South Korea’s S.M.Entertainment Makes Chinese Inroads With Baidu
Chinese search engine company Baidu and South Korea entertainment giant S.M.Entertainment signed a strategic cooperation agreement covering music and video copyrights.
With the cooperation, Baidu's music division will license the music copyrights of stars from S.M.Entertainment; Baidu's video branch Iqiyi will gain the genuine music videos and performance videos of S.M.Entertainment; and S.M.Entertainment's artists will have an official forum and marketing portal on Baidu.
Gong Yu, founder of Iqiyi, said that the cooperation allows Iqiyi to provide exclusive music videos and performance videos from S.M.Entertainment to Chinese viewers. Meanwhile, the two parties will jointly create a reality show about popular artists.
S.M.Entertainment is an independent Korean record label, talent agency, producer, and publisher of pop music. As a star factory, it was once the home to the original Korean idol groups like H.O.T., S.E.S., and Shinhwa and its current artists include BoA, Super Junior, Girls' Generation, SHINee, f(x), and EXO.