Why HYBE Is Betting Big on Latin: Isaac Lee on the K-Pop Giant’s Next Global Growth Engine

When HYBE chairman Bang Si-Hyuk approached Isaac Lee about launching HYBE’s Latin American division in 2023, he says his first reaction was, “I am not the right person for this job.”

Lee had long understood the power of music as a content driver, but he had never run a music company. Two years later, he is in charge of a handful of them as chairman/CEO of the newly named HYBE Americas — which includes North America and Latin America — following Scooter Braun’s departure from the Korean music giant.

In his current role, Lee oversees HYBE Latin America and its operations in Mexico, Miami and Medellín, Colombia, as well as Big Machine Label Group in Nashville, QC Media Holdings in Atlanta and HYBE’s investments with Universal Music Group in artists like KATSEYE.

Lee, 54, comes to the job as an outsider. Born and raised in Colombia to Russian and Polish Jewish immigrants, his career began as a reporter at Colombian newsmagazine Cambio, then, at the age of 26, as editor-in-chief of the country’s leading newsmagazine, Semana, during a particularly volatile time in the country’s history.

He joined Univision in 2010 and, in 2015, became chief content officer of Univision and Televisa, which included overseeing music programming and launching and acquiring properties for the growing U.S. bilingual population. Then-Univision chairman Haim Saban became a mentor, teaching him the Japanese principle of nemawashi, which involves laying the groundwork and building a consensus on deals before they are formally announced.

When Lee left Univision in 2018, he launched Exile Content, which produced projects for the Latin market with an emphasis on music. An early success was the HBO Max scripted series Vgly about rising regional Mexican artists battling to make it big. (It has been renewed for a third season.) Vgly’s success and Lee’s launch of Exile Music caught the eye of Bang, who acquired the label (but not Exile Content) as an entry point into the Latin market.

Lee spoke with Billboard from his offices in Los Angeles, where he lives with his husband and their two black Labs, Luna and Picasso.

Your involvement in music dates back to the production of a Shakira concert for Semana in 1997, but you never ran a label before joining HYBE. Was that daunting?

Yes, but I also think that music and all our entertainment businesses are changing and evolving so rapidly that nothing is as it used to be. What matters to HYBE is creating a global company focused on intellectual property and the long-term success of that IP. It’s more important to understand that. For the music part, Bang is a genius. I have the best resource internally to be able to answer any question that I have. I have a very powerful A&R department. We have been bringing the right people on board and have a very strong partnership with Universal Music Group. So I’m not concerned about my lack of direct expertise.

What has surprised you about working for a music company?

The potential of growth that there is, the amount of possibilities that are still untapped and how HYBE’s formula, which has been incredibly successful in Asia, can also be a hit in other parts of the world, as it has demonstrated with KATSEYE. It’s a perfect example of Bang’s vision to take the training and development model of HYBE and create a successful girl group that is conquering markets everywhere. And that will also be happening in India, China, Latin America and expanding in the U.S. and so on.

What’s another example of untapped opportunities?

HYBE is focusing on [identifying] the biggest areas of growth in terms of markets, genres, demographics, and that’s why they are investing in China and India. And they are betting on Latin music, which has a huge potential to grow — to get out of the region and become a global force. Latin music is the most important IP in the Latin content world today.

More than film and audiovisual?

It travels incredibly well. It has the ability to appeal to youth audiences, it can happen in multiple languages, it can have collaborations that are easily made with different markets, and definitely, nothing has been more successful than the Latino artists who have become global sensations, from Bad Bunny coming out of Puerto Rico, Karol G coming out of Medellín and Peso Pluma, who came out of Mexico with a genre that was not even known [broadly] to this world five years ago.

How exactly do you work with Big Machine and Quality Control?

Both of those labels are under HYBE Americas, and the most important focus for us is, where can collaborations happen and how we can play with our different synergies to do things that have not been done before? When you have Lil Yachty, a QC artist, in the studio, creating content with BTS, you are already reaping the benefits of a strong collaboration, which is all in-house. Some of the best writers today are part of Big Machine’s publishing arm. They are writing music and lyrics for the likes of Sabrina Carpenter and Morgan Wallen. To have that level of resources inside the company is incredibly important, and it allows you visibility and access into different genres other than K-pop. It turns HYBE from an Asian pop company into a global music company that is playing in regional Mexican music, country music, hip-hop, pop, Japanese music and Indian music.

There will be more and more collaboration between each of the labels that HYBE owns. That’s one of chairman Bang’s and [CEO] Jason Lee’s goals, and I am implementing that vision, connecting with all the other areas of the company. You will start to see how Latin America and Japan will be connected, how country music and regional Mexican music are brothers, how Latin rap and hip-hop can do things together. There is no such thing as puritanism in different genres today.

Your first project at HYBE ­Latin America was creating a Latin pop band, Santos Bravos, which debuted at Billboard Latin Music Week in October.

Yes. Our goal is to adapt the methodology that has worked so well with KATSEYE to the Latin American market. That’s why we established a training and development center in Mexico City. We had an audition project that started with many young boys coming from all over the region and ended up with a group of five from Puerto Rico, Los Angeles, Mexico, Peru and Brazil. I already released the first song, and we are creating a strong fan community in the Americas. The results are making us very happy, and these are just the first baby steps.

What are you excited about in the non-Latin realm?

I’m incredibly excited with the success of KATSEYE. The second group that’s going to come out in partnership with Geffen, Prelude, is going to be very cool. And our boy band with Ryan Tedder is going to be a rocket. Those are all projects signed to HYBE Americas.

Does chairman Bang need to approve all new signings to HYBE Americas?

Everyone has the autonomy to do whatever they think is right. Now, it would be a lack of judgment if people didn’t use him as a resource. It’s an advantage, not an imposition.

What can you offer an artist that you sign now?

Success. The batting average of HYBE is incredible.

Does HYBE Americas provide any support to the company’s K-pop operations?

They don’t need us to help create successful groups. But we are here to be their anchor support when they visit and tour the Americas and to be the best possible marketing and promotion arm of their music and content.

You are known for taking risks. What do you say no to?

I say no to things that cannot scale or are not sustainable. I trust my gut, but I do make decisions very much based on research. I’m very into data and research and identifying trends. It’s something I’ve done all my life. I have a very close relationship with Luminate. When something is mainstream, it’s too late.