Kakao M

[11] Kakao M was founded as Seoul Records in 1978 by Min Yeong-bin as a subsidiary of YBM Sisa, a company mainly involved in creating language-learning tapes.

[17] On July 18, 2013, Affinity Equity Partners, through its subsidiary Star Invest Holdings Ltd., bought 52.56% of LOEN Entertainment's shares, leaving SK Group with only 15%.

[18] The company was reorganized to include two labels: "LOEN Tree" (Jo Yeong-cheol) and "Collabodadi" (Shinsadong Tiger).

On August 25, LOEN Entertainment announced that its joint venture with Studio Dragon will be called as Mega Monster.

[22] The company has also signed actress Kim So-hyun through setting up her own independent label, E&T Story Entertainment, which is led by her long-time manager Park Chan-woo.

[27] On February 28, 2021, Kakao M's music was removed from Spotify after its licensing deal with the streaming service expired.

2011 LOEN Entertainment, along with then-parent SK Telecom, was one of the 15 companies fined and sued by the Korean FTC for price rigging in 2011.

[citation needed] 2016 On October 9, 2016, the Supreme Court of Korea handed out a 100 million won fine each to LOEN Entertainment and its closest competitor Genie Music (then known as KT Music) for colluding in price fixing, dating back to a case filed in 2008.

[31] On September 26, 2019, it was revealed that 3 former executives of the company have been charged with stealing 18.2 billion won in royalties from Melon, artists, and producers.

[33] In response, LOEN Entertainment stated that they were still in discussions regarding the album's promotion and that nothing had been confirmed prior to the relevant article's release.

C-JeS responded saying that they had begun receiving pre-orders for the album and entries for the showcase event without a response from LOEN.

[37][38] Melon Company[39] (Korean: 멜론컴퍼니; RR: mellon keompeoni) was Kakao M's online music service company, operating Melon (short for melody on),[40][41] the most popular music service in Korea, with 59% of all users in South Korea as of November 2013[update].

In December 2017, Kakao M established a one-person agency E&T Story Entertainment for actress Kim So-hyun, which was led by her long-time manager Park Chan-woo.

On June 27, 2018, Kakao M made strategic investments and created partnerships with three actor management agencies BH Entertainment, J.WIDE Company, Management SOOP, and Korea's leading advertisement model casting agency, Ready Entertainment in order to globalize its content.

The logos of LOEN Music and 1theK