Just to clarify the post title: I don’t mean the music. Obviously the TBL artists aren’t extremely different sonically or conceptually from their YGE predecessors, which isn’t surprising considering Teddy’s involvement as a producer. I’m referring to the way TBL manage and promote their groups.
YGE groups have one thing in common: their focus on live performances and touring, no matter how big or small the act is, their priority will be the concerts. It’s even more prominent among their most popular groups: BigBang reunited for the first time in a decade, released one song and immediately went on a massive world tour. Blackpink’s newest EP literally happened AFTER their tour had concluded. YGE may sacrifice the comeback promotions, but they rarely (if ever) sacrifice the tours. And that’s how they maintain their fandoms, despite the more infrequent releases and less traditional promotions compared to their peers from other labels.
MEOVV and BabyMonster debuted in the same year, but even with the upcoming comeback MEOVV’s discography will still be only half of Baemon’s (who aren’t even necessarily pumping out music). And BabyMonster are already on their fourth tour. Izna debuted after MEOVV and are produced by TBL, but even they had fanmeetings last year and have done concerts this year. ILLIT, Hearts2Hearts, tripleS all have held fanmeetings or concerts as well.
It’s great that they get to attend the fashion shows and open their personal Instagram pages, but I do think that the TBL management style has severely slowed down their momentum. MEOVV legitimately have talent, visuals, resources to be more successful, but it doesn’t feel like TBL have ever been ambitious enough to seize those opportunities.
Converting a decent chuck of Blackpink and other YGE groups’ fans should’ve been pretty straightforward, but in my opinion they really underachieved in that regard, partially because of their approach towards live performing (which is the bread and butter of 4 generations of YGE artists). Zero fanmeetings or concerts in two years, frequently relying on a backtrack, focus on the complicated choreographies have really limited their ability to grow their fanbase.
It honestly seems like TBL as a company have inherited a lot of YGE cons, but not a lot of their pros, which is especially frustrating since I do genuinely believe that just personnel wise MEOVV have everything they need to become one of the top girl groups. Singing, rapping, dancing, visuals, member chemistry, variety, fluent foreign language speakers etc. I’m not saying that they excel in every aspect, but they don’t really have a glaring weakness either, TBL are just not good at managing them.
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