Author / Moe egg
Editor / Zhu Ting
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"I cried like when I first heard 'Growing Up Like This' on the day of the Suzhou Music Festival, and suddenly realized that even two months had passed since the festival, and they seemed to be really coming to an end."
At the end, they came forward in reverse order to give their graduation speeches, and everyone welcomed Liu Yu on the day of the formation of the group, and Liu Yu sent everyone away on the day of disbanding. I thought it was over, but everyone came back from the lifting stage and rushed towards him, and at that moment I was also very moved, and I also flashed the thought of 'it seems okay not to disband'. ”
"Put on the uniform again, sing the songs from the show, everyone dyed their colorful hair, and 11 people hugged together at the end of "A Group Photo Without Hugs", and finally realized the purple yao sea... It feels as if everything has just begun, but tomorrow it will disband, and "The Wind Rises" is sung again, but the wind on Sea Flower Island is about to stop. ”
Fans who were present at the scene conveyed their real-time feelings to KK overnight, and still had no real sense of the dissolution of INTO1.
Yesterday, in Shanghai, INTO1 completed its last concert before the break.
On April 24, tomorrow, the INTO1 two-year limit expires. After the final farewell live broadcast at 23:30, this group, which once opened a new pattern of the internal entertainment draft debut group, will officially disband.
At this point, the active regiment of internal entertainment has returned to zero.
Someone is broken, someone is reborn. The last active limited regiment of internal entertainment here was disbanded; On April 20, ZEROBASEONE next door officially debuted through "Boys Planet", starting a two-and-a-half-year limited career. Just two days ago, Mango TV's new variety show "Youth Π Plan" was officially announced, and the draft that had been suspended for two years seemed to be coming back.
About the dream of becoming an international team
Among all the limited combinations of creative series and domestic entertainment debuts, INTO1 is definitely a special existence.
Fan Cherry Hot Strip told KK, "When I first debuted, I felt that they would definitely become a world boy band, because there are many foreign members in this group, and they will hold many concerts and go to many countries. ”
This limited group, with nearly half of its foreign members, has been on the mission of opening up the international market since its debut.
Shortly after his debut, on the eve of the Tokyo Olympics, INTO1 released its first EP and won the status of Tencent's Tokyo Olympics Report applause ambassador as a group. At the same time, the overall concept of INTO1'S WONDERLAND's music project was also announced at the press conference, hoping to build a universe belonging to INTO1 through the next musical works.
Subsequently, in two years, INTO1 has completed four complete music albums "Eye of the Storm", "Thousands of Miles", "Sky Rush" and "Growing Up Like This", from the ocean, to the land to the sky, and ended with "Growing Up Like This".
In addition, "Echoes of Ancient Shu" (focusing on the story of Sanxingdui cultural relics linked to traditional culture), "Dian Jing" (focusing on lion dance culture), and the collective interpretation of the Winter Olympic and Paralympic song "New Era Winter Olympics" have all become the face of the international group.
So, is the build of INTO1'SWONDERLAND complete?
KK feels that the horizontal comparison of the domestic regiment, from the concept of the planning to the production level and quality, is quite good, but the story has not yet unfolded, and it is already time to write the ending.
In this regard, most of the interviewed fans also agreed. Pineapple Bun told KK, "The quality and level of each album I feel respected as a fan of the group. But I will also be very envious of the previous senior brothers and sisters who have sung OST in movies and TV series, and some have become hits. ”
When KK asked them: What do you think is the most regrettable about two years? Everyone will unanimously mention the "big group".
R1SE has "Autumn of Eleven Boys", Rocket Girl 101 has "Rampage Twenty", Hard Candy Girl 303 has "Sister's Martial Arts Hall", and INTO1 is "N Ways to Open INTO1" that is inferior to the former in terms of duration and planning.
"Usually there are some materials, but the duration is very short, the update is not timely, whether it is event planning or peripheral sales, there are often mistakes, there are not many opportunities on the stage in the past two years, and there are not many opportunities for all members to go on variety shows together, so everyone will always want a big ensemble that belongs to us and them." Xiao in said that when they were together, it was very lively, and it also made me feel that I was not lonely when I looked at them.
According to kk statistics, there are only 4 variety shows jointly recorded by INTO1, and half of the participants in "Battle to the Top" are barely included, and like the dilemma of all limited groups, it is already a hard-won victory for a show to gather half of the people.
Two years later, INTO1's dream of becoming a world boy band has folded under the general environment and various influences, and the concert has not been able to open many times, most of which still meet online.
But fortunately, it is close to disbanding, and has held fan meetings in Japan and Thailand, as well as Mei Ben's two farewell concerts, compared to the quiet dissolution of the senior sister group Hard Candy Girl 303, unfortunately, it can be a little less.
The wind on Sea Flower Island stopped
After the disbandment, the first Weibo content of the members was to help Zhou Keyu realize his dream.
Time flashed back to the night of the group, at that time, the first interview question was: the first hot search term they wanted to on, Zhou Keyu replied #INTO1 group soul#, two years later, this dream finally came true two days before it was disbanded.
On stage, they watched silently as the INTO1 prefix disappeared inch by inch; Off stage, fans painted a beautiful vision of SOLO's activities after graduation.
Since the official announcement of the disbandment, from group tickets to lights to divisions, fans come and go and do not give in to each other.
But on the matter of questioning the graduation concert tickets, a quick agreement was reached. After the first performance, #Wow Haw Wow Empty Seat # Climbed to the top of the hot search. Immediately, the 12 support clubs issued a joint statement for the first time: publicly questioning the ticket issuance rate, internal reselling and ticket locking of the graduation concert;
Before the start of the second performance, the 11 members jointly called on fans not to wear light signs, and after the end, some fans asked the company to explain the difference between the length of the first and second performances... The flower work took off, and the internal entertainment seemed to come alive again.
