As the company sees opportunity to also enter the Southeast Asian region.
During the company’s earnings call on Tuesday, November 3, HYBE chief executive officer Jason Jaesang Lee was asked by a shareholder about the company’s view on the growing number of influential music acts from Southeast Asia. Specifically, with some companies launching their own music acts in the region.
Thus, there is already interest regarding the possibility of HYBE, which is home to K-pop afts such as BTS, SEVENTEEN, Tomorrow X Together, and more, expanding to the SEA market.
In response, he said, “[It] is a very positive development that we are seeing success stories not only from major IPs but also from smaller companies, and that local artists in Southeast Asia are gaining significant attention.”
Bringing it from HYBE’s perspective, he said that there is a distinction between an artist’s growth in terms of “popularity” and securing broad public appeal, as well as an artist’s ability to unlock “super-fan economy.”
“Furthermore, there is a fundamental difference between an entertainment company that primarily derives profit from B2B business models based on popularity, and one that, while also leveraging such popularity, is effectively capturing value directly from end users,” he said.
Lee then noted that hat they are already closely monitoring the growths of Southeast Asian acts led by SB19 and BINI in the Philippines, as well as nona from Indonesia. The three acts, he also shared, are now on their fan connection platform Weverse.
“This is a very encouraging trend. Our approach is as follows: we generally do not enter a market unless there is already a foundation of local artist growth, as it is difficult to generate added value without developing local content and talent,” he noted.
But when local IPs begin to rise in a market, specifically on instances when one with the potential to become a major market, Lee said that the company sees it as a strong signal to establish a local production base, if not a full-fledged “multi-home” operation.
“With this in mind, I can share—though I haven’t disclosed it publicly until now—that we are currently working on an incubation project in Southeast Asia. We are approaching the market from this perspective,” he added.
In recent years, both groups have consistently been making history and breaking records for the Philippine music industry.
Last April, BINI became the first homegrown group to perform at the Coachella Music Festival in California. That was later followed by SB19’s equally groundbreaking performance at Lollapalooza in Chicago in July, where they also became the first local artists to do so.
SB19 and BINI are also performed at the Summer Sonic Festival in Osaka and Tokyo, Japan in August 2026.
The two P-pop juggernauts were also announced as Philippine Tourism Ambassadors by the Department of Tourism (DOT). Together, they are set to appear in promotional materials that aim to entice tourists to visit the Philippines under the Love The Philippines banner.
The HYBE official, looking into their domestic market in South Korea, also said that they while artists in Korea have recently achieved success through effective marketing strategies and high-quality music, they need a necessary infrastructure.
“As you are aware, we do not limit an artist’s growth to the domestic market alone; we operate a mechanism that fosters an artist’s development simultaneously across a global, multi-hub infrastructure—spanning Korea, Japan, the United States, India, and Latin America,” he continued.
“Because this system is in place, I can confidently state that growth within the domestic market is not the full extent of our scope. In this context, I would also like to mention that we have internal principles for expanding our pipeline, which incorporate the specific signals.”
