The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published an online article entitled ‘YouTube Helps South Korean Band Branch Out’ which basically discussed about how SM Entertainment utilized YouTube as a tool to introduce SNSD to the Japanese market.

According to WSJ on January 14th, there are 2 reasons behind the success of SNSD’s 1st showcase in Japan at Ariake Coliseum,Tokyo. The first reason being the debut song itself which is a Japanese language song and secondly, some online assistance from YouTube in spreading the words to the public.

According to the article, SM Entertainment uploaded the MV of the Japanese-language song (‘Genie’ Japanese version) to YouTube weeks ahead of the showcase and it was their strategy to allow fans to reupload the videos on any websites, subsequently driving Japanese fans to flood radio stations with song requests as well as online discussions on forum sites.

*Mistake by WSJ – ‘Genie’ Japanese version PV was released on YouTube on August 26th, 2010, a day after the Ariake Coliseum showcase and not weeks ahead.

SM Entertainment has been releasing the videos of its artists through Google Inc.’s YouTube since last year. YouTube uses an anti-piracy scheme known as ‘Content ID’ which provides protection against duplicates of copyrighted videos.

According to SM Entertainment’s CEO, Kim Youngmin, the partnership with YouTube is mainly for promotional purposes and through it, the agency saved thousands of dollars a month to maintain video servers on various websites. He added, “Rather than being on each video delivery site in each country, it’s much better for us to be on a world-wide channel like YouTube”.