarked the name in 2005, before handing trademark rights over to June Media completely, according to according to K-pop publication Soompi.
And in 2020 a Korean court stripped SM Entertainment director Kim Kyung Wook of trademark rights to the name and logo of first-generation boyband H.O.T. (Highfive of Teenagers), which he originally cast and produced in 1996. While planning a reunion tour, the group in 2018 was forced to remove its name and logo from promotional materials after failing to come to an agreement with Kim over trademark rights, Soompi reported.