HYBE to host 'The Debut: Dream Academy' to recruit new girl group members

Bang Si-hyuk, founder and chairman of HYBE, speaks with John Janick, chairman of Geffen Records, in a YouTube video earlier this week. [HYBE]

HYBE is recruiting members for its next girl group through a new audition program called “The Debut: Dream Academy,” the K-pop powerhouse said Friday.

The audition will be co-hosted by HYBE and Geffen Records, a subsidiary of Universal Music Group. The two companies established a joint venture in 2021 to hold projects that scout new artists.

The contestants will be revealed on Tuesday. It will take place in the United States for 12 weeks, meaning that the contestants will most likely be of diverse nationalities and ethnicities.

The audition process will be available to view on YouTube.

“I’ve always had a dream to give talented young people the opportunity to become a member of a remarkable group that is created based on K-pop,” Bang Si-hyuk, founder and chairman of HYBE, told John Janick, chairman and CEO of Geffen, in a YouTube video earlier this week.

K-pop would have to take the “K” out of K-pop and become just “pop” music for the music genre to become globally mainstream, Bang said. For that to happen, it would “have to be targeted to the American market.”

For the past two years, there were some 120,000 applicants for the audition, 70,000 of whom sent in their audition videos during the first week of submission.

“It’s time to use the K-pop production system overseas to find new talents across the globe,” HYBE said in a press release. “This is what makes ’The Debut: Dream Academy’ meaningful."

BY SHIN MIN-HEE [shin.minhee@joongang.co.kr]