AT a vinyl bar only lit and weakly lit just outside the center of Tokyo, a handful of pool signals are framed above the table. Everyone has a signage plate, but only one name belongs to an American: Brandon Silverstein. The main placement represents much more than billiard skills – it symbolizes the years of work, and the ultimate partnership, between the entertainment company of Silverstein, S10, and the owner of the bar, the Japanese entertainment giant Avex. In March, the two companies devoted this partnership with the launch of Avex Music Group, the American division renamed from Avex (formerly known as Avex USA), and Silverstein was appointed CEO.
Silverstein describes AMG as “a major shop with a global perspective” – and this ethics is exactly what attracted it to AVEX five years ago. After launching S10 in 2017 as artist management company, his friend and collaborator Ryan Tedder suggested to create a publishing company. “I was looking for a partner – and I was looking for another type of partner,” recalls Silverstein when he was sitting in the hall of the fifth floor of the Virgin Headquarters in Tokyo.
In 2019, Silverstein was presented to Naoki Osada, then avex USA-head, and the two hit him. In 2020, S10 Publishing was launched as a joint venture with Avex, and shortly later, Silverstein flew to Tokyo for the first time to meet the founder and president of AVEX Max Matsuura and the CEO of the Avex Katsumi Kuroiwa group. “From the first meetings, (we had) very similar visions, cowboy mentalities,” explains Silverstein. Today, the list of S10 Publishing has producers of composers of cards composites, including Harv (Justin Bieber), Jasper Harris (Tate McRae, Jack Harlow) and Gent! (Doja cat).
In May, AMG announced that it had signed the producer fast Elkan (Drake, Rihanna) with a global publishing agreement and joined his joint puboxing company by Elkan – the first, Silverstein hopes, many offers of this type. “The artists are among the most incredible entrepreneurs, and they just need an infrastructure, the right infrastructure, so that their ideas prevail,” he said. This thought is the dorsal spine of Avex: the approach of the company in terms of creation, known as Kuroiwa, is “entrepreneurship, since we are an independent company – and we would like to remain independent”.
More recently, AMG has marked a major signature with us the group, known as Bieber support musicians (evidence, suggests Silverstein, of his theory that “artists first find talent”). He says that S10’s relationship with the law dates when she signed the Harv member to a publishing agreement in 2021; Shortly after, Harv marked a Billboard Hot 100 N ° 1 as a co-scriptwriter / co-producer on Bieber’s “Peaches”.
For AVEX – known in Japan as the fourth major, alongside Sony, Universal and Warner – early investment in publication S10 was essentially a deposit over world domination, the initial stage of a five -year plan which led this year to the launch of AMG. (In conjunction with the new role of Silverstein, Avex has acquired 100% of the S10 Publishing Song catalog and additional participation in S10 Management; AVEX now has the largest part of the management of S10, alongside Silverstein and Roc Nation.)
Since its creation in 1988, AVEX has always moved the needle, largely thanks to the singular vision of Matsuura and a healthy relationship with risk. “When we started, we were focused on laser on Euro-Beat, a very small genre and a market,” recalls Kuroiwa, who joined Avex group in 2001 and became CEO in 2020. “(We did) things that other record companies would not choose to do, and who shaped who we are today.” It is even part of the company’s motto: “Really! Mad + Pure.”
“I don’t think I would be here today if avex not This kind of business, “adds Takeya Ino, president of the Avex labels division, Avex Music Creative, who has a list of more than 500 artists.” It is a question of creating a new movement, and this has always been the way to Avex: Disco Booms, Euro-Beat, Japanese hip-hop. And then we think of the next step to We – And the response would be the global market, “continues Ino, who joined AVEX in 1995.
Although he has now employed around 1,500 people in offices in more than 50 cities and earned $ 1 billion in 2024, the AVEX listed on the stock market still has this small but swampy state of mind that allowed him to become “a complete entertainment company,” said Kuroiwa. “You see a lot of this these days, but we were the pioneers – one of the first labels to have an internal management company, scout and train our own artists, produce and organize live events.”
These pillars still support Avex, in particular Avex Youth Studio, the intensive training program for future potential superstars where more than 200 trainees are registered. Scouts regularly travel around 500 artistic schools to identify talents; Once selected, trainees are not charged tuition fees because Avex considers them as investments.
It is in the main installation of Avex Youth Studio, the youth studio Avex Tokyo, in the city of Tokyo in Setagaya, which, about four years ago, the group of Japanese boys emerging one or eight was developed. Over the past two years, the AVEX has tested its next act, with the current training of the best best boys (14-16 years) together. The influences of boys include Bieber, Kendrick Lamar, Ed Sheeran and Morgan Wallen; Obviously, from the start, the objective is worldwide success.
