peermusic Enters Its 30th Country with the Acquisition of Korean Independent Publisher Music Cube

New York, NY (January 8, 2019) – peermusic has acquired the Seoul, South Korea-based independent music publisher Music Cube. This acquisition will add 40,000 Korean copyrights to peermusic’s global catalogue, including works recorded by K-Pop groups BTS, Red Velvet and AOA. Korea will be the 30th country in peermusic’s worldwide network. Heesun Park will be the General Manager of peermusic Korea and will report directly to Mary Megan Peer, Deputy CEO, peermusic.

The acquisition comes as the latest step in peermusic’s long-term strategy in South Korea. Prior to the acquisition, peermusic and Music Cube had a 10-year partnership based on a reciprocal sub-publishing arrangement. During that time, peermusic also made a minority investment in the company. Through that partnership, European and US-based peermusic writers have secured records with popular K-Pop groups including TWICE, EXO and Super Junior. peermusic’s production duo SOS (Sons of Sonix, comprised of Mikey Akin and Mo Samuels) recently wrote and produced “With You” from EXO’s latest album Don’t Mess Up My Tempo. That album scored the band its fourth No. 1 on the World Albums chart, No. 1 on the Gaon album chart, and the band’s highest charting entry to date on the Billboard 200. peermusic is planning to send Sons of Sonix among other peermusic writers to Seoul in 2019 for more writing collaborations.  

“We’re thrilled to continue our working relationship with Music Cube with this acquisition and to expand peermusic’s presence in IFPI’s sixth largest music market in the world. The growth of Music Cube’s repertoire both domestically and internationally has been phenomenal. Our representation of Music Cube’s catalogue worldwide has given us first hand visibility into the rising popularity of K-Pop around the globe. We’re looking forward to continue working with Heesun Park and her team,” said Mary Megan Peer.

Heesun Park said, “The partnership between Music Cube and peermusic has been very important for us as Korean music has become more successful internationally over the past ten years. This deal is a huge win for our songwriters, who will benefit from even greater support and resources that come with joining a global publisher. We’re all excited to continue to build on all the work we’ve done with Mary Megan and the peermusic team by creating more collaborations between Korean and foreign songwriters.”

As part of her role as Deputy CEO, Peer overseas peermusic’s Asian operations, including companies in Beijing, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and now Korea. She led the opening of peermusic’s first office in mainland China in 2015, continuing peermusic’s history of global expansion by becoming the first global independent in mainland China. She had previously established a successful joint-venture partnership in China, which made peermusic the first Western independent publishing company to directly sign Chinese writers. Peer has actively fostered opportunities for the company’s Western writers to collaborate with local writers in Japan and Korea, resulting in charting releases in both countries. Her work in the region was recently recognized by Billboard, which named her to its “International Power Players” list in May 2018.

Previously a regionally popular genre, K-Pop has exploded into a global phenomenon. Numerous K-Pop artists have broken into global markets, including through collaborations with some of Western pop music’s biggest stars. As Music Cube’s sub-publisher, peermusic has been able to respond to the increasing demand for K-Pop music placement in Western film and television. In the US, TV shows such as Family Guy, Younger, The Bold Type, and Star have all recently featured music by Music Cube’s writers. And on the other hand, Western music has been increasingly accepted in Korean advertising. This year peermusic writers have been placed in Korea advertisements for companies including Samsung and Renault.

Ralph Peer, CEO, said “peermusic’s acquisition of Music Cube is an example of the company’s long-term philosophy of having a local presence in creatively rich territories. As such, Music Cube will continue their leadership in the local market, and its local writers will now benefit from the support of peermusic’s global network of 30 branches and its proprietary copyright and royalties system.”

ABOUT PEERMUSIC:

Founded by Ralph S. Peer in 1928, peermusic is the world’s largest global independent publishing company and operates in 30 countries. With well over a half million titles in the company’s catalogue, and songs that vary from country, blues, jazz and pop to Latin, concert and rock‘n’roll, peermusic is the largest privately owned company of its kind in the world. For further information about peermusic, go to peermusic.com. For breaking news updates, behind-the-scenes information and photos, follow @peermusic on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Pictured (left to right): Chris Lauridsen, peermusic Sweden writer; Mary Megan Peer, Deputy CEO; Ji-Hyun Kwon, Manager Music Cube; Heesun Park, General Manager Music Cube; Byeong-Hwa Park, Manager Music Cube; Dave Hamelin, peermusic Canada writer; Richard Harris, peermusic LA writer; Moses  Samuels, peermusic LA writer; Mikey Akin, peermusic LA writer; and Tuff Morgan, Senior Director of A&R, peermusic