Digital Notes: Justin Bieber\'s Manager Signs Korean Web Star Psy

September 4, 2012, 2:17 pm

By BEN SISARIO

Can Scooter Braun turn another online phenomenon into a bona fide star?

Mr. Braun has become the music industry's biggest and most successful proponent of social media. He became Justin Bieber's manager after finding him on YouTube, and recently helped make Carly Rae Jepsen a household name through viral videos of her hit “Call Me Maybe.” (You can read about some of his exploits in a recent New Yorker profile.)

On Monday, Mr. Braun, 31, announced - on YouTube, appropriately enough - that he had made a deal with Psy, a South Korean rapper whose comic video “Gangnam Style” has become an online sensation this summer. Sitting with Psy, and apparently sealing the deal with a bottle of stiff Korean liquor, Mr. Braun said they had “come to an agreement to make some history together.”

He did not elaborate, but according to reports in Billboard and The Korea Times, Psy has signed a contract with Mr. Braun's record company, Schoolboy, which is associated with Universal's Interscope label.

So far, “Gangnam Style” - a send-up of the good life in Seoul, with Psy and a bevy of backup girls doing a horse-trot dance - has been watched 100 million times on YouTube, and held at No. 1 on Billboard's K-Pop chart for five weeks. But only about 57,000 copies of the song have been downloaded in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

New Nokia Music Service: Nokia is making another play for mobile music consumers.

The company's Comes With Music service, introduced to fanfare in 2008, bundled unlimited song downloads into the cost of a Nokia phone, but the plan proved unpopular and was withdrawn in most markets.

On Tuesday, the company i ntroduced Nokia Music, which offers free music streams from “over 150 exclusive playlists” for users of two of the company's models, the Lumia 900 and 710, in the United States. The service has no advertising and does not require its users to register or subscribe, Nokia said in an announcement.

And what about those playlists? Nokia promises they will feature “a wide spectrum of musical genres from underground Detroit house tracks to New York Philharmonic favorites,” and will be programmed by “an expert team of U.S.-based musicologists” as well as stars like Lady Gaga, Rihanna and Lana Del Rey.

Ben Sisario writes about the music industry. Follow @sisario on Twitter.