On May 22, SM Entertainment announced a new partnership with Samsung TV Plus to launch Monthly SM Concert – a monthly concert series releasing one performance from an SM artist each month, starting with NCT Wish on May 30, across six artists in total. According to the label, the partnership aims to provide fans with more opportunities to enjoy K-pop concert content in their daily lives through accessible streaming platforms. The series will be available free of charge through the SMTown channel on Samsung TV Plus in Korea, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, K-pop concerts have become increasingly accessible for online audiences living abroad – through paid livestreams, cinema screenings of Seoul shows, and now monthly streaming series. SM's latest venture is the most recent marker of a shift that's been building for six years. Here's how it got here.

Between 2017 and 2019, K-pop tours held throughout North and South America, Europe, and Latin America had grown exponentially compared to their levels in the 2000s and early 2010s. The chances of seeing favourite K-pop artists outside of Asia were few and far between, as K-pop's popularity overseas was still considered niche. For concerts held in the US and Europe, most fans had to travel to special events such as KCON LA or SMTOWN Live in Los Angeles, New York, or Paris. For many, if the cost of travelling wasn't feasible, they simply couldn't go. As K-pop became more popular and began breaking through Western barriers, Korean companies began investing in touring abroad, with tours spanning multiple cities across the American, European, and Latin markets.

However, once COVID-19 forced the world into a global shutdown, in-person concerts were halted with no updates on when they'd safely return. That's when labels pivoted out of necessity – concert tours make up one of the largest revenue streams in the music industry. In April 2020, SM Entertainment became the first K-pop company to host a paid online concert with the "Beyond LIVE" series, bridging the gap between artists and fans watching at home during one of the most disruptive periods in recent history. The first artist on SM's roster was SuperM, followed by WayV, NCT Dream, NCT 127, and others throughout the year via the V Live app.

With this new strategy, fans could still feel connected to their favourite artists, with a select number of audience members able to interact with the idols through video calls. It also made it possible for K-pop groups to continue performing in a standard concert setting without losing the interactive element entirely. Soon, nearly every company was organising its own virtual concerts, with BTS setting a Guinness World Record in June 2020 with "Bang Bang Con: The Live," drawing 756,000 paid attendees and cementing the format's commercial viability.

Once the world began opening back up, K-pop companies shifted focus from streaming to cinema. Although the first major K-pop concert film to hit theatres was BIGBANG's "BIGSHOW 3D" in 2010 and BTS's "Burn the Stage: The Movie" in 2018, the trend didn't fully take hold until the 2020s. With travel still restricted, companies began releasing cinematic concert experiences using footage from Seoul shows for audiences abroad.

In 2021, BLACKPINK joined the lineup with BLACKPINK: The Movie, shown in over 100 countries and 3,000 theatres worldwide, grossing over $4.8 million within two weeks – one of the highest-grossing event cinema releases of the year. NCT Dream, SEVENTEEN, MONSTA X, and TXT have since followed with their own concert films.

Both concert films and VOD shows proved to be a sustainable way for global fans to experience K-pop concerts without travelling to Seoul. They also gave audiences an incentive to attend tours abroad, where set lists often differ from the Seoul versions – a standard practice across K-pop shows. That brings us to the streaming platform partnerships with Netflix, Disney+, and now Samsung TV Plus.

While Netflix has partnered with BLACKPINK and Disney+ with BTS, SEVENTEEN, and TXT, Samsung TV Plus is proving to be SM's platform of choice. In 2025, the two companies collaborated on an exclusive livestream of "SMTOWN LIVE 2025 in LA," drawing significant global attention across the label's roster. Monthly SM Concert is the natural next step – moving from one-off events to a consistent monthly format.

The first performance in the series will be NCT Wish's "Into The Wish: Our Wish" encore concert from Seoul, which took place from April 17 to 19 – a useful entry point for newer fans and a fuller experience for existing ones. Beyond full concert broadcasts, the SMTown channel will also air stage clips and highlight compilations every Saturday at 7pm, giving fans a reason to return throughout the week. The remaining five artist slots are yet to be confirmed.

Six years of pandemic pivots, cinema releases, and streaming deals have steadily brought K-pop concerts closer to audiences – Monthly SM Concert is the latest iteration of something that was never going to stay behind a paywall or a plane ticket forever.