Why do compaines always sabotage their own idols?

Greed, ego, stupidity, selfishness

well it depends

yg is just plain incompetent

in sm case, they never EVER want the idol to be bigger than the company or the group

Because most of them are incompetent. It is hard to make the right business decisions. This is one of the biggest reasons top-level management gets paid so well.

In NJZ's case, it's clearly the battle of egos. Specifically BSH and MHJ. NJZ just got caught in the middle.

For JYPE, it is because they don't want one individual to be more popular than the group overall. The stronger the brand is individually, the more power that individual has. They learned from the Suzy situation. At some point, she became bigger than Miss A, she left JYPE to focus on acting. Now, she's still a huge megastar, and Miss A no longer exists.

If they focus instead on building the group fandom, the individual member is less likely to leave the group, and within the 7 years of the first contract, JYPE can rack in money from album sales and touring.

CFs and individual promotions benefit the artist more than the actual company since most of that money goes to the artist and builds their brand. Most Big 4 companies come with a built in fandom anyway, so they don't necessarily have to push individual members to earn money. Just look at NMIXX and Kick Flip. NMIXX is no where on the k-charts, but still is going to sell like 700K in the first week. Kick Flip debuted with 280k.

Nayeon's 2nd solo, Jihyo's solo, and Yeji's solo didn't chart that well, but they still sold 376k, 534k, and 220k in the first week. Fandom power.

I have a "spiritual" theory lol

I believe the ego of the people who own kpop labels is so big, they simply can't stand the idea of their groups/products becoming bigger then the company itself. We already know that in SK what matters is which act the x company will bring out next, right? Which always puts the company on a pedastal, always keeping the label as the most important element in the entertainment indutry - surpassing their artists talents and commercial potential. And the owners wanna keep it that way.

So whenever their artists are close to become bigger than their label, it's when the companies choose to shoot their own foot by boycotting their own artists. And it becomes what we call mismanagement in the end. Kpop labels aren't ready for the next level and that's why kpop still hasn't hit the world hard. They are too scared of not being essential anymore, when they were the ones investing in the people that could (or are threating) threat their reign. Which is absolutely dumb, companies choose to stay small and lose money over petty sentiments and narrow views.

Edit: Our BP girls are paving the way for this next level. They grew so fast and got loved so much world widely, YG's dungeon strategy just did not work on them, thankfully.

Another edit: (insight) And what's happening with BP members rn reflects my theory. YG is cutting their solo journey short for the BlackPink's 2025 World Tour. They can't stand the fact the members are becoming bigger than their group. Crazy!

Ego is the major factor imo. Most of these decisions seem to be about management ego and control. Not mentioning any groups because I don't want to start drama. I always find it odd when a member that isn't supposed to be the popular member goes viral,and the company doesn't strike while the iron is hot. It seems like sabotage when companies don't capitalize on opportunities. I feel this issue happens too often in kpop and it's always confusing.

The major issue with upper management it's hard for them to swallow their pride and make changes. It's why you will see groups stuck with concepts that doesn't fit them or are outdated because somebody's ego will most likely get bruised to make changes.

I wonder if psychologically they make these decisions due to power or fear. I assume power corrupts, and they're most likely scared if idol becomes too big for the company. I think they want some control, so they make certain decisions to sabotage a group or idol. I do feel if a star is bright enough they will shine no matter the circumstances.

Quote from foreveraespaaa

but the bigger an idol the more popular the company becomes?

It is harder to control them

There's no such a thing as sabotaging their own investment, it's called mismanagement JYP took twice for granted and mismanaged itzy, they didn't let them do solo activities cus that was new rule in JYP back then. I remember sm pushing exo and RV both in international markets as well, it just didn't work so they started investing in a newly debuted group NCT. With Irene getting less and less recognition, I think the popularity of RV faded more. And YG used to gatekeep their idols on purpose to give them "mysterious person", confirmed by Leehi in an interview.

The only thing I find fishy is labels pushing a certain member over others and then losing their shit when other member goes viral, like why does it even matter? Just let things be natural.

the ceo wants to marry one of the members yg style

Kanye gets immediately dismissed for reasons I don't support but he said some truth. He said they sabotaged Drake because he was too big and companies want to control their artists and I agree.

Look what happened to Taylor Swift. The ceo of her previous record company basically blackmailed her, saying he will give her masters if she released the number of albums that equals the number of previous albums she wants to own the masters of? if i explained it correctly. And she has like what 5?6? albums with them. She said nah and left. Now do you think they can dictate her what to do now that she's the biggest artist in the world? And before she released her versions she called out one of the most powerful people in the world. That's what these companies don't want. All these artists are basically puppets.

