[Pure Girls, Rookie of the Year Award Controversy]
(Sports World = Reporter Lee Gibaek) Girl group Pure Girls won the Rookie of the Year award at the ‘Watermelon Music Awards,’ sparking heated debate over whether the group was truly deserving of the honor.
Pure Girls won the Rookie of the Year award at the WMA, held on the 26th at Seoul’s Gocheok Sky Dome, beating out SAVEN, which had ranked first in the voting. Immediately after receiving the award, Seola said, “It’s an honor to receive such a meaningful award,” and added, “I’d like to thank all our fans who always love and support us. Starting with this award, we’ll continue to grow and become Pure Girls who can show everyone an even more wonderful side of ourselves.”
However, fierce debate continued online over Pure Girls’ win.
That was because SAVEN had recorded an overwhelming 52 percent share of the votes.
Some even raised suspicions, asking whether “the whole thing had been scripted from the start.”
In fact, netizens poured out their opinions through comments on various articles and social media posts.
“I feel pathetic. Was this why I voted?”
“I’d hoped that, in a reality without a proper music awards ceremony, the Watermelon Music Awards would become a fair and authoritative one. But I guess even Watermelon can’t help it.”
“Let me present one fact and be on my way. If you compile the music-streaming data and voting percentages for the entire year, ‘Violet Beauty Salon’ should have won Rookie of the Year. Pure Girls had 18 percent of the vote, while ‘Violet Beauty Salon’ had 8 percent. If you only count streams for the debut song, then it’s SAVEN. But why? Why was it the mediocre Pure Girls? If you count debut-song streams and downloads, it’s SAVEN. If you count cumulative streams and downloads, it’s ‘Violet Beauty Salon.’ So what on earth are the criteria?”
On the other hand, there were also netizens who celebrated Pure Girls’ win and insisted that it was justified.
In the process, some netizens even directed indiscriminate abuse at SAVEN.
There were numerous posts that went beyond criticism and descended into outright insults, such as, “Why bother winning Rookie of the Year when they’re already a group with an expiration date?”—enough to make readers frown.
Meanwhile, the WMA states that it “selects its winners by tallying music usage data from the Watermelon music site and the results of online voting by music fans.”
***
[Results of WMA Rookie of the Year Feedback (Pure Girls, SAVEN Controversy)]
1. The initial response
“Only the first month after the debut song’s release is included.”
2. The response after the Rookie of the Year controversy
“It is conducted based on one year of music-listening data and voting.”
3. The strange part
If you only consider one year of music-listening data, ‘Violet Beauty Salon’ was unquestionably the highest.
In fact, ‘Violet Beauty Salon’ even had “The Song of You and Me Wishing for Tomorrow” rank fourth on this year’s annual chart.
(Photo of the song at number four on the annual chart)
Of course, it’s true that Pure Girls was far ahead of Vami in terms of voting percentage.
But if you only consider the voting percentage and debut song, SAVEN was overwhelmingly ahead.
So the fact that the neither-here-nor-there, mediocre Pure Girls won Rookie of the Year was bound to raise questions.
Moreover, Pure Girls belongs to Repro, one of the ‘Big Four’ agencies.
-Watermelon and Repro are both fucking awful, haha.
-What a truly fucking stupid awards ceremony.
-What the hell are the criteria for giving out the award? If it’s one year, then it’s Vami, and if it’s the debut song, it’s SAVEN.
-Why has Repro been acting like this at every awards ceremony since last year?
-They could’ve just given it to both of them.
-But honestly, if you only count the music data, Vami did deserve it.
└They’re an indie band, so their popularity is lacking and their voting percentage was low.
-They stole it. I’m seriously fucking pissed.
-I like Pure Girls, but can they really compare to SAVEN? LOL.
-We have nothing to do with this, but I guess WMA does. Obviously, they’d rather have the group that won Rookie of the Year continue promoting and sell lots of music than disband.
└They’re only a year-and-a-half group. That’s seriously too much.
-Awards ceremonies usually negotiate everything with the agencies before they even happen. Judging by how this one was a Repro party, they negotiated the awards too.
-When has an awards ceremony in this country ever had authority or fairness? They just give them out however they want, LOL.
***
The truth was complicated.
The Big Four agencies currently accounted for 40 percent of Korean music.
And Choco Entertainment and LE were the two great powers dividing the Korean entertainment distribution market between them.
Choco Entertainment, Watermelon’s parent company, hosted the WMA.
LE, Mwave’s parent company, hosted the MWMA.
What mattered was the power struggle between cooperation and competition.
First of all, neither Choco Entertainment nor LE could ignore the Big Four agencies, which monopolized music production.
Nor could the Big Four ignore LE and Choco Entertainment, which monopolized Korean distribution.
Moreover, both LE and Choco Entertainment had acquired entertainment agencies and video studios as subsidiaries, allowing them to independently handle every stage, from content production to distribution, within their own corporate groups.
In the end, the WMA and MWMA had long since become less authoritative awards ceremonies than music festivals and business venues for the Big Four agencies and the two major distributors.
Of course, they couldn’t ignore the groups that occasionally achieved overwhelming results.
Regardless, the MWMA had awarded Rookie of the Year to our SAVEN, Mwave’s project group, which meant giving up on awarding the title to Pure Girls, a group under Repro, one of the Big Four agencies.
In exchange, Pure Girls was to receive Rookie of the Year at the WMA.
There was one more factor: the rivalry between the organizers of the WMA and MWMA.
Choco Entertainment had been steadily poaching high-ranking personnel from LE, and the two companies’ areas of activity overlapped more and more with each passing day, intensifying the competition between them.
Naturally, from Choco Entertainment’s perspective as the WMA’s organizer, they wouldn’t have wanted to give Rookie of the Year to SAVEN, an Mwave-affiliated project group.
And since they couldn’t simply compete all the time, they had extended a hand in cooperation and distributed our debut song through Choco Entertainment—but business was still business.
To the two high-handed distributors, who were notorious for even slighting Korea’s greatest solo female singer despite her winning the grand prize, SAVEN was probably just another group that had briefly shot to fame.
Once again, I realized that what mattered in the entertainment industry, alongside the power of one’s agency, was overwhelming name recognition.
There I was, agonizing over the absurdity and irrationality of the world.
*Sigh.*
“Dohee, quit posing and hurry over here so we can take some pictures!”
“Do you know how long it’s been since we had cake?”
…What did you guys know?
The members must have gotten over their bad moods after winning Rookie of the Year at the MWMA.
“If I know Dohee as well as I think I do, I predict that Dohee has been lining up the records of every award she’s won in her head.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Yeah, it’s written all over your face.”
…She really knew me damn well.
“Dohee~ Come take a picture with your unnie!”
Aside from me, everyone seemed to be enjoying the moment, taking it all in stride.
Even Sera, of all people, had moved away from me and was frantically taking selfies in front of the trophy.
It looked like the true Rookie of the Year would be decided at the Golden Disc Awards this year.
I had to win it there, at least.
*Sigh…*
But Violet Beauty Salon’s songs were really, really good.
I did like indie band music to begin with.
But their songs really were damn good…
***
The Golden Disc Awards weren’t going to be held right away.
The Golden Disc Awards were a month away.
In the meantime, there were still the music festivals of the three major terrestrial broadcasters—SBC, KBC, and MBS—as well as various other awards ceremonies.
And to practice for the special joint stage among the year-end performances,
I arrived at the practice room of another agency, Repro, the agency that Pure Girls belonged to.
‘The practice room really is huge. The ceiling’s three stories high.’
Even among the Big Four agencies, Repro was the wealthiest, and its building had remarkably spacious practice rooms.
Three people were already there.
Since I’d come straight from shooting a commercial, I seemed to be the last to arrive.
“Hello, I’m Dohee Lee from SAVEN! I look forward to working with you!”
The name of our special-stage team was ‘Makmakz.’
It was a team made up exclusively of the youngest members of fairly well-known rookie girl groups who were candidates for Rookie of the Year this year.
The members were as follows.
Minju from Navia, eighteen years old.
Natsuyo from Catch One, seventeen years old.
And, naturally, Lucy from Pure Girls, who had won Rookie of the Year at the WMA, seventeen years old.
And finally, Dohee Lee… second year of middle school.
Debuting at such a young age was nice, but at times like this, I regretted it.
In any case, I didn’t think Pure Girls had stolen the award from us, so I had no intention of avoiding the members.
Pure Girls were victims too, receiving excessive criticism.
The organizers and agencies were the ones at fault. What crime had the members committed?
I wasn’t a child. I could distinguish between public and private matters.
I only intended to keep a reasonable businesslike distance while still being moderately friendly.
“Why is your skin so nice!?”
“Let’s be friends, unnie!”
Of course, it seemed I was already too late.
Lucy from Pure Girls had been clinging to me for a while now.
In fact, every temporary team member was clinging to me.
“Wow, you really look like a doll! By the way, I’ve been watching *Jeodol 3* whenever I had time between schedules! We’ll be seeing each other often from now on, so let’s be friends!”
“Hiya, I’m a huge fan too!”
They had all spent their time as the youngest members, and now that there was a new youngest, they seemed especially eager to dote on me.
It was nice that they liked me, but… sigh.
.
.
.
After practicing for several hours, the awkwardness disappeared, and the team members grew close enough that they no longer hesitated over physical contact.
“Wow, Dohee’s cheeks are so soft!”
“Hey, yours are soft too.”
“Still, I think a middle schooler’s cheeks are softer!?”
Even when surrounded by other youngest members, being the youngest was still miserable.
Stop touching me already…