Sorry if you already said something, but do you have any thoughts on sm losing both baekhyun and now taemin as soloists? Is this snowballing likely to continue, and what do you see sm being in five years?
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Hi Anon,
I've answered the question of where I see SM in 5 years here <- that's from about a month ago.
My view of Baekhyun and Taemin both jumping ship is that they were overdue. It was always a question of when not if. SM has a long, prolific history of bleeding talent and abusing their idols - that company is quite literally the worst offender among the Big3 just going by the number of lawsuits filed every 3 - 5 years from idols under their management. And this is aside the fact that SM is the only major company that compels their artists to sign 10-year contracts using a legal loophole, where the industry standard is 7 years. The reason SM's known practices aren't talked about more in fact, is because SM also has the largest amount of company stans in the wider k-pop fandom who strongly influence where scrutiny is placed.
And that reason is why even if this snowballs, it won't change anything dramatically for the company, because nobody is more committed to keeping illusion of SM's legacy/prestige alive more than fans of SM groups.
That said, based on debut dates, the group next up for contract negotiations is NCT. Because most of the founding members have promoted outside Korea (the legal loophole SM uses), this means they have 10-year contracts and so they'll only begin negotiations from the latter half of this year through 2026. As some of the members are due to enlist starting this year (Taeil, Jaehyun, Doyoung and Taeyong are the four oldest Korean members), it's assumed they are speedrunning negotiations ahead of that deadline, and it could be why we've seen solo and sub-unit projects for Taeil, Taeyong, Jaehyun and Doyoung in the last year. I'm highlighting those four in contrast to a member like Mark, who is easily NCT's most prominent member (alongside Taeyong) who still doesn't have a solo EP, and it's probably just a coincidence that he's Canadian and not up for military service. And so his negotiations can happen much later. Given the state of SM's dwindling idol portfolio and how they've been handling NCT so far, I expect almost all the members to re-sign (WayV is the wild card here), but I expect more bleeding from EXO and other legacy acts.
Anyway, I'm already rambling.
Baekhyun/Taemin have been associated with SM for a decade and that's not going to change even with them leaving the company, for two reasons:
They are still signed under SM for group activities.
SM stans won't relinquish that connection no matter how hard those idols attempt to rebrand their image. Like I've been saying, most fans of SM groups are actually company stans despite what they'll tell you.
So long as the make-up of k-pop fandoms remain dominated by SM stans, nothing is changing significantly for SM in this space in the next 5 years. Their new girl group will debut to much fan fare, Taemin and Baekhyun will continue being included in conversations about SM talent and influence, and SM company norms will continue as they have like every other time a high-profile talent has left their company - just fine.
The one caveat I didn't include in my prior post (linked above) but feel compelled to include now, is that the non-compete HYBE placed on Lee Sooman in 2023, expires in 2026. Given everything I've mentioned about how SM operates and the cult-like following LSM has both with his staff and k-pop stans generally, if he establishes a competing agency in the next 5 years, that could dramatically impact the life of SM Entertainment beyond any of the expected M&A scenarios I mentioned in point 3 of my linked post.
Overall, expect more of the same but there's a chance we get more fun times ahead. :)
