About Fantasia Entertainment
Answer Me 2008 | Gloria's Journey | apply open!
Fantasia Entertainment
Fantasia Entertainment (판타지아 엔터테인먼트, stylized as FTZ) was founded in 2006 by CEO, Choi Younghwan. Fantasia Entertainment is currently home to artists HM (Hong Minwoo), Lee Yumi, G.Ni (Kim Hyojin), Nova and sub units Luna and Solar, 1TEAM, and previously boy group C-Clown along with girl groups Gloria and sub-units Dahlia, Lily and Clover, and Cherry Day. The name Fantasia is said to resemble a 'melting pot of talent' as each artist under the company is said to have unreal talent and can pull off a mixture of different musical styles. Fantasia can also mean "improvising", once again referring to the meaning that each artist can pull of multiple styles.
2006-2010: Founding and first artists
CEO of Fantasia Entertainment, Choi Younghwan, was previously vice president of DSP Media from 1998 to 2006 when the company then merged with Hoshin Textile Company before establishing Fantasia Entertainment in April of 2006. Due to Choi Younghwan's strong connection with DSP Media, the company was often mistaken as a subsidiary of DSP, aiding in the popularity in the company's first artists.
Once established, Fantasia then went on to hold auditions in May of 2006 also while gathering former DSP Media trainees like Lee Yumi previously of Gloria. In 2007 Fantasia debuted their first artist, soloist HM. In 2008, Fantasia debuted their first girl group known as Gloria. While it seemed like HM was an instant hit and dubbed a "second Rain", Gloria's debut did fairly well but it wasn't until their break out hit "Bo Peep" did the group gain popularity.
In 2010, Gloria came back with the song "Lies" which was a drastic concept change for the young girls at the time. Although Lies topped many charts in South Korea the song was eventually banned from airing on MBC. Along with this, HM had recently made a comeback with "Wealthy 2nd Generation" which the song was banned by KBS, saying that the song was encouraging excessive, indulgent lifestyles. Fantasia had decided to debut a sub-unit of Gloria, known as Dahlia, to try to get the company back on track. However, due to the former leader of Gloria getting caught up in a personal scandal, Dahlia was deemed a failure as well.
2011-2015: The rise and fall of Fantasia Entertainment
In 2011 Fantasia group Gloria made a comeback with what became their hit song "Roly Poly" after the lead vocalist of Gloria debuted as a soloist. Gloria was featured with two new members and with a retro sound and concept unlike their previous title tracks. Roly Poly quickly moved to the top of the music charts within 24 hours of it's release and became the number one song of 2011. This paved the way for Gloria and other Fantasia artists HM to become some of the most popular household names from the 2nd generation of kpop.
With the success of Gloria still rising after their comeback with "Lovey Dovey" in late 2011, Fantasia debuted their first boy group on July 18 2012, known as C-Clown. C-Clown was moderately popular compared to their previous artists. Fantasia also debuted a second sub-unit from Gloria known as Lily. Lily became a success after striking two perfect all-kills with the units title track "Gone Not Around Any Longer" peaking at number one on all major music charts for two weeks straight.
Fantasia Entertainment welcomed 2013 by Dahlia having their first comeback singing their units debut in 2010. This time, Dahlia managed to recieve positive press due to their unique vocal colors, however shortly after promotions ended one of the newest members of Gloria was met with a peresonal scandal resulting in her taking a short hiatus from the group. This left Gloria to make a comeback with only 6 members in the second quarter of 2013.
In 2014, Fantasia debuted their second girl group known as Cherry Day. Cherry Day didn't recieve the same recognition as previous Fantasia groups did (mostly due to lack of funding and little promotion), resulting the group to disband after their first comeback within the same year. The groups disbandment was met with public backlash as many believed that Fantasia didn't even give the girls a fighting chance, despite the public remaining generally disinterested in their short lived career. Gloria and C-Clown had also seemed to die down in popularity some until November of 2014 when Gloria came back with title track "Like A Cat".
In April of 2015, C-Clown was met with their first major controversy. Member Rome had made some comments on his personal Instagram account while removing C-Clown's name in his bio. Fans started questioning if he was leaving the company or if the group was disbanding, while Fantasia remained quiet on the issue until months later when they confirmed C-Clown's disbandment.
The reason why Fantasia delayed confirming anything about C-Clown was rumored to be due to their new girl group which debuted on April 12, 2015. Nova was a rebranding of previous girl group Cherry Day, with a new member which made the group a total of 7 members with a fresh and girly concept. With the groups new concept being different than any other fantasia artist, Nova did considerably better than Cherry Day. With each comeback Nova gained popularity, however it still wasn't any where near comparison to Gloria.
With Gloria being quiet most of 2015, aside from a Japanese album and solo debuts, it seemed like their popularity was slowly dying down as well. Fluer, known as Gloria's fanclub, originally boycotted Fantasia Entertainment along with the debut of a seven member girl group while Gloria was still standing. The company was seeing a major loss in profit from their previous years as 2015 came to a close.
2016-2018: New building and second generation artists
As 2015 was possibly Fantasia's worst year, in Feburary of 2016 Fantasia Entertainment moved from the Seocho district of Seoul to a four story building in the Mapo district in their first attempt to prove to the public that they were still rising upwards. It was also around this time that Fantasia became known for their crowdfunding projects; Nova's Mr. Potter was the first of these. Nova also became known to have one big comeback a year with multiple smaller comebacks with crowd funding and busking. The company said this was to increase popularity of the group by being relatable to the pubic during their busking experiences, and also to increase the girls artistry.
Gloria made a group comeback in Korea for the first time in a year and nine months with the dual title tracks "Good Luck" and "Whoo!". However, the group was said to only hold promotions for two weeks due to the busy schedules of the members. Gloria