It’s that time of year again! While December is filled with year-end countdowns, I like to take a look back at some of K-pop’s biggest agencies during November. Before reading (especially if you’re new to the blog), it’s helpful to know that my grading focuses most heavily on music releases and how comebacks are managed and delivered to fans. Scandals and non-musical factors can certainly impact an agency’s grade, but the biggest criteria will always be the music itself. Following SM Entertainment, YG Entertainment and JYP Entertainment‘s analysis, it’s time to dive into HYBE Corporation.
As usual, the thoughts below are my own and aren’t privy to any insider information. There will be plenty of subjective critique.
The Good
The less directly an artist was involved with HYBE, the stronger their 2024 work tended to be. I’m talking mainly about subsidiaries Pledis and KOZ Entertainment, and even more specifically about TWS and BOYNEXTDOOR. These two groups have defined the year for me, releasing great music that thrives on distinct identity and a clear vision. These two factors are not as common as you may think in K-pop at the moment, and should be celebrated.
TWS had a killer debut year with steady promotion, excellent releases and a genuinely massive hit. Plot Twist will go down as one of 2024’s most iconic tracks – a rare feat for a rookie boy group. Meanwhile, BOYNEXTDOOR have continued to develop their own quirky catalog. They’re genuinely one of the most idiosyncratic idol groups working today and I see this focus on individuality paying off in the long run. Their mentor and agency-head Zico also released a solid single this year, managing to get BLACKPINK’s Jennie on the track with him.
Speaking of subsidiary agencies, there’s no doubt that Seventeen had a strong year. I haven’t been a fan of most of their 2024 music, but they are legitimately the biggest K-pop group on the planet right now, spawning a similar fever as BTS did before they went on hiatus. It’s almost intimidating how popular they are. Pledis Entertainment must just be thrilled. The subsidiary’s only girl group fromis_9 also found unexpected success with their most recent album. Supersonic has exceeded expectations.
With most of BTS currently serving in the military, Big Hit’s fortunes rested largely on TXT. The group continued to sell well in 2024. Smartly, Big Hit also pre-planned hiatus-era tracks from some of BTS’s members and is now successfully navigating post-enlistment work with Jin. So far, so good… at least commercially.
Moving onto BeLift Lab, this subsidiary saw gains in 2024. ENHYPEN are now outselling other groups on HYBE’s roster and have done a particularly good job reaching out to global markets. ILLIT was an out-of-the-gate success, with debut track Magnetic riding high on the charts all year long.
HYBE’s other girl groups continued to chug along. NewJeans still enjoyed a ton of success despite a raft of behind-the-scenes issues and LE SSERAFIM made international gains with some high-profile performances abroad. Global group Katseye also appear to be doing well, paving the way for a new kind of K-pop-adjacent career.
Meanwhile, over in Japan boy group &TEAM are shaping up to be a powerful force. Their sales still lag behind the country’s biggest male acts, but the music has generally been strong.
On a non-musical level, HYBE does a great job promoting its artists. As a fan, it’s nice to have so much material to freely watch on YouTube. The fact that many of its artists have their own weekly show is insane and keeps their hype going even between comebacks. You can definitely feel the budget of a big corporation.
The Bad
While much of my favorite music of 2024 came from HYBE artists, the corporation as a whole was a big old mess. As you know, scandals don’t factor heavily into my grades, but it’s impossible to ignore the multiple messes HYBE found itself in this year.
Mess one was the NewJeans/Min Hee-jin scandal, which saw the NewJeans creative director fighting with HYBE in a sprawling power struggle too vast to recount here. Suffice it to say, this battle could very well sideline or completely dissolve one of the industry’s most popular girl groups depending on how things turn out. At the very least, it’s put a stain on many different entities and clearly affected the trajectory of the corporation. It even pitted HYBE’s artists against one another, with a clear NewJeans vs. ILLIT sentiment taking hold.
Mess two spawned from mess one, involving a leaked internal audit from HYBE’s “Weekly Music Industry Report.” This included derogatory comments about other agencies and idols, revealing a toxicity that raised serious concerns about the culture within HYBE and the corporation’s power within the industry. It wasn’t a good look for a company that many have accused of operating as a monopoly. Above all else, it was simply a gross and cynical peek behind the curtain and made fans question how much of HYBE’s success was truly organic.
Musically, HYBE was most responsible for the “beige” music trend I’ve been complaining about for much of the year. Apart from groups like TWS and BOYNEXTDOOR, who have specific, unique musical perspectives, most of the corporation’s artists released watered-down, truncated music that was factory-designed to offend no one. But when you seek not to offend, you become unable to thrill. I never would have expected K-pop to embrace an “easy-listening” experience, but many of HYBE’s 2024 singles feel designed to fill space on a playlist and exist comfortably in the background.
NewJeans and ILLIT released flat, repetitive music that unfortunately went on to influence the entire K-pop industry. TXT and ENHYPEN were drained of much of their musical personality, delivering shadows of former glories. Even BTS members fell into an adult contemporary realm far removed from the visionary work of their past. Meanwhile, LE SSERAFIM sought to replicate global trends but removed many of the idiosyncrasies that make those trends so enjoyable. Two-minute songs lacking a bridge became normalized. Production smoothed over vocalists’ individual quirks. Song credits often revealed dozens of cooks in the kitchen, making it impossible for the music to harness a specific perspective. Even veterans Seventeen, who had an incredibly successful year, found themselves mired in ho-hum material.
Overall, it’s difficult to grade such a sprawling corporation. I almost want to dole out different grades to different divisions of the company. There are parts that would get an “A+” and many parts that would earn an “F.” When everything’s combined together, it evens out in the middle for me.
2024 Grade: C
What I’d like to see in 2025:
No more beige! Give us music with color, bite and unique ideas
Less mess, more innovation
Less focus on international trends
Some sort of resolution for NewJeans
Successful runs for TWS and BOYNEXTDOOR, my favorite acts from the HYBE roster at the moment
Previous years: 2023 // 2022 // 2021 // 2020 // 2019 // 2018 // 2017