Since ancient times, the relationship between fans and agencies has mostly been about love and killing each other, and the group is even more so. For most fans, the time of the "brothers" at INTO1 was a journey that was not very satisfactory, and they all seemed to be looking forward to an early end and a better personal future.
But if you leave, is there really a bright future waiting for you? KK remains skeptical.
Looking at the individual development after the dissolution of the limited group of internal entertainment in the past, there are very few stories that can really rely on individuals to firmly sit on the head. So far, there are only a few people who can still stand firmly on the top of the mountain, counting and counting, and it seems that only Cai Xukun, Fan Chengcheng and so on.
However, there is indeed a very clear polarization between the members of INTO1 during the formation of the group, but this seems to be a common problem for all groups.
In terms of fashion resources, at present, the team's overall single-person cover record of domestic magazines is 0, and only Liu Yu's four results on the cover of first-line magazines are still good. At Paris Fashion Week some time ago, Liu Yu was invited by the brand Xia Zichen and Yin Haoyu was invited by the brand BALMAIN to watch the show, becoming the first wave of members of the team to go to Paris to watch the show after the release.
From the endorsement data, Liu Yu ranked first in the team with 22 brand endorsements, Mika ranked second with 13, and Zhou Keyu ranked third with 11. Most of the categories endorsed are makeup, FMCG, and food brands, and the forms are mainly ambassadors and product experience officers with short-term cooperation for three months, and basically do not involve high-luxury brands or high-end categories of brands.
Group endorsements, in the words of fan Momo, "either snacks or unaffordable Longines watches", involve a fairly limited category and quantity.
Referring to the results of the original draft limited group NINE PERCENT that year with 20+ brand endorsement cooperation per capita, and the results of the basic per capita publication, only half of the people in the INTO1 team can really get brand recognition.
This is also inextricably linked to the overall audience of fans. The ability of fans to pay for their dreams determines idou's bargaining space in front of the brand. In a sample of more than 10 randomly selected by KK, more than half were college students with relatively weak purchasing power at present.
To some extent, the side proves that when the group was first formed, Wa Haw Wow hoped to break the barrier of "500 draft fans on the whole network" through INTO1. In essence, the business of INTO1 is still the attention and carnival of niche circles.
Most of the problems encountered by the internal entertainment limited group are similar. The struggle between the native company and the operating company, how to coordinate the distribution between group time, business resources and individuals... These old questions are still straddling INTO1, coupled with the large number of foreign members of the group, and the differences in culture, time and geography have further aggravated the contradictions between fans and fans and companies.
Some problems, even after four generations of the Genesis Draft, have never been completely solved, and members will also face a new round of problems after returning to the original company or setting up their own studios.
After losing the advantage and aura of the limited group's identity, whether they can really embark on the path of solo as they wish, for each member, the answer is unclear. They may also face a more brutal environment and faster iterations.
After all, although the wind on Sea Flower Island has stopped, the wind in the entertainment industry has never stopped.
The soil that pursues profit cannot grow flowers that pursue dreams
As KK who experienced the first generation of shooting, and later looked at the draft, I felt that they were lucky and unlucky. The first person to eat crabs can eat dividends, and later in the story, many pure things quietly disappear.
Compared with the operation of the peach group, the operation of the founding group, and the accumulated experience of generation after generation, the right to speak is obviously many times more than the "idol" of the idol-century and later "idol-xx" who changed soup without changing medicine.
Whether it is from the overall planning and operation direction of the group, it is far more than the peach group in the same period, if you are a person who loves to engage in groups, in domestic entertainment, the founding group must be the first choice.
But why is it that even if the draft has gone through four generations of peach and four generations of creation, internal entertainment still can't be a group that the public is satisfied with?
In the final analysis, the problem lies in the imperfection of the idol-cultivation mechanism and the imperfection of the idol-operated system.
The reason why Tencent wants to build an international group is to make the talent show of the "Creation Camp" series stand out from the crowd of homogeneous shows, and the inner calculation is that if the ancestral tomb smokes green one day, it may be possible to hit a BTS and BLACKPINK.
But they ignored, or avoided, that South Korea's international combination is based on a mature trainee training system. The members can debut first because of their excellent strength, and then they have a tacit understanding of many years of joint training.
Even the random combination of drafts is essentially selected for trainees who have been systematically trained under the unified system. Based on a long enough practice cycle, the running-in cycle between each other is much lower than that in China, and the vast majority of activity time within the limited period is effective time.
And our idols selection mechanism completely reverses the order, focusing on a first debut.
After the debut, personality, cultural differences, etc. of players with different levels are put in the debut, most of the time presents basic problems such as strength, tacit understanding, and running-in that the Korean group has already solved during the trainee period, and compresses the effective activity time after forming the group to a minimum, which is no different from cultivating from scratch.
Unfortunately, if the order is wrong, everything is completely wrong.
On the other hand, I have to say that the money of internal entertainment is still easy to earn.
The threshold for debut, which is not too high, makes the matter of fame a not very difficult thing in the eyes of many artists and companies. For the purpose of pursuing profits, everyone thinks more about their own interests, naturally, dreams become less important, coupled with the influence of the public opinion environment, the already difficult environment, even worse.
Even if the draft is about to come back in a different form, we don't know if these problems that always have to be solved can be solved in the end, we can only wait and see. But in the future, it is still recommended that everyone not easily engage in internal entertainment, and the pain of uprooting a small sapling that has just emerged from the seed not long ago, only those who have really experienced it will understand.
The interviewees are pseudonyms, thank you for your support and sharing;
Source: INTO1 official blog, photo provided by interviewee, Weibo, invasion and deletion.