Big Hit Entertainment, the label behind BTS and Tomorrow X Together, have announced plans to launch a new boyband and other groups from labels under Big Hit’s umbrella.
The agency held a corporate briefing yesterday (February 4) at Seoul’s Dongdaemun Design Plaza in which it recapped the last 12 months and set out plans for the future.
The event saw updates from Big Hit themselves, as well as the other labels that form their stable – Source Music, who were acquired by Big Hit last year, and Belift, who were created by Big Hit and CJ ENM.
During the briefing, Vice President of Big Hit Labels Young Jae Shin announced Big Hit are currently working on producing a new boyband, with the aim for them to debut in 2022. Another male group will be unveiled within the year by Belift and will be made up of members from various nationalities in a bid to put “K-pop into the mainstream”.
So Sung Jin, president of Source Music, gave an update on their previously announced new girl group. The band are expected to be unveiled in 2021, while So added the company aims to become the leading girl group label in the world. Source is currently home to GFriend, who returned on Monday (February 3) with their new EP ‘Labyrinth’.
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Read more: K-pop super rookies Tomorrow X Together are the imaginative, passionate boyband the world needs
Meanwhile, there were also plenty of updates for Big Hit’s existing groups. Following their debut US showcases last year, Tomorrow X Together are planning their first world tour with dates to be confirmed.
As for BTS, the company has many plans in the works, including an educational tool to aid fans in learning the Korean language, called Learn Korean With BTS. Big Hit plans to expand the service to incorporate its other artists in time, while the programme will begin to be rolled out in March. A teaser, which features in the above video around the 59-minute mark, shows existing BTS content from the band’s variety show Run BTS being used to teach words and grammar.
A new BTS character game is also being developed by Superb Corp, while there are also plans for a second The Notes book. The first instalment was released last year and featured fictional diary entries based on the band’s Bangtan Universe narrative.
Big Hit is also planning on making BTS’ concerts more immersive experiences for fans across the world. They will bring the area known as “Playzone”, which previously only featured at the group’s Korean shows, to select cities, with a view to creating a larger “tour village” experience in the future.
The tour village is envisioned to include attractions such as a BTS-themed hotel, an exclusive pop-up store and exhibition, exclusive food and beverage store with BTS-themed limited edition products, local souvenirs and more.
BTS’ upcoming ‘Map Of The Soul’ tour will see the agency team up with stage production team STUFISH, who have previously worked with the likes of Beyoncé and Jay-Z, Queen and Adam Lambert, Mumford & Sons, and Elton John.
Finally, Big Hit will also continue to grow their Weverse app and aim to provide a better experience for fans wishing to buy merch. Weverse, a community platform where fans can interact directly with artists, will see the first non-Big Hit signed act join its ranks with Pledis’ Seventeen. Big Hit will begin to use domestic shipping options in the US and Japan to cut shipping costs for fans.
Big Hit’s co-CEO Lenzo Yoon said in a press release that “fans are the centrepiece of the ‘Big Hit Winning Formula’, that they are at the centre of the music industry and are indeed the core value of the Big Hit business model.”
BTS are set to release their new album ‘Map Of The Soul: 7’ on February 21. They shared the latest track from it this weekend (February 2) in the form of J-hope’s bright solo track ‘Outro: Ego’.