JY Kwak, the co-founder and chief strategy officer of Contents Technologies, discusses supporting music artists and their IPs
JY Kwak has, by his own admission, never been a musical person. Yet, he has wound up guiding a company entirely devoted to managing intellectual property (IP) in the music industry, with a specialism in K-pop. Because it isn’t beats that drive Kwak, it’s a belief in democratising assets.
For several years, Kwak found satisfaction in using his financial prowess at startups rather than being a small cog at the big banks. However, he still hoped to find a better use of his asset management skills in order to change the world and assist people.
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Inspiration came in the late 2010s, when Kwak took note of the massive rise in music streaming. While YouTube, Amazon, Apple Music and Spotify had driven down traditional music sales, the convenience of these platforms had disincentivised piracy and furthered the discovery of new artists. The value of music IPs was evident. In 2020, he established Contents Technologies, which manages a massive portfolio of music rights in Asia, alongside investments in music services, production and digital entertainment innovations.
Here, Kwak describes how he’s helping artists create at an extremely interesting time for music.
Starting out was pretty intense. I didn’t know anything about music—if you had told me to sing Happy Birthday, I would have sounded absolutely ridiculous. But that’s what makes it interesting. People who’ve had anything to do with startups recognise that if you’re fixated on something, the sheer willpower to figure it out is exciting enough.
We provide a marketplace for musicians or artists without access to capital, who aren’t Blackpink or BTS; no one may have invested in them, bought their assets or respected their work. But because streaming has brought about the proliferation of more individualistic appetites for music, we’ve stepped in as capital providers to allow these smaller artists to better perform.
Before, unless you were picked up by a large label, there was no chance that you could build hype. Now that streaming platforms exist, the chances are still slim but it’s more democratised. Anyone who has the heart and passion can take a stab at it without having to go through the bureaucratic process of trying to get picked by a large corporation.
