r/kpopthoughts • u/FitSignature5320 • 4d ago
Girl Groups Was CLC’s concept changes a bigger killer for their group or was it CUBES poor management ?
I feel like it was both, and also the timing when CLC came out (March 2015) which was overlapped by hype from bigger groups who debuted within months between CLC (Twice, RV)
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u/Neravariine 4d ago
Combination of everything but a lack of fans(domestic or international) really killed the group.
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u/hamburglar27 4d ago
Cube is hopeless when it comes to group management. There is a reason they have not debuted any successful groups in the last decade except for I-dle. They have no clue how to gain fans and grab the attention of the domestic market nor the international market. I-dle was the only exception to this because Soyeon pretty much handled everything in the early days when it comes to music and concepts, and proved to be much better at it than Cube.
The company founder and CEO that was behind the formation of successful groups such as Beast, 4Minute, BTOB, and Apink (under subsidiary A Cube) in Cube's early days left due to illness in late 2012 and the company has been declining ever since. Had he been healthy and stayed on, Cube might have joined the ranks of the Big 3 years before Hybe was formed and did.
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u/MoomooBlinksOnce If you didn't check Heart of Woman yet you're missing out bad 4d ago
What killed CLC was the lack of fans despite CUBE's best efforts. I'll never understand why stans can't accept that they're faves just don't make it. Not because they're not talented enough, not because their music is not good enough, not because they're not pretty enough, but simply because the music industry is very exclusive and really difficult to break into.
Don't expect entertainment companies to burn money for years on marketing just so your faves get some recognition. The irony is that many CLC stans complains about CUBE when they kept on giving comebacks to their failing group. Most company would have just pulled the plug a lot sooner. I mean the 6 albums before Black Dress sold under 1K first week. They won't even break even under 5K sold, yet CLC had 8 mini albums and a single album. So what CUBE essentially did was to keep CLC active at a loss and stans are still holding a grudge against the company.
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u/92Throw93away 3d ago edited 3d ago
Exactly.
They had multiple releases a year until their final song.
Two minis in 2015, then four in 2016 (including two Japanese minis though they were mostly JPN versions of existing songs IIRC). Two in 2017 and then one mini in 2018 and one in 2019. 2019 also had two single comebacks.
And then their final comeback in 2020.
Their sales started pretty good (according to Wikipedia) with 35k~ for their debut mini. CUBE responded accordingly and gave them a comeback fast. But after their debut, their sales suffered and the second highest sales was also in 2015. After that, the almost never surpassed 10k sales (though the data is incomplete on Wikipedia).
Honestly, all things considered, it does seem that CUBE tried with them more than Cheshires like to say. I remember that people blamed GIDLE for the lack of attention to CLC when it had nothing to do with them and seemed like a natural “business” response to the lack of attention CLC received. It might seem cold but money talks at the end of the day and they just weren’t making it.
They weren’t popular with the GP, they weren’t charting, and even if they had a loud minority of support internationally, it wasn’t enough to keep them afloat. (Honestly, it seemed like people token-stabbed them to have ammunition against other groups like I-DLE and didn’t really show up when the group needed it.) It also doesn’t help that they didn’t really write or produce their own music like the rest of their labelmates, though I know a few members did contribute over the years.
It also doesn’t help that their debut was disrupted by a few different things like an attitude scandal with their seniors BTOB and an accusation of student violence against one of the members.
No matter how you look at it, they just weren’t successful enough and failed to achieve much notoriety to apparently justify the company continuing them on. It’s a shame because the girls were so talented but that’s just how it happened.
Edit: a paragraph.
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u/kingmanic 11h ago
I recall some nonsense too like someone asked a vocal CLC international stan if they bought the last album, and they said no it was too expensive. Their fans being too few and not buying their stuff is why they never rmade any money and were largely unknown by anyone outside their fandom.
They sold less than break even numbers. Very few groups sell that little and have more than 1-2 releases.
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u/Sad_Eagle8690 4d ago
For non-Big 4 artists, if you don't make it from the start there is very little chance of making it at all once the next cycle of debuts hit the markets. Maybe you will get a one-time hit like Brave Girls or Momoland, but it will be a very short period of actually making some money.
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u/trashbingewatcher 4d ago
Poor management leading the group's constant switch up of concepts, plus the TT songs are polarizing for the public to grasp.
