So You Wanna Be a K-pop Star? Check These Audition Red Flags First to Avoid Being Scammed
Becoming a K-pop idol is going to be difficult, but fraudulent agencies make it much harder to accomplish that goal. How can you stop getting scammed, given that there are several fraudulent agencies out there?
YouTuber Evangeline Pang, known as Ploopy678, deliberately auditioned for dubious "companies" and found out what separates a scam firm from a legitimate one. Read more about her encounters here, and see the warning flags she'd discovered.
LOW NUMBER OF FOLLOWERS AND LACK OF SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE
Legit K-pop firms, on Instagram, Twitter, and other social networking platforms, usually have a great following - hundreds or even thousands of followers, and a high level of interaction on their threads. Scam agencies tend to have a much relatively small following and low engagement.
However, a moderate presence on social media is not a simple and effective sign of a company's credibility. It's not exactly unusual for fresh, smaller K-pop businesses to establish with a small number of followers when they just began establishing themselves.
However small a firm is, it must have a professional website with its own domain name, together with an email from a business that isn't from a free service, such as Gmail.
BAD QUALITY OF PROMOTIONAL PHOTOS AND MATERIALS
It's rare for legit entertainment agencies to end up producing a photograph that is less than attractive. But if you're beginning to think of applying for the K-pop company that constantly has bad pictures that scream "graphic design is my passion," leave immediately.
A legitimate company will have high-quality images because everything in K-pop is also about brand management and digital marketing. Poor quality is the equivalent of a lower margin.
If a fraudulent company has high-quality images, that just doesn't imply they're the real deal. This only indicates that they have photoshop talent.
PERSONAL INFORMATION
Never give your confidential info, including your current address, even if you are 100 percent sure a firm is reputable. But even then, it's smarter not to disclose your personal information until after the audition process.
Through her research, Evangeline found that straight away, utilizing Google Docs forms, fraudulent firms ask candidates for a lot of personal details.
MONEY
This is a massive red flag! A firm must never request for a "training program" audition fee or a pre-audition payment plan. One scam agency that Evangeline encountered required her to pay USD 70 for a training course, which probably never existed.
The company confirmed, to add more pressure, that the course was intensely competitive, and thus, had to pay the full amount within 48 months to prevent losing her spot.
The company reached out to her the following day when she didn't pay, saying they would still have a spot for her. Because she still didn't pay, they approached her again and sought to sweeten a discount on the offer.
The last red flag is manipulation. They considered trying to use the idol dream of Evangeline to blame her for paying the full amount. This is particularly devious, given that the fake account of Evangeline outlined that she's only 16.
