A-Pop Castle 2017 yields great results
Finnish songwriters collaborated with Asian artists and songwriters at A-Pop Castle songwriting camp in Helsinki May 21-26. Over three days, 22 songs were written, many to be released on the target markets in Japan, Korea and Taiwan.
The Asian companies that came looking for songs and work with Finnish songwriters this year were JYP Entertainment and Publishing and Jellyfish Entertainment from Korea, from Japan Avex Entertainment, Sony Records and Sony Music Publishing Japan and from Taiwan Warner Music and Warner/Chappell Music. In addition, Korean companies LOEN Entertainment, CJ E&M, YG and SM Entertainment were represented.
“A-Pop castle is the event to learn what Finnish writers are about and create new sounds with their skills.” –Kohei Ohta, A&R, Avex Entertainment, Japan
A-Pop Castle 2017 in numbers
- 22 songs
- 3 writing days
- 13 Finnish songwriters
- 6 Finnish music publishers
- 11 artists and songwriters from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Sweden
- 6 A&R representatives from Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese labels looking for songs
The camp was organized at Radisson Blu Seaside hotel in Helsinki, with the hotel rooms acting as mobile studios for the co-writing. In addition to songwriting, the participants got to experience the nearby restaurants and got to stop and breathe with a sauna night in Löyly (@helsinkisauna). The listening session of the songs written at the camp was held in G Livelab with a unique Genelec designed sound system and the camp was concluded with a cruise in the beautiful Helsinki archipelago with Helsinki Marketing and StopOver Finland.
According to Music Finland's Export Manager, Katariina Sorsa, time will tell how many of the songs written at the will be released on the target markets. Based on the immediate feedback from participants at the camp, Sorsa estimates that a record number of songs will be released.
“However, even more important than the direct releases are international relationships that were established. Those connections will create many successes over time,” Katariina Sorsa says.
“The result of the A-Pop Castle 2017 was the best so far with six confirmed upcoming releases of songs with involvement of our writers, in less than two weeks. We are very pleased with the outcome of this camp!” –Ann Slangar, Sugar House Publishing, Finland
From the previous successful A-Pop Castle 2016 organized at Ruka, four songs written at the camp were released within a year from the camp. These songs were Minmi “Circus” (Japan), Hyolyn “Dope” (Korea), Fox.i.e. “Snow” (Japan) and Shionoya Sayaka “Smiley Days” (Japan). In its’ history since 2013, A-Pop Castle has produced a number of successful singles and album tracks on the Asian markets and sparked international collaborations.
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A-Pop Castle is funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture, The Finnish Music Foundation (MES) and realized with partners Genelec, Helsinki Marketing and StopOver Finland.