NOTE: The following is only displaying MY opinion, not allkpop's.

SM Entertainment is without any doubt one of the biggest entertainment companies in Asia.

Being the home of legendary K-POP artists like H.O.T, BoA, SNSD, TVXQ and EXO. 

Yet, in the past few years, many fans have not been content on the way SM provides fan content. Specifically, how most of the content is either not available for international fans or non existent as a whole.

And they are right to do so.

The K-POP industry have changed ever since SM have created the fondation by debuting H.O.T in 1996. What was before a more unknown genre have become a worldwide known multi million market that is still in expansion. The ways to connect with fans also changed. With social medias, there's thousands of methods to connect and interact with fans.
Which is why fan content became important in the building of a strong and passionate fandom.

And this is what SM higher-ups failed to understand, which made them fall behind other companies in the recent years.

The company that was known to be the trendsetter (and still is to this day), the example to follow is now the company who's trying to catch up and they are doing so horribly.

As I have previously said, fan content is a must. In today's industry, to grow and build a strong fandom, you must put out original fan content. Red Velvet and EXO, two of their most known groups, barely releases said content for older fans to enjoy and for new fans to watch in order to be more familiarized with them. And when they do so, it is either released on Vlive +, which has to be paid in order to be watched or oksusu, a streaming site that only Korean fans can access easily while international fans must go through VPN and hope to be able to pass the welcome page. By doing so, SM is drastically cutting any chance for both groups to gain new loyal fans. Which is quite surprising to see when they do know how to create a good fan-artist complicity. Look at NCT, whose content mostly on YouTube, a streaming site where most can go to easily and do not have to pay for it and also on Vlive but for free compared to their older compatriots.

The point here is that SM actually knows how to connect the fans and the artist but isn't willing to let most of their act have access to it.

And this is quite disheartening because fans deserve content and you cannot expect fans to stay with your groups if you are willingly blocking the connection between the two.

You simply cannot expect a growth in a fandom if you are only working hard to give free and fun content to one instead of all.

EXO fans have been complaining for the last 3 years on how SM should let the members use the official EXO Twitter account so they can interact with each other. To this day, SM has not listen and EXO's Twitter, though having near 7 millions of followers, barely get the social interactions a 7 million followers account should get. The account looks more like an advertisement account, a page full of links to articles, achievements, etc... only in Korean. The few times EXO's twitter releases tweets in English is when they (SM interns) have to boast about EXO's achievements or interact with influential persons and global companies. When member Baekhyun made his personal Twitter account, his first tweet had more interactions and retweets than the last 7 tweets on EXO's page which were mostly links to EXO's variety show on oksusu that most international fans cannot even access.

There is a clear issue on the way SM gives content to their fans, in a modern K-POP industry who is now exposed to the world, content must be easy to access for all. If SM wants to compete with other companies in the western world as they have shown many times in the past 4 years, they must think of a new way of approach so that ALL their groups can easily interact with their fans.

And if they don't do so, their own ship might sink due to their carelessness.

-Ab