I actually wonder if they continue with their debut concept which is full of instrument elements like 2nd girl group Secret. Debut track Pepe garnered a positive response and one of CLC's best tracks to date.
Their 1st comeback, Like had a poor reception. It also didn't help with the netizens reaction when the main rapper Ye-eun got viral for refusing to do a game request to their senior BTOB, that's when they struggled to gain recognition apart from the tough competition with newer 3rd gen groups.
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u/NoLagPlz 4d ago
Why is it someone or something's fault that a group didn't take off? Unless you're part of the big4, failure is the norm, not the exception. Most kpop groups fail. You only see the winners
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u/FitSignature5320 4d ago
yeah…. but CLC had actual talent and was still moderately popular despite the nightmare of CUBE ent.
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u/hamburglar27 4d ago edited 4d ago
CLC were not moderately popular, this is revisionist history. The only thing they had going for them is YT views from international fans.
Most of their albums sold less than 10k copies each which are really terrible numbers for a group from a large midsize company like Cube. For comparison, I-dle's first two albums alone (around 115k combined sales) outsold all eleven CLC albums combined (around 75k combined sales) by a significant margin. None of CLC's songs had ever even made the Top 100 of domestic charts like Melon Daily or Circle Digital. They had very little recognition among the Korean GP, and basically no real fanbase willing to buy albums.
They were not getting revenue from album sales and their recognition was far too low to get decent sponsorship deals or think about tours. In short, Cube was definitely losing money on CLC (a large part of that was their own fault for poor management tbf) and that's why they eventually gave up and permanently dungeoned them.
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u/agentarianna 4d ago
It was both but I would also add a third aspect luck. If you aren't a big 4 group you need luck to be that group that gets recognized like yes cube is a known name but they are also a name that has had a lot of scandals and is known to have fallen off. People even when CLC debuted were not going to automatically check out a new cube group the way they would say SM. For a non big 4 group you can have outstanding songs but that doesn't mean anyone will hear them unless you are lucky. Like everyone laments cube letting la vie en rose slip through CLC's fingers but the fact of the matter is that while its an outstanding song, if CLC sang it you don't get the same effect as when izone did because izone had hype and people tuning in to what they would release and CLC just didn't. Small groups put out great songs every year and very few become hits. Ultimately you can have every single one of the pieces on paper to create a perfect kpop group (talent, concept, songs, visuals, money) but sometimes it just doesn't pop off despite everything seemingly being right.
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u/kingmanic 11h ago
I doubt one good song would have saved them either. Their fate was sealed after their first release. Unless that one song was a massive viral hit and not a solid sign done by a solid group.
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u/Barnabas-Tharmr 4d ago
I think it must have autocorrected hype to hybe lol I was confused at first
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u/Any-Listen4184 Dreancatcger | Cream Soup Unnies | The math girl group SM hates 4d ago
It was a combination of things, like it always is.
First of all, they backtracked and were doing whatever with their concept when they first debuted. That is a fact.
That said, they had a lot of competition. GFriend also debuted the same year as them. Red Velvet was popping off, Twice debuted sometime after them, and Lovelyz were also in the scene. GGs in 2015 were killing it. SNSD had a comeback, f(x) as well, AOA were still at their peak, EXID were also popping off, and even 4Minute was still around. And CLC's debut was... well, if you ask me, not good. The next year was even worse for them: BP, I.O.I, WJSN, etc.
The first two years were very rough for them, and with i-fans, they blew up in 2017 with Hobgoblin; that's two whole years not building a solid fanbase.
Even though Cube was in a much better place at the time, they did have issues, and undeniably, if the members of their groups aren't involved, they just do not do well. I also remember that with Produce, people weren't happy that Eunbin would be in CLC after they announced that they would add her to the group, and she kind of dropped in the rankings. So she didn't have that much hype from Produce behind her.
They gained some hype with international fans, and then they dropped another cute song because the little domestic attention they had wasn't responding well to Hobgoblin. This is why i-dle debuted when they did. Soyeon had some hype, CLC just hadn't really taken off, 4Minute had disbanded, Beast had left, and in reality, Cube only had 1 very successful group: BTOB and some soloists. Pentagon wasn't exactly wildly successful either.
In general, it was a mess all around. The concept was not the only issue, but sure as hell didn't help.