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March 29, 2024

[INTERVIEW] Calling all the Davids in the music business: MusicSpray

PUBLISHED : May 18, 2018 - 17:24

UPDATED : May 24, 2018 - 18:01

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[THE INVESTOR] “I wanted to stop the David vs. Goliathesque battles that were being fought every day by talented musicians who had no way of getting their music out,” says Ryu Ho-suk, founder and CEO of Pison Contents, on why he set up the company.

“If all goes well, we might become a real threat to Melon,” said Ryu, a musician-turned-entrepreneur, referring to the leading online music store and music streaming service in Korea.

Rewinding to 2011, Pison launched
MusicSpray, a digital distribution service offering without limits to major global distribution channels such as iTunes and Spotify for tiny fees. Artists can first become members for a lifetime fee of 99,000 won or US$99. Once the songs are distributed, Pison gets 18 percent for each piece, which is far below the 50 percent or so that most distributors take, according to Ryu. 


Albums distributed via Pison's Music Spray



“In Korea, there’s a perception that if you’re a musician, you belong to a management company,” said Ryu. “Despite the globalization trends and popularity of hallyu, Korean artists still struggle when trying to reach out to the world.”

The Silicon Valley-based company has reached out to more than 5,000 artists, helping them publish more than 100,000 songs around the world.

Pison’s endeavors were recognized by notable investors in Korea and the US. In 2015, Pison received an investment of US$1 million from Silicon Valley-based Sazze Partners, Korea’s leading accelerator Primer and Korean government-backed Tech Incubator Program for Startup. 


Pison Contents founder and CEO Ryu Ho-suk
Park Ga-young/The Investor



However, the situation in the music industry is not as rosy as other fields, like tech, because investors lost interest after the Beatpacking Company, an ad-based music streaming service which received 18 billion won of investment, went bankrupt in 2016.

Ryu acknowledges the challenges of disrupting existing distribution channels, and says that’s why he joined forces with startups in the digital content industry. He formed an alliance named Musician First in November 2017 with startups such as Diocian and FrontRow to build up an ecosystem. Like an airline alliance, the nine cooperate when it comes to effectively distributing digital contents around the globe so that the hard work of artists could reach as far as possible.

“In Korea, it is not easy to compete with big companies but I hope that everyone can be a musician,” were the parting words of Ryu.

By Park Ga-young (gypark@heraldcorp.com)

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