black-tortoise:
So… since I don’t go to Allkpop, I am so late about the subject, hahahaha… but I dug around and read the interview of Kim Young Min…
The quote that got a lot of people talking is this:
We will only be distributing digital music, and not physical CD’s. There will be more opportunities for…
What Kim Youngmin meant was that SM Entertainment will stop distributing physical copies of CDs via SM Entertainment. In other words, the company will not handle CDs’ distribution anymore, thus the distribution is done by another company, or at this matter, KMP Holdings (they’ve done this since Super Junior’s comeback, TONE and Winter Korean Version are distributed via KMP, but KYHD albums were distributed via SM). So, SM does say that they will focus on digital music from now on and they’ll take care of the digital distribution thoroughly, but they will not stop producing CDs, instead they have other people to take care for the distribution because that matter is solely not theirs to handle anymore.
Also, physical CDs may not be that profitable anymore in the market, but in this matter, SM has the best physical sellers out there (SNSD, TVXQ, Super Junior), and selling actual copies of CDs are their artists’ forte. Thus, profits margin from selling physical CDs is higher than digital sales in SM’s artist case. Unless they want to kill their acts, there is no way SM will obliterate completely the production of physical CDs, at least not in 2 years ahead, IMO.
:)