Music Finland's prominent co-writing camp A-Pop Castle is hosted online in August! The songwriting experience organized brings Asian guests to a virtual Finland. The virtual camp is leading up to the implementation of the next live camp planned for 2023.

A-Pop Castle is a successful international co-writing camp hosted by Music Finland, which focuses on K-Pop, J-Pop and C-Pop.

This year A-Pop Castle will bring together around 20 Finnish songwriters with 20 artists, lyricists and songwriters from the Asian target markets, as well as their business representatives and labels looking for new music.

Direct cuts from the past A-Pop Castle camps have been numerous. Many artists and groups including Hyolyn, Gugudan, Sunmi, Lee Hyori, TVXQ (Korea) as well as Jolin Tsai, Joanna Wang, R-Chord (Taiwan), Kamin, Shionoya Sayaka, Toyama Mirei (Japan) have released songs written at our A-Pop Castle camps.

Each A-Pop Castle produces multiple releases on the target markets. But it’s not only the direct results, A-Pop Castle has been an important connector of European and Asian music companies within the songwriting industry. The Asian markets have long been a focus for Finnish songwriting. In addition to the aforementioned artists Finnish songwriters have releases with huge pop groups over the years including Twice, S.E.S., EXO, SHINee, and Sexy Zone, Hey Say Jump!, Kumi Koda, Arashi and more.

Read here, what kind of impressions Music Finland's A-Pop Castle made in the year 2017 and watch the aftermovie.

Dates and implementation

Each invited songwriter will work with two different teams on two days, either 22.–23.8. or 24.–25.8. The writing teams will have a few more working days to finish the demos as the deadline for the finished is 31.8. Songs will be written directly to briefs. The songwriters need fair English skills to communicate with their teams.

Starting times for all the sessions, kick-offs and listening session are 9am Finnish time and 16.00 in Seoul / Tokyo. The song camp includes kick-off sessions with introductions each start of sessions as well as a listening session with all of the song camp writers, representatives and A&R’s on 31.8.

A-Pop Castle will get team communication going and provide the songwriters with video call rooms and additional online working software plugins by request.