This is obvious in the way in which AVEX produces live events, thanks to AEGX, an agreement concluded with AEG in 2021 which brought Superstars such as Sheeran and Taylor Swift in Japan for closed stop shows. “Initially, (AEGX) was built to support foreign artists who wanted to perform in Japan,” explains Kuroiwa. “But now we are entering an era when Asian artists will play and succeed abroad, which means that there will be a request for both.” After having helped non-Japanese stars to reserve shows in Japan, the AEGX can now help Japanese artists reserve shows in the United States and elsewhere. For one or eight, Ino aims at Madison Square Garden in New York.
From left to right: Neo, Mizuki, Takeu, Reia, Souma, Ryota, Tsubasa and Yuga from one or eight during the rehearsal at the youth studio of Avex Tokyo.
Ooze
And a bit like the way to team up with AEG helps Avex and its artists beyond Japan, the partnership with the S10 of Silverstein helps Avex and its artists to mark successes.
The beginnings of one or eight in August 2024 marked the first time that a AVEX law had American management in S10 (co-managed with AVEX). And in May, Atlantic Records and Avex joined forces with all future versions of the group. “The staff involved in this project come from Japan as well as from the United States, and we therefore have this cross-border structure in place,” explains Kuroiwa. “Visionwise, it really amounts to creating a successful case model. All this project, the goal is to have global successes – and not only one. ”
The group’s credits illustrate one of Kuroiwa’s letters: “The co-creation is the key.” The first single of one or eight, “Don’t Tell Nobody”, was co -produced by Tedder, and Stargate produced his second single, “DSTM” (which samples in good place on Rihanna Stargate “Don’t Stop the Music” – the first time that success has been officially sampled). “DSTM” also attributes to the composer of S10, David Arkwright, who co-written “Get a Guitar” by RIIZE, which, according to Silverstein, was an early victory for the publishing company. (RIIZE is signed at SM Entertainment, which in 2001 joined forces with AVEX to launch the SM Entertainment Japan subsidiary.)
“Our writers have early access to placing songs for (one or eight),” said Silverstein, adding that many have participated in writing camps in Japan. “This is an (exchange) in progress where we create recordings that can work for our next group of boys or group of girls from Japan, or whatever the group.”
AVEX AVEX ACT XG – The first project of the XGALX brand, a partnership with the executive producer Simon Park – also embodies the collaborative vision of Kuroiwa. The group of Japanese girls, based in South Korea, made its debut in 2022 and appeared in Coachella in April. “We have seen how K-Pop players ventured on the world market, but we didn’t have the right Japanese talents to get on this train at that time,” said Kuroiwa. “It took us five years, also because of the pandemic, but we trained (XG) in the studios, integrating knowledge and expertise on our side as well as on their side, which means K-Pop. What you get from what is something completely new. ”
For Ino, the success of the K -POP – which, according to him, “built this path so that foreign music enters the American market and succeeds on a global scale” – is, in part, which made it confident that the world would adopt in the same J -Pop.
He quotes the “aging society” of Japan as one of the Avex prunes to take J-POP global, affirming that in terms of growth potential, it is a main engine for needing to market outside Japan. He also underlines the robust American infrastructure that AVEX built with S10 and beyond: “Everyone said it was the time, there is an opportunity, there is a chance to really go to the American market,” he said. “Maybe it was Ryan (Tedder) who accentuated the most-he said that now is perhaps not Time for K-Pop. It’s really time for J-Pop. But, adds Ino laughing, “he works with Hybi anyway.” (In February, Tedder joined forces with Hybe to form a group of world boys who have not yet made his debut.)
J-Pop is indeed his own world. For Ino, the term umbrella represents a “more diverse” music class. “And there is the anime, manga and Tubers V (viral youtubers),” he adds. “We have all these categories that we can really take advantage of and take advantage of, so integrating them all together, it will be our strong point.”
Now, with AMG, this integration will only grow. After the joint venture in 2020 of S10 with Avex, the pair built a studio house in West Hollywood for events and to build a creative community. In April, AMG went to a new larger Weho house which previously belonged to a $ AP Rocky and Rihanna who will continue to be used for the construction of the community, as well as for the leaders of Housing Avex when they visit Japan.
“Creatives want charming societies that are fresh and exciting and positioned worldwide, and I don’t think there are many,” explains Silverstein. “We want to support the artist’s vision and the vision of the writer and the vision of the producer and allow them to be their own CEO. I think it is change (we need) – and I think that the Avex music group will prevail because of this.”
As Kuroiwa and Ino see it, AMG will prevail due to the bases it has so carefully laid in the past five years. “(S10) really helped us create something new,” said Kuroiwa. “There were a few companies in Japan that (tried it) in the past, but they couldn’t get there.”
To what Silverstein said with a confident smile: “We have the right team. We have good relationships. We have the right partnership. We have the right vision. We have the right momentum. We are ready. “
This story appears in the June 7, 2025 issue Display panel.