#but most fans including myself think hybe forcibly disbanded them

[sanstropfremir]

Wait while we're talking about Hybe's business philosophy, something that has has been bothering me for ages is that period of time where hybe would acquire a company with fairly successful groups and then? those groups would disband? like i was only a casual nu'est enjoyer and am by no means a fan of gfriend but i've been struggling to find a reason. nu est was probably some sort of internal disagreement bc they at least had a final album, but it seems like gfriend were dropped like a hot potato. idk. firmly believe society is better bc of it tho! it just nags at me a lot and i was curious if you had any thoughts on it.

oh gfriend got canned bc they had a nazi scandal, so that one was deserved, but nu'est got nuked without warning like a month before their ten year anniversary + album. from the verbiage used by the guys when they've talked about it, it appears like hybe essentially didn't offer them a contract renewal as a group. the two guys who stayed with the company have extant commitments (minhyun i believe is on an acting contract/had some acting gigs lined up and baekho does a huge chunk of songwriting and producing and would probably lose all his copyrights if he left), but the other three had nothing to keep them there without the group. obvs we're probably not going to know actually what happened but the general consensus is that the members and perhaps even pledis staff got blindsided by the decision, because the guys were talking about their anniversary and looking forward to the future with the group at their winter concerts (if they had known they were disbanding on the anniversary we would have also known bc they're all criers) and there straight up was a bus ad campaign that ran in seoul until AFTER they had already disbanded? which why on EARTH would a company pay for a whole ass ad campaign if the group was about to die? there's also a theory that their last album was just meant to be a tenth anniversary cb with galaxy as the actual title track, bc it's much more in line with a tt from them, and again was meant to be the anniversary song bside. the guys are pretty close (mcing/going each other's fanmeetings, ren's guested on aron's podcast at least twice) and they fought like HELL to stay together as a group for the last ten years (they're literally the group that pioneered the survival show flop revival) so them disbanding was extremely out of left field. as for why hybe would have incentive to not renew them? nu'est have a fair amount of domestic popularity and a very stable and loyal fanbase BUT not a very large intl one and not one that was actively growing. they were quite large in japan as well, but they never hit big with a western audience and as we know, that's the only audience hybe cares about. plus, as ten year veteran idols and staples of the industry they would have likely had a lot of negotiating power during contract discussions. hybe probably knew that they wouldn't be able to beat them in line with their company vision if they stayed together so the easiest solution was to just disband them.