ADOR

ADOR (acronym for All Doors One Room) is a South Korean entertainment company established in November 2021 by its current CEO, Min Hee-jin, as a subsidiary of Hybe Corporation. After becoming CBO of Hybe Corporation in 2019, Min started planning to form a K-pop girl group. She subsequently decided to establish her own label to gain full control over the production process. The label's first girl group, NewJeans, debuted in July 2022 to immediate commercial success. After the group's second successful release, Hybe sold a significant portion of its stake back to ADOR and allowed a change in the board of directors that led to ADOR gaining increased autonomy. To promote the group, the label has collaborated with one of Hybe's subsidiaries, Weverse Company, to develop a NewJeans-exclusive mobile application, Phoning, which was successfully launched in July 2022.
== History ==
=== 2019–2022: Origins and establishment ===
After working for 16 years at SM Entertainment, creative director Min Hee-jin left the company and became the chief brand officer (CBO) of Hybe Corporation in 2019. That year, Min started planning to debut a K-pop girl group. In November 2021, Hybe announced the establishment of the wholly-owned record label ADOR, with Min as its CEO. Initially formed as a division of one of Hybe's subsidiaries, Source Music, ADOR was subsequently acquired by Hybe through an investment of |15.4 billion, becoming the first label to be established solely by Hybe. The label's initial board of directors included as inside directors Min and two Hybe executives: chief financial officer (CFO) Lee Kyung-joon and head of corporate strategy Lee Chang-woo. Hybe supported the label through monetary investment and financial and corporate strategy consulting provided by their executives.
In January 2022, the label hosted the online ADOR Global Audition. The planned girl group, named NewJeans, debuted under ADOR in July 2022 with the release of the music video for their first single "Attention", which topped South Korea's Circle Digital Chart. That same month, one of Hybe's subsidiaries, Weverse Company, launched the mobile application Phoning, an artist-to-fan communication service developed exclusively for NewJeans in collaboration with ADOR. NewJeans' first extended play (EP), New Jeans, was released in August 2023 to commercial success; it topped South Korea's Circle Album Chart and sold over a million copies, becoming the best selling debut album by a K-pop female act in South Korea and the only debut album to achieve this since the establishment of Circle Chart in 2011. The marketing strategy implemented to promote NewJeans was considered innovative in the K-pop industry; Lee Seung-yoon, digital cultural psychologist and professor at Konkuk University Business School, analyzed the album rollout, highlighting their unconventional introduction to the public, use of transmedia storytelling in music videos, and close communication with fans through Phoning, among others. In the second half of 2022, sales reportedly totaled up to 18.6 billion.
=== 2023–present: Increased autonomy ===
NewJeans' first single album, OMG, was released that same month. The album topped the Circle Album Chart with over a million copies sold and spawned two singles including "Ditto", the longest-running number-one song on the Circle Digital Chart and the group's first entry on the Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Singles Chart. In the first quarter of 2023, sales had reportedly increased to 26 billion and the company had recorded a net profit of 4 billion. That year, Hybe sold 20% of its stake to ADOR. Industry analysts assumed that it had been sold to Min, but Hybe only stated that they had sold it "to our core management". In April 2023, Lee Kyung-joon and Lee Chang-woo left the board of directors and were replaced by Min's long-time collaborators Shin Dong-hoon, vice president (VP) of ADOR, and Kim Ye-min, senior creative director at ADOR; both had previously worked with Min at SM Entertainment. Analysts noted that the move would guarantee the label more autonomy. Hybe subsequently stated that the change had been enacted "to strengthen ADOR's artist management and production capabilities". Analysts interpreted both moves as "recognition of the capabilities of CEO Min and other key officials" at ADOR from Hybe chairman Bang Si-hyuk following NewJeans' commercial success. In the first half of 2023, sales had reportedly increased to 44.9 billion and ADOR recorded a net profit of 11.6 billion, becoming Hybe's sixth largest-grossing subsidiary.
From March to June 2023, ADOR hosted a series of worldwide online and offline auditions, titled 2023 ADOR Global Audition – The Real Hybe Boys, to recruit members for a future boy group; offline auditions were held in South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In May 2023, ADOR and the Korean Cultural Center in Thailand hosted the 2023 ADOR Onsite Global Audition in Thailand, open to both male and female trainees.
== Philanthropy ==
In December 2022, it was announced that ADOR and NewJeans would annually donate part of the profits from the group's album sales to The Snail of Love charity to fund cochlear implant surgery and speech therapy treatment for the hearing-impaired. In February 2023, ADOR and NewJeans donated 200 million to the World Food Programme to help victims of the 2023 Turkey–Syria earthquake|earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria that month.
== Artists ==
* NewJeans
== Products ==
=== Phoning ===
Phoning is a mobile application developed exclusively for NewJeans by ADOR and Weverse Company. The app was launched by Weverse Company on July 25, 2022. Created as a marketing tool to promote the group, Phoning was the first app to be developed by Weverse Company for a specific artist. Users can interact with members of NewJeans through multiple features, including a live stream service, a private messaging service, a photo album, and a calendar detailing the group's upcoming schedule. The private messaging service was initially limited: NewJeans' members could send messages but users could not reply. In December 2022, the app implemented a subscription-based private messaging service, priced at 9,000 per month or 99,000 per year, where users could send messages to the members. Upon release, users could also dress avatars of the members in different outfits and virtually decorate albums, but the features were discontinued following the end of promotional activities for the group's first EP. The app is designed to mimic a phone: NewJeans' members appear listed as "friends", while live streams are dubbed as "calls". Based on NewJeans' concept, the app's visual style is inspired by the design of 1990s Nokia phones and the Y2K aesthetic. 
Ten days after its release, Phoning had been downloaded more than 50,000 times through Google Play. Writing for Mashable, Elizabeth de Luna appreciated its design and unique features, but lamented the app's slowness, the limited notification settings, and the inability to talk to other fans. Upon release, pop culture critic Jeong Deok-hyeon called the app an "aggressive marketing strategy" that, if successful, could have further shortened "the profit recovery period" by helping the group establish a loyal fandom. Analysts speculated that Hybe had used the app to test the private messaging paid service, which could have been eventually implemented on their main artist-to-fan communication service, Weverse, depending on Phoning's performance. In April 2023, Weverse announced they would launch a subscription-based private messaging service in line with Phoning's own private messaging service.
== Discography ==
Date of release 	Title 	Artist 	Type 	Format 	
August 1, 2022 	New Jeans 	NewJeans	Extended play 	CD, digital download, streaming	
December 19, 2022	"Ditto" 	NewJeans	Digital single	Digital download, streaming 	
January 2, 2023 	OMG 	NewJeans	Single album 	CD, digital download, streaming	
April 3, 2023 	"Zero" 	NewJeans	Digital single	Digital download, streaming 	
July 7, 2023 	"Super Shy"	NewJeans	Digital single	Digital download, streaming 	
July 21, 2023 	Get Up 	NewJeans	Extended play 	CD, digital download, streaming	
Category:Hybe Corporation
Category:South Korean record labels
Category:Entertainment companies of South Korea
Category:South Korean companies established in 2021