Firestar

yeah, I mean it's always been true, but 4th gen has been pretty notable in that what are probably the most talented groups on average (particularly singing, and live singing) mostly being small company and less successful, and the big company groups selling mostly on image.

Why spend the time and money? Chuu is the only one that has any value to them.

Gross, but not surprising. K-pop has always been about looks far more than talent.

By a very wide margin, she's like Suzy in Miss A or Nana in Orange Caramel, in that her non-group work is what the company relies on to make money, and the group isn't as important. BBC would dump the other 11 members in a heartbeat if it meant signing Chuu to a contract renewal.

Nah, see this I disagree with, it may annoy fans, but from a business perspective it makes perfect sense, and Stans love to complain, but they aren't going to do anything about it (ie boycott). They're going to sell out those venues anyway, Chuu being there or not has no impact on the bottom line, which is what a company cares about, especially with a group that's entering the point in their contract where you start planning for renewing contracts or not. Chuu doing solo work will bring in money (honestly probably more than the tour). Don't look at it from a fan perspective, look at it from the company's.... what benefit would the company get from having Chuu at those concerts if they know they'll sell out anyway (except maybe Reading)? They make no extra money, and a tour of that length in those venues isn't exactly bringing in a ton of money to begin with. They see an opportunity to double dip, make exactly the same amount with the other 11 members, while using the only member who can make money on her own to do that.

Dreamcatcher is kind of the opposite approach, they just dropped albums and singles and built up an audience. Loona tried to build the audience by debuting all the individuals. It may have worked to an extent in that they got to higher numbers faster than a Dreamcatcher, then leveled off, where Dreamcatcher took longer to get a big audience. I do wonder... is this the last Loona push? Is the plan from BBC to put them on Queendom, world tour, then an album. If it does well... you keep going. If it's just the same level, that's the last comeback and they focus all their energy on Chuu and convincing her to sign a new contract as a solo artist with the argument that they are getting her lots of work and that once she isn't splitting it 12 ways she'll be making good money.

Are they incompetent? This is pretty clearly about money. Chuu is, I'm pretty sure, at the Suzy/Nana stage where her individual non-idol work makes more profit than her group. This is probably a test to see if they can make money from Loona without Chuu, because the alternative is going full Pledis and just shelving the group because it's better for the bottom line to just milk the most popular member's outside activities. Loona isn't a total money sink, but I would guess it doesn't make much money either, they sell in the mid-tier, and they are more popular outside Korea than in (bad for touring as the tours are more expensive, and other appearances aren't as profitable), plus 12 members means more expense than most groups.

Somebody needs to make the money to keep the lights on

In cash just means no mortgage, not that uncommon for rich people, why pay interest in this environment if you don't have to, it doesn't mean he showed up with a briefcase full of bills

Like they used to sometimes rig them, but now they realized that is dumb, you don't need to rig the votes, you just set up the scoring system and editing to get people to give you what you want. You want a girl to make your idol group... give her a ton of screentime and favorable storylines. You want a villain... combine edits with giving them lines to say you know will anger stans. You want to do a comeback story.... set up the rules so one groups struggles, then edit whole episodes around it, seed socials with "they deserve better" and watch the bounce. You want to make sure that the final decision is the two groups whose fans will be most active online... make the scoring all about that. Mnet has stans on puppet strings and half of them don't realize it. Even raging about Mnet... is exactly the engagement they want

Mnet is so good at this btw. They set it up so early someone like Hyolyn would get a lot of points as the best performer who all the stans would use their non-stan 2nd vote on. Then they have one of the big groups pick one of the other big groups as the "Worst" performer, so the stans get riled up. Meanwhile they build the narrative of Brave Girls being in trouble, so the non-stans back them for a couple weeks and there are Naver articles about how they are not getting fair deal. But then they also build the system so none of the weeks really count compared to one big stan engagement war in the last week, so that the stan groups stay invested in "coming back" to win over someone who the system actually gives no chance (Hyolyn). Gives them storylines throughout, then the huge stan engagement numbers and trending topics they want

Yep, as expected, once it came down to strategic mass-voting and streaming it was always going to be WJSN v. Loona The whole system is based on fanbase interaction wars (also why they edited up "tension" between those 2 groups)

Went exactly how everyone expected, as it got late in the show it came down to the 2 big fanbases fighting it out. In terms of who gains the most, it's Hyolyn, much like OMG and (g)-idle got the most out of season 1. She had all the good performances early, so everyone talked about how she was so much more talented, but since she doesn't have a stan base to swamp voting/streams she doesn't "win" and the other stan bases aren't mad at her.

