#rookies

Here’s an understatement: things have changed in k-pop since the second-generation, including the status of the humble performance video. No longer supplementary, as groups have become increasingly focused on choreography, performance videos have now become part and parcel with music videos, with any good comeback involving the filming and release of both on their official YouTube channel. When it comes to b-sides or special singles, some groups are even forgoing the traditional music video altogether in favor of a performance version as evidenced by Kiss of Life’s “Te Quiero”, Billlie’s “Work” and RIIZE’s “Siren”.

Then there is rookie group AWU’s debut single, “Guess Who's Back”. The song’s performance video does double duty, serving at once as both their performance video as well as their music video.

There is an obvious cost-benefit analysis at work behind this decision as, especially for a group under a small single-act label which only opened its doors in 2024. Since these types of videos focus on the choreography they often work best with an empty space, one devoid of any of the non-sequitur props and artwork of what I had previously termed the "nugu aesthetic". By leaning into this element of choreograph videos, they avoid spending money on building sets, travelling to multiple locations, and outfit changes as they would with a traditional music video.

In the case of AWU’s debut song the performance video feels fitting. The song is about their literal return, with the group’s three members all previous members of the now defunct group PIXY, declaring in their chorus, "Guess who's back/Yeah, guess who's back (Back)/Oh yeah, we're back (Back)". As the three members rotate in and out of the center position, they are occasionally flanked by back-up dancers dressed in black who often fade into the background. This ensures that for the duration of the video the emphasis remains where it should be on the three members themselves, who are, so back.

May / YUHZ Debut: May 7, 2026 Debut Song: "Rush Rush"

Mnet’s Produce 101 franchise may not hold the distinction of being the first survival show or even originating the idea, but it does deserve credit (or blame) for sparking a boom in the format that continues apace to this day. Of course, there are some other players who helped make this reality. Risk-averse television companies who gravitate towards ideas that have already proven to work with audiences certainly helped. Then there was both economic and industry-wide shifts that changed the mechanics of how groups are formed, which made them useful to agencies who can no longer rely on a traditional standby pool of trainees. Indeed, according to the Korea Creative Content Agency's 2025 Pop Culture & Arts Industry Survey, only 4.7%, or 211 registered companies actually have trainees. The remaining agencies, lacking those same deep pockets, must source talent through alternative channels, like the survival show.

Paradoxically, it is the participants who do not win a survival show that likely hold the most interest for agencies. Unlike the winners who will be unavailable due to long-term contracts and promotional activities as members of the final group, other participants are often unaffiliated with agencies. Moreover, the survival show format allows them to showcase their skills and charm, much as they would in a traditional audition.

Not to mention, many of the survival show participants, in spite of their lack of formal association with agencies, are generally not new to the industry and usually have had some training. For example, of the 30 participants of the SBS show B:MY BOYZ, most of the participants had previous training with 12 of them having previously trained at least one k-pop academy including Joy Dance Music Academy, MUDOCTOR Academy, KPOP Art School. Among the eight members of the winning group YUHZ, half of the members had previously trained at an academy.

Without survival shows to play the middleman, academies still work as sources for potential new talent, given that those enrolled are already training and honing their skills for debut. Much as with the now-defunct Future Idol Asia project, some academies even maintain relationships with agencies, for recruitment purposes in a mutually beneficial setup. Agencies spend less money on finding and training talent, while academies gain a new marketing angle, as they can highlight their successful alumni to attract new students.

If there is a group that loses out in this shift, it is neither the agencies nor the academies but the idol hopefuls themselves. While under the old system, agencies took on the initial financial risk, and therefore were invested in a group succeeding, here the risk is placed completely on the aspirants, who have been conditioned to do anything to succeed. Furthermore, although theoretically this system improves on the break-even system, where an agency's cost of training is tied to an idol as "debt" to be paid back before they earned money, it does not eliminate it. Agencies still incur significant costs during the debut period as they ready a group, from the cost of music videos, styling, music production and living expenses which would likely still be passed onto idols themselves. Yet, because this pales in comparison to the previous scale of the investment agencies had to make, they may be far more likely to shelve or disband an underperforming act in favor of their more successful stars. This may keep their books looking good, but it does so at the expense of those idols' dreams.

June / B.YourSide Debut: June 29, 2026 Debut Song: "B.YourSide"

Survival shows have been an industry mainstay for over a decade, meaning that production companies and agencies have had to continually find new ways to rework a format that paradoxically works best when it sticks to its core formula. Add to that the industry's new emphasis on TikTok, with K-pop songs stretched and molded to fit short-form video, and a survival show that marries the two seems like the next frontier. No wonder then that over the past three years the industry has averaged one TikTok survival show annually: 2024's Time Turner, 2025's Stellar Sugar and Fan Pick 2, which aired earlier this year. Yet despite all three of these shows choosing winning contestants, only Fan Pick 2 has successfully debuted a group—the boy group B.YourSide.

Unlike a traditional survival show which functions as a weeks-long hype-generation machine slash focus group for the winning group, in the case of Fan Pick 2, producing a k-pop group appears to be beside the point. Instead, the purpose of the show seemed to be to funnel new users to the Twinkple app.[1]

Billing itself as a "global artist platform", Twinkple, in theory at least, is intended to be a one stop shop. In addition to advertising audition opportunities from entertainment agencies and production companies (including, at one point, SBS’ Universe Ticket) that can be applied to directly through the app users of the application can—or at least one point could—also engage in the following activities:

•Cover Dance Challenges. Periodically, the application invites users to film themselves dancing to a k-pop song, sometimes based on a theme. The winner is determined by other users who could “pick” their favorites.

•Twinkple Shop. The store sells (or at least sold) both merchandise, as well as dance and vocal lessons from the k-pop academy PinkM Academy and online dance lesson mentoring from former idol Dohee, a former member of the defunct girl group S2.

•Fan-Connect Projects. Similar to MakeStar, entertainment agencies and idols can set-up crowd-funding campaigns to fund both their activities and releases in exchange for perks including exclusive selfies and video calls. The boy group Xenex took this a step further, tying their music video budget to the amount pledged. If they achieved 100% of their goal, it would be a live clip; 200% would bump them up to a Performance Video; and at 500%, they would release a full “Cinematic MV.”

Although Fan Pick 2 streamed on TikTok Live, it lived on Twinkple. Interested participants auditioned for the show via the app’s Audition feature, submitting a video of themselves singing and dancing. Likewise, the voting procedure for the show was designed to favor the app, rather than remaining on TikTok. While technically viewers could literally buy votes via TikTok coins to exchange for gifts during their weekly streams, using the app was a better bang for your buck. Whereas coins cost real money and only yielded one point each, a single, free vote on the Twinkple app was worth a whopping 20,000 points.

The logic behind this design seemed to be that while voting could get people to download the app, their features would keep them there. Whether this worked initially is unclear, but by the time I downloaded the app last month, it was empty. Ghosts of past users still haunt the app, with the remains of their comments and dance challenge videos from 2022 still present. Despite its premise being partially predicated on offering the opportunity to connect fans and idols, with the former shaping the music and aesthetic of the latter, there is no mention of the winning group, B.YourSide, not even an offer to contribute financially in exchange for having input into their concept or title song. That just goes to prove my point though: that the show was never really about them.

Footnotes