K-Pop agency holds global auditions for girl group

AAs K-pop increasingly looks beyond South Korea for its next generation of idols, one of the genre’s top entertainment agencies is holding its first global audition with the aim of putting together a new girl group.

SM Entertainment – ​​the company behind some of K-pop’s most successful bands, including Super Junior, Girls’ Generation, Shinee, NCT and Aespa – is opening auditions to girls of any nationality who were born between 2005 and 2011. (Those under the age of 14 will need parental consent.) SM Entertainment also shared posts in multiple languages ​​for its application It is audition tape requirements.

Registration is open until June 22, after which a select few will be invited to in-person auditions.

SM Entertainment held annual global auditions for more than 10 years, but this is the first time they have been held specifically for a new girl group. In 2021, in the same way opened auditions for a male group. SM Entertainment said it would four new groups debut this year, including a British K-pop boy band and a virtual artist.

Last month, Big Hit, the company behind BTS, announced your own global audition for a new boy group. And YG Entertainment, which gave rise to Blackpink, has been holding idol auditions all over the world since March, from China to Australia, from Indonesia to the USA.

After passing the auditions, aspiring K-pop stars often spend several years as trainees – some may even take more than 10 years– before they debuted as idols. Behind the glamor of stardom, however, is the grueling pressure of staying in an industry known for producing pop stars with more efficiency than empathy. A whopping 63 K-pop groups debuted last year; Meanwhile, celebrities have become increasingly vocal about the growing mental health challenges in the industry.

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But such concerns haven’t dampened young people’s dreams of breaking into the “Hallyu-wood,” with the proliferation of boot camps and schools aimed at helping young K-pop hopefuls, no matter where they come from, break into the industry.