The kpop industry is a very big and powerful entity, it shook the world in the past decade unlike any other music industry in the past years. With that said, I’ve wanted to bring attention to the unfair treatment of the rising group Loona (이달의 소녀) coming from the entertainment company named Blockberry Creative (블록베리 크리에이티브). They’ve been active individually since October 2016, then as a group since August 2018, and their timeline as a group has been not so free of controversy regarding their company’s treatment towards their idols. They’ve been keeping the girls “hidden from social media presence” since debut and have limited their abilities to promote themselves unless it had been company-issued. Their subunit YYXY had been denied a repackage album whilst the other two subunits had recorded and promoted both versions of their albums (debut and repackage). The latest proof of their ignorance was the removal of three members from an advertisement that used to hold all twelve members for unknown reasons. The members themselves took the opportunity to let out information about the way they’ve been mistreated, including them being starved for promotions, member Olivia Hye being overworked in the short span of her solo debut to subunit debut and then group debut. Their previous producer, Jaden Jeong, had deleted their next album and left the company after teasing a new comeback in 2019, which was sadly delayed to early 2020. The girls don’t have access to social media and they don’t have the creative freedom to write their own songs (member Jinsoul not being able to release or include her own work into future releases), to post song covers of any type unless company-issued, and overall their promotion of the group is very limited to non-existent.

If the budget is the problem, there are multiple ways that their budget could skyrocket.

1. Reprinting old albums that are practically unobtainable because of their small number of prints - the fans would much rather give the company/group the money they quite deserve rather than buying from resellers who rip them off.

2. Selling merch worldwide - pretty self-explanatory, the fans would love to have official memorabilia rather than giving money to some other company printing copyrighted goods.

3. Opening a patreon - if the company is in need of support, loyal fans with extra money they don’t really need can step up and put it to good use for something they enjoy.

4. Paid live-streams, concert DVDs, other forms of good that may come in handy for them to expand their budget and broaden the group’s influence on the industry.

And at last, here I come to the idea of another entertainment company taking over from Blockberry Creative, and I suggest Happyface Entertainment as a very good competitor in such a race.

Happyface Entertainment (해피페이스 엔터테인먼트) had quite the success with its first girl group Dal Shabet, but their latest success is definitely due to their second girl group, Dreamcatcher. The company has shown countless times how supportive they are of their artists and they’ve given almost absolute freedom to their idols to be creative, promote themselves and enjoy their idol life. They’ve taken legal action against another company over mistreatments towards their members and they’ve been an all-around very positive company that seems to care very much about their image and the state of their idols.

My take here is, although quite wild, HFE could be a much better host for the sweet members of Loona than what BBC had unfortunately been, up to this day. I believe they would be able to conjure a good enough budget to support the twelve girls while also making money due to the freedom and creativity they would be in hold of. I hope you consider this idea too, as a fan of Loona, as a fan of Dreamcatcher, or just as somebody who believes public figures deserve to be treated as humans too, especially if they’ve been positively affecting the industry for many years.

Thank you for your time and consideration, best regards to both companies and groups involved.