I do believe plenty of rappers were jealous of Drake since he became the biggest rapper in the world as his numbers show and who knows what he rejected.

If executives tried to humble Michael Jackson, Prince etc, these companies will def try to sabotage idols who already don't have any freedom.

Pretty sure i've seen plenty of times hybe rejecting solo ads and roles/features to bts. They don't want them to be bigger or have more opportunities if things turn left. They also have their own fav members as you can see how they promote their solos. Akgaes are akgaes, but they also see what goes on the groups' fandom refuses to discuss which is why they turn into solo fans.

As Alexs said, idols are not employees, they are self-employed.

And when self-employed gain power, it become harder to control.

Or more likely fans just don't understand business? It can also be factors we acctually don't know anything about, like issues with the artists or something else that is not public knowledge.

But it's also hard to stay at the top and to constantly deliver good songs, some groups at a big too many boring songs, maybe that is a bit of incompetence or maybe they just have so many groups that they need to throw away some bad songs to those groups. (ITZY got a bit too many boring songs from JYP).

And fans in kpop are mostly young people that move on to other things when they grow up from teenages to young adults so you can loose a big part a groups fans in a 4-5 year span.

So just because a group can't stay at the top for 7 years straight don't mean it's companies that sabatage their own groups, it's more the likely outcome and it's more uncommon for a group to have a smooth sailing at the top for so long time.

Quote from killingtime1934

in sm case, they never EVER want the idol to be bigger than the company or the group

? I think you're talking about JYPE where the whole 'Suzy bigger than Miss A' affair has traumatised JYP and his people so much that they decided to never ever let the idol get bigger than the group again.

As for SM, I don't see it: Yoona was bigger than the group when she had tv show super hit and started to be IT girl, and so far SM always seems to be pushing the most popular member at a time to get even bigger, providing more opportunities, gigs, CFs etc.

Which makes sense, if it helps a member, then it helps the group too - unless it grows into a Suzy vs Miss A situation, but that won't happen every time.

JYP won't let you be on the same level popularity wise as their group let alone outshined the group, so they make sure you won't be having any leverage in the industry without the "JYP GG" tag before your name. Just look at twice and itzy you will get what am i sayin.

SM is the same as JYP but they will let 1 or 2 GG members they want to be on par or bigger than the group to keep for the future wether the group keep going or hiatus, the rest can do whatever they want as long i have 2 key members on lock. you can say taeyeon and yoona (and sica at some point) , seulgi + irene.

Can't say anything about hybe coz they still new and looks like they don't take any chance at all about being bigger than the group.

YG is just lazy and dumb.

To the question in the OP, while I agree with a number of reasons people already mentioned, I also think it isn't always a 'bad faith' move, or on purpose. I think it's also often an 'I/we know better' or a 'let's try this first' of the management vs idols' opinions, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

Let's be fair, idols' opinions and ideas aren't always better even if it's about their own career - I recall Taeyeon saying she disliked 'Gee' and didn't think it would become a hit when the company switched from 'Dancing Queen' to 'Gee' - yet it became the song that launched SNSD into the stratosphere.

Same for netizens and K-pop fans, it's easy to be armchair generals or say in hindsight 'the company should have done this or that better' - everyone can be truthtelling prophets, in hindsight. But how many times have K-pop fans predicted a song was a flop and bad move and a group has become a flop - only for that song to become a monster hit or that group to rise up and become extremely popular and successful?

Company people can be wrong, idols can be wrong, netizens and K-pop fans can be wrong.

I also think that it's a matter of resource limits and core strengths of each company. Due to limited resources in money and available supporting talent, companies need to decide what group should get focus first and get access to those resources, and decide how to spend those for maximum effect.

This may run against the inbuilt limitations and weaknesses of a company.

For example, SM simply doesn't have the expertise, connections and networking structure for international/western expansion, even if they want to and try to for their groups. Which makes it harder for SM to make their groups grow outside Asia, at least harder than other companies. Fans might pull out their hairs about the many missed international opportunities of their groups - but it's not as if that's SM's strength.

And YG, for years, YG has had its entire organisational structure built around having their groups' songs not be bought but be produced only inhouse by a few genius composers/songwriters, and only the highest quality was acceptable. But this production and brand building philosophy has the weakness your song and album production will be inconsistent and comebacks sparse - fans might complain to high heavens about the long hiatuses of their groups, but YG's way of producing songs simply can't deliver more due to its limited capacity.