Not a total surprise given her two long hiatuses, but sad... Jiyoon has left the group permanently for mental health reasons:

Not totally surprising, but still unfortunate. I hope they consider keeping her with the company as a lyricist/composer, some of the songs she did were good.

If we want to go full conspiracy, this all came out right after some twitter/instagram stan drama about her getting close with out singer Deb Never

I'm not sure that's even really true though. Singing live during a dance performance is hard, I think people are so used to processed vocals (not just albums, tv programs where they sing "live" etc) they don't remember what real live vocals sound like. Aespa are probably decent singers based on some stuff I've heard, but it's tough to put them with groups that sing really well live (NMixx, Weeekly, older groups like EXID, etc.) until we hear that. Basically every group sounds great if the only time you hear them sing anything live is sitting in a practice room. People tend to compare their very few carefully managed vocal performances against groups doing real live singing, which is harder, and wears on your voice. It's an interesting choice by SM, I think probably because the company doesn't think they could consistently give top performances if they always sang live, and so never letting you hear tired or poor performances means they can sell them as "great SM vocalists" since you can't compare them to anyone on an equal field.

Abracadabra by BEG should be on the list, that song banged when it was new, the dance has been a standard, such that Psy even used it in Gentleman and every girl group still does dance covers of it 13 years later. Also just instantly recognizable from the intro.

Oh he's definitely a creep, but focusing on his being involved with sex workers, which is pretty common shifts the attention from what really makes him a creep: 1. He grooms young girls including his wife, that's way worse. 2. He threatened witnesses, which is what this trial is about, he's admitting that he visited escort bars because it's a technically illegal, but generally accepted practice, and by doing so he's using the court's disdain for sex workers (but not their clients) to help himself with the argument that because he was her client she couldn't be afraid of him, which is gross and obviously untrue. I was just pointing out, that escort bars are while illegal, a generally accepted practice in Korea, and Korean's aren't going to see him as a creep for going to them. And honestly the story shouldn't be that he's the kind of guy that goes to escort bars, it should be that he's a creep and a thug, and that her being an escort doesn't have any impact on that.

Hate to break this to you but that's probably the majority of men in K-pop, both in terms of CEO's, Producers, etc, and honestly even the idols. It's massively widespread in Korea in general based on the government reports.

I read this as Han So Hee and was deeply confused.

yeah, I knew what she meant, I was noting it's important to remember that it's a little more than an average celebrity, say an actor, they are selling movies or shows where they play a character, so while they obviously show the good, they can be themselves to a large extent because everyone recognizes that the person isn't the role they play. Idols are selling themselves, they are the product, and every time you see them it is a planned and curated thing where they are presenting not just the good of themselves, but "X the idol", and while for some that might be pretty similar to their non-work identity, for others it is a pretty different identity altogether (I used the crimes, but it can be as simple as the idols who are sweet and shy to fans, then you hear rumors that they treat staff like shit, or bully their juniors, etc. etc. or just the ones where the personality they got assigned as their role in the group isn't who they are off-camera). I get that Jennie was saying " what I do with BP and how I was packaged feels like it isn't me and someday I'd like to be more of who I feel I really am", but in the broader scheme of things, what this points out is that any time you see an idol it's a conscious decision, and there is from pre-debut a plan for what image an idol will have and how they should present that.

While this is creepy, can we also recognize that these shows are all creepy when the girls are 18 and 19, etc. etc. It's not like when she turns 18 this whole schtick of having young women go on these shows and forcing them to flirt and receive creepy attention from these shitty old men (this is all of these shows btw) isn't awful. And if they are anything less than 100% simpering for the attention they get trashed for being "disrespectful" or "bitches".

I think the odds are pretty good they "dated" or are dating (what that means... anything from hooking up once to real GF/BF) based on neither company denying it, but man the "Evidence" outside of that picture is really reaching.... went to the same high end store in LA months apart, posted at the same general time of day? I mean if that's evidence, then like 90% of K-pop artists are dating each other. If they didn't think they were dating already, nobody would think that was evidence, it's just silly season out there now that the rumor wasn't denied.

Most interesting thing in there was an admission of something that's true of all idols... "it's a character" I like when idols are somewhat upfront about it that "you don't actually know me", it's a healthy way to look at things. Similar to IU a long time ago saying "I should just be a hobby for you". Of course, the company probably doesn't like that, they want you to think you're the idol's friend, and know them so well. It means you'll spend more money, also when they screw up you'll defend them. I mean look at the people who are still saying "he would never do that, I know him" about guys who plead guilty to crimes (or harrass the people who ACTUALLY know them for not supporting them).