Blackpink Members Won’t Renew Solo Deals With YG Entertainment, K-Pop Company Confirms

A live performance from Jennie (front) and her fellow Blackpink members. Photo Credit: HeyDay

Closer to December’s beginning, YG Entertainment re-signed Blackpink to an exclusive deal. Now, it’s emerged that the popular K-pop girl group’s members have opted against extending their solo agreements with the company. Seoul-headquartered YG Entertainment just recently revealed the solo-career news in a statement, with certain of the act’s four members having weighed in on the development as well. Per Yonhap, nearly 28-year-old YG specifically acknowledged that it had “‘agreed not to extend our contracts regarding individual activities’” on the part of Jisoo, Jennie, Rosé, and Lisa.

Meanwhile, the K-pop agency further signaled that it will continue to give the artists behind “How You Like That” its “‘full support and sincerely cheer for their individual activities’” moving forward. Though the precise career plans of each Blackpink member remain to be seen, Jennie has already indicated that she’s established a company called OA (short for Odd Atelier) for her solo work.

“Hi, this is Jennie,” the 27-year-old wrote to fans in an image message, published in English and Korean. “This year was filled with many accomplishments, and I’m so thankful for all the love I’ve received. I’m also excited about what’s to come, as I start my solo journey in 2024 with a company that I have established called OA.

“Please show lots of love for my new start with OA and of course, Blackpink. Thank you,” concluded Jennie, whose aptly titled debut solo single, “Solo,” dropped back in 2018.

Especially given the commercial milestones achieved by other K-pop artists’ solo projects during 2023, it’ll be worth keeping an eye on the commercial feats of Blackpink members’ individual efforts throughout 2024. BTS, all seven members of which re-signed with Hybe/Big Hit in September, saw its Spotify monthly listener count surpassed by that of “Seven” creator Jungkook in August; the latter professional made a splash with his debut album in November and had an edge of about five million monthly Spotify listeners at the time of this writing.

But we needn’t wait to see whether the individual releases of Blackpink’s members will drive similar results; Jennie already has 29.18 million monthly Spotify listeners to Blackpink’s 19.55 million.

Rosé, for her part, has a solid 3.92 million listeners (with the better part of 400 million streams for “On the Ground”), against 8.80 million for Lisa (with 1.06 billion streams on “Money”) and 4.96 million for Jisoo (with 351.24 million streams on “Flower”).

Earlier this month, BigBang member G-Dragon officially departed YG after beating a drug-use investigation, and Louis Vuitton named SM Entertainment-signed Riize as its newest house ambassadors. Bigger picture, heading into the new year, Hybe, Attrakt, SM, Titan Content, and several others are developing additional K-pop groups yet.

By the Numbers – A Non-Exhaustive List of K-Pop Groups’ Spotify Monthly ListenersBTS – 30.85 million

NewJeans – 21.13 million

Blackpink – 19.55 million

Fifty Fifty – 17.20 million

Le Sserafim – 12.76 million

Twice – 10.36 million

Tomorrow X Together – 10.06 million

Aespa – 10.02 million

Ive – 8.59 million

Red Velvet – 7.48 million

Exo – 5.82 million

NCT Dream – 4.84 million

BabyMonster (which only debuted a month ago) – 4.53 million

XG – 4.29 million

BigBang – 3.22 million

Riize – 2.75 million

StayC – 2.67 million

Everglow – 2.33 million

Monsta X – 1.87 million

ZeroBaseOne – 1.47 million

Kard – 1.40 million

Pentagon – 1.30 million