How did Starship manage to snatch Wonyoung? (1 Viewer)

[Moguri]

Its something I always wondered about. Even during IZ*One days when I did not follow the group (I always stay away from temporary groups), Wonyoung really stood out to me.

Disclaimer for the following text: I did not know much about Starship at that time, as I'm not very well informed on many topics, please keep that in mind when reading
So when I learned she is from Starship and has to go back to that company after IZ*One, I always thought: wow what a big waste for such a charismatic and beautiful young idol to go to some random company, where she will be wasted away and end up like many of the other produce successor groups. I remember being really dissapointed, that I will never have the opportunity to stan a group she is in.

Well obviously this turned out very differently and I'm sure IVE will eclipse the already incredible success IZ*One was and even if my assessment of Starship was ill informed, I think no one could have seen this coming. To me this verifies that Wonyoungs starpower (as JYP likes to call it), is truely on another level. Her entire career so far feels like the story arc of a movie, a story about a chosen one, the one true princess.

But to get back to the original point of the thread.. how did Starship manage to sign her in the first place, or to put it differently: how did the scouts of the big 3 labels fail to notice her? It has to be single greatest scouting failure for any company that is not starship. I feel like based on how everything usually goes, she should have ended up in SM, or at least one of the other big 3. (I'm excluding HYBE, as they were not so big yet back in 2015/16 or whenever this happend)

In hindsight I'm very glad she did not end up in another label, but I still always wonder about how things went down.

 

[Ahsoka]

I’m not sure when this all went down, but YG for one was kinda imploding at some point, SM idk but there’s a lot of competition for SM anyways, for all we know she didn’t want to sign because of that. JYP maybe, I don’t know if they were necessarily looking hard for female trainees with Itzys debut to scheduled likely, though ig maybe they were if it was early as you think. I also don’t know much about Wonyoung, what her skills are like, I’ve only heard about visuals, so that might play a role too. I wouldn’t know. But anyways there’s a lot to consider, it’s not always as straightforward as good trainee=big 3, mediocre trainee=everyone else.

 

[Moguri]

I’m not sure when this all went down, but YG for one was kinda imploding at some point, SM idk but there’s a lot of competition for SM anyways, for all we know she didn’t want to sign because of that. JYP maybe, I don’t know if they were necessarily looking hard for female trainees with Itzys debut to scheduled likely, though ig maybe they were if it was early as you think. I also don’t know much about Wonyoung, what her skills are like, I’ve only heard about visuals, so that might play a role too. I wouldn’t know. But anyways there’s a lot to consider, it’s not always as straightforward as good trainee=big 3, mediocre trainee=everyone else.

Burning sun was 2018 I think, so YG should have still been fine around that time when Wony was scouted
I think JYP is always looking for female trainees, they seem to debut a new group every 3-4 years. I think its unlikely she could debut with Itzy, but she would have fit right in with NMIXX (agewise at least)

oh and sure you are right ofc, especially with young trainees you never know how they develop or if they even stay interested in following that path. Some trainees with high expectations might not do well, while others with lower expectations might turn out to be great. But like I tried to point out in the first point, I just feel like Wony was always special and I would have to assume that starship always knew this, at least from the moment when she won her produce show right away as first place, when she was just 13-14.

 

[Abeamus]

Every company has a certain style they look for and some idols that are popular now were turned away by the big companies with the most famous one being JYP turning away IU so chances are if any of them knew about Wonyoung they probably just didn't see her fitting the vision they had for their upcoming groups.

 

[Moguri]

Every company has a certain style they look for and some idols that are popular now were turned away by the big companies with the most famous one being JYP turning away IU so chances are if any of them knew about Wonyoung they probably just didn't see her fitting the vision they had for their upcoming groups.

Based on how JYP managed most of their solo artists, I guess in the end we can all be glad they made this big blunder.. but yeah the potential of having IU and Twice at the same time would have elevated JYP to another level if they managed to pull it off
I would think they most likely did not know about her, but I would be really interested to know if its otherwise and how she was assessed

 

[Abeamus]

Based on how JYP managed most of their solo artists, I guess in the end we can all be glad they made this big blunder.. but yeah the potential of having IU and Twice at the same time would have elevated JYP to another level if they managed to pull it off
I would think they most likely did not know about her, but I would be really interested to know if its otherwise and how she was assessed

There's also a clip of JYP evaluating Yuju as a trainee with another judge and he denies her saying her voice is plain while the other judge was like "I thought she was good" and given the fact she's known for her singing now that's another wild assessment.

I don't know when exactly Wonyoung became a trainee but googling it says she has been under Starship since 2017 at least and with SMs next group being aespa who were all of age when they debuted probably would've ruled Wonyoung out anyway and YGs new girl group still hasn't debuted as it is so doubt she would've stuck around and that really only leaves JYP to take her on since even Big Hit they only started looking after the merge with Source Music in 2019 so Wonyoung was already signed to Starship then.

 

[Moguri]

There's also a clip of JYP evaluating Yuju as a trainee with another judge and he denies her saying her voice is plain while the other judge was like "I thought she was good" and given the fact she's known for her singing now that's another wild assessment.

I don't know when exactly Wonyoung became a trainee but googling it says she has been under Starship since 2017 at least and with SMs next group being aespa who were all of age when they debuted probably would've ruled Wonyoung out anyway and YGs new girl group still hasn't debuted as it is so doubt she would've stuck around and that really only leaves JYP to take her on since even Big Hit they only started looking after the merge with Source Music in 2019 so Wonyoung was already signed to Starship then.

he certainly made some very bad calls but to be fair to JYP, probably most people in that position have done a lot of stupid assesments. I think also for most western stars, there are stories how they were send away by some of the major labels

yeah it has to be 2016 or 2017, as IZ*One already debuted in 2018 and she was a trainee for only a year and a few month. Age wise she would fit for Baby Monster and she would not have taken part in produce as a YG trainee probably and have a lot less hype now, so she may have stuck around.

