K-pop goes global with Google Apps

Posted by Jeff Son, Strategy Manager, YG Entertainment

Editors note: Today's guest blogger is Jeff Son, Strategy Manager at YG Entertainment, a record label and talent agency based in Seoul, South Korea.

YG Entertainment is a record label and talent agency based in Seoul, South Korea, specializing in R&B and hip hop music. We represent some of the biggest names in Korean music including BIGBANG, 2NE1, Lee Hi — and of course, rapper PSY, whose “Gangnam Style” recently became the most popular YouTube video of all time.



Over the last few years, we have been working hard to bring the best of K-Pop to the world. In the last two weeks alone, PSY has been busy touring the United States, 2NE1 have been touring South East Asia, and Big Bang has been touring Japan.



With artists all over the world and a third of our staff out of the country all the time, we need a communication system we can rely on. Prior to moving to Google Apps, our email system was run from a local Korean server. This was fine while we were in Korea, but was unreliable when working internationally. When looking for alternatives, we wanted mobility, speed and stability for teams and artists on the go. As a creative business using both Macintosh and Windows, we also wanted something which would be compatible with both operating systems.

Google Apps worked well with all these requirements. Since making the switch to Gmail in June this year we’ve noticed a big increase in email reliability. We’ve also found the mobile experience is much better. Staff use smartphones and tablets to access Gmail and Calendar and find it much more intuitive than our previous system. We also like that Google Apps is priced according to the number of accounts, not the amount of storage that you use, so we only pay for what we use.

As we continue to expand globally, nurturing Korean talent and bring stars like PSY onto the world stage, we’re confident knowing that Google Apps can scale with us.