SM Entertainment have been lucky that all eyes have been on the dumpster fire over at HYBE at the moment because new management has not exactly been covering themselves in glory. For a while now, veteran artists have been publicly expressing their disdain at the communication and treatment they’ve been given, and recently things have seemingly boiled over a bit with the upcoming SMTOWN Live 2025 concert.
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Backtracking a bit*, one could argue that the mess with their treatment of veteran artists started with BoA. Early last year, she was under heavy criticism for typical dumbass netizen shit (trying to act, her looks not remaining static, etc.), and while she did tell everybody to fuck off, she also hinted at retirement not long after. Whether it was a reactionary moment or not, just that it got to that point sucked for fans (me).
*Not even counting the EXO-CBX disputes.
After some months, things really got rolling when Taeyeon blasted the company after her latest comeback, as it wasn’t supported with much promotion like her previous releases.
The communication with my management was not smooth this time, so there were some mistakes in carrying out the release promotions. They needed to have promoted it well before the album is released. I’m also really sad that time was wasted like this. I’m sorry to the fans too. It’s late, but we are working hard in order to see what promotions we can do even now. I’m sorry for being unable to satisfy all the needs of the fans today. I’m so upset.
A couple days later, she spoke up again, mentioning that she wasn’t going to SMTOWN LIVE due to not being on the same page with management.
”i don’t think i’ll go to sm concert, there aren’t any good conversations going back and forth between the company and me. the notice… they haven’t changed it, what are they planning?”
Despite this, it took until December 10 for SME to officially announce she wouldn’t participate.
The complaints against SME continued to mount, as a few days ago, Red Velvet‘s Wendy spoke up to apologize to fans. She had discussed her absence from SMTOWN over a month ago, but it was only announced recently after the merch was released.
You may or may not have already seen the announcement… I actually discussed this with the company over a month ago, but the notice was only posted today…
I’m sure there were a lot of ReVeluvs who were looking forward to seeing Red Velvet perform as a full group of five, and I’m really sorry about that. Since it’s the 30th anniversary, there are a variety of stages being prepared. I hope you’ll have a great time. Thank you, as always, and I’m sorry.
As you might imagine, this didn’t go over well.
Fans actually resurfaced comments made by veteran artists, including Super Junior‘s Yesung speaking cold treatment back in December.
Also, I’ve been seeing some questions regarding SMTOWN. As it is an event at a company that I’ve been in for over 20 years, I do try my best to participate. However, I was not able to participate much in the album. I’m also tired of talking about the cold treatment, especially when it comes to the group song. I am going to be focusing more on my concert, so I’m just letting you know.
TVXQ‘s Changmin also alluded to poor treatment in a reply to a fan about merch sales.
Fan: SM merchandise! Oppa is so handsome that I will buy 1988218 of them!
Changmin: If I really sold that much I wonder how the company’s treatment of me would change.
That’s like … almost all of their legendary artists still associated with the company.
So yeah, while junior fandoms and artists have complaints as well, it’s mostly the veterans who are speaking out quite directly about their problems with the company. If SM is a “Town” then some of the constituents seem like they’d prefer a new mayor. It’s messy and only seems to be getting messier.
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When you boil it down, a lot of the complaints from SME seem to allude to poor communication or lack of care for the veteran artists (also that all they care about is money*). In a way I suppose that’s not surprising, because from the sociopathic business frame of mind, the sales of artists tend to decrease as they age. Even for those who continue to sustain popularity, their second contracts mean the company profits less off their activities than their younger artists, so priority on the investments and attention would go to the latter. That’s why business news writers will champion the importance of generation change, and are thus bullish about SME’s situation despite all these complaints.
*On that note, in April of last year, SME employees were posting on BLIND, complaining about new management only caring for higher sales and threatening their salaries, saying that there was high turnover now and described the situation as “chaos”. Less than ideal.
Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s not fucked up or that companies are right to do it. These are the artists, after all, whose labor literally built the company and put these executives in a situation where they could be ruthless sociopath wannabe tech bros. It’s also just sad to see companies seemingly lose an appreciation for their roots, as you’d think at a bare minimum they’d want to flog that to the public and stuff.
The solution on the other end is that hopefully more artists take note of not just how SME is treating their veterans, but a lot of other companies as well*. Mostly that more artists will feel less sense of loyalty to the corporation they were raised under and will similarly just coldly take care of themselves with the best deal they can get instead. That possibility seems to ring especially true when we’re seeing an era where older groups either reunite or continue on together more than I’ve ever seen before. So the demand for veterans is out there, and hopefully more and more will find better situations going forward.
*(G)I-DLE’s situation with Cube Entertainment could be interesting to monitor because they’re on their second contract but also have the company by the balls cause they have nobody else. On a smaller scale, the same applies to groups like Dreamcatcher, who literally just are their company now. Leverage, not just in negotiations but also projected towards the future, seems as important as anything else, honestly.