 

[Ahsoka]

Based on how JYP managed most of their solo artists, I guess in the end we can all be glad they made this big blunder.. but yeah the potential of having IU and Twice at the same time would have elevated JYP to another level if they managed to pull it off
I would think they most likely did not know about her, but I would be really interested to know if its otherwise and how she was assessed

I think IU auditioned many times for JYP
But for JYP himself to make mistakes out of thousands of trainees who audition it would be kind of weird if he didn’t make mistakes. Plus it sounds like with the IU case at least he wasn’t the specific one who rejected her

 

[Myth]

Was starship that random? I know Monsta X only kept getting bigger and bigger and I think that would be a time where they were starting to get lots of global recognition in 2017-2018 since they did their second world tour in 2018, which is the year produce 48 aired. And that tour had stops in Asia, Europe, America, SA. And they had some good success in Japan as well.

On the girl group end, sistar was incredibly hot and successful when they were active, and had a handful of hit songs under their belts.

Sure, this might not be as big as big 3 groups, and the stuff they are doing now surpasses their achievements from back then, but personally if I were a young trainee looking for a good company, starship wouldn't be a bad pick by any means. At the time, they did have some favorable things in their track record. And I definitely think ss built themselves up and had good industry connections and all that fun stuff by that point.

 

[Moguri]

Was starship that random? I know Monsta X only kept getting bigger and bigger and I think that would be a time where they were starting to get lots of global recognition in 2017-2018 since they did their second world tour in 2018, which is the year produce 48 aired. And that tour had stops in Asia, Europe, America, SA. And they had some good success in Japan as well.

On the girl group end, sistar was incredibly hot and successful when they were active, and had a handful of hit songs under their belts.

Sure, this might not be as big as big 3 groups, and the stuff they are doing now surpasses their achievements from back then, but personally if I were a young trainee looking for a good company, starship wouldn't be a bad pick by any means. At the time, they did have some favorable things in their track record. And I definitely think ss built themselves up and had good industry connections and all that fun stuff by that point.

I hope you saw my disclaimer regarding Starship

It is possible Wony saw it like you describe it too and in hindsight ofc everything makes perfect sense.

I just thought at the time when she actually made the decision, it seemed less safe then joining a big 3 label. From what I can gahter online, it seems she was randomly approached by a starship scout when she was attending some school ceremony or so. So maybe she just signed without ever talking to other agencies or even considering an idol career beforehand.

I think its always intersting how seemingly random events can have such big implications.

 

[izcream]

starship really hit it big with wonyoung fr even without much training, she managed to capture the hearts of all the national producers on produce 48 and debut as the center of iz*one

 

[Abeamus]

he certainly made some very bad calls but to be fair to JYP, probably most people in that position have done a lot of stupid assesments. I think also for most western stars, there are stories how they were send away by some of the major labels

yeah it has to be 2016 or 2017, as IZ*One already debuted in 2018 and she was a trainee for only a year and a few month. Age wise she would fit for Baby Monster and she would not have taken part in produce as a YG trainee probably and have a lot less hype now, so she may have stuck around.

Oh it's gonna happen unfortunately especially in an industry so visually motivated like Kpop which I think you can link as the reason a lot of vocalists got denied by other companies as Seunghee from Oh My Girl as well had been in multiple auditions to the point WM was gonna be her last.

Age wise yes but 6 years is a while to stick around although not the longest of course with some sticking around 10 or more however when it comes to lengths like this people will worry about their position and if another good opportunity arises may take it instead.

 

[Abeamus]

Was starship that random? I know Monsta X only kept getting bigger and bigger and I think that would be a time where they were starting to get lots of global recognition in 2017-2018 since they did their second world tour in 2018, which is the year produce 48 aired. And that tour had stops in Asia, Europe, America, SA. And they had some good success in Japan as well.

On the girl group end, sistar was incredibly hot and successful when they were active, and had a handful of hit songs under their belts.

Sure, this might not be as big as big 3 groups, and the stuff they are doing now surpasses their achievements from back then, but personally if I were a young trainee looking for a good company, starship wouldn't be a bad pick by any means. At the time, they did have some favorable things in their track record. And I definitely think ss built themselves up and had good industry connections and all that fun stuff by that point.

Starship has a good track record when you think that all of their groups are fairly successful from Sistar to Monsta X to WJSN to Cravity to Ive with the boy groups being more album successful and the girl groups all have good to decent digitals.

Starship might not have the metrics to be considered a big company but they're basically the first company you should be putting after them and their roster is entirely self made and the only group they had that never really caught on was Boyfriend.

 

[Moguri]

starship really hit it big with wonyoung fr even without much training, she managed to capture the hearts of all the national producers on produce 48 and debut as the center of iz*one

yay, I'm glad you also see it like that!

And it was only the beginning

 

[Moguri]

Oh it's gonna happen unfortunately especially in an industry so visually motivated like Kpop which I think you can link as the reason a lot of vocalists got denied by other companies as Seunghee from Oh My Girl as well had been in multiple auditions to the point WM was gonna be her last.

Age wise yes but 6 years is a while to stick around although not the longest of course with some sticking around 10 or more however when it comes to lengths like this people will worry about their position and if another good opportunity arises may take it instead.

oh yes.. I understand the importance of visuals in kpop and fitting to this thread, this is ofc also where Wonyoung stands out the most

6 years is long right, I just thought if she ended up in YG and would train there, she might not know how beloved her visuals would be by the public, as she never gets exposed to it like it happend in reality. So maybe she would just stay put and think its how it has to be.. I would assume thats what many of the current YG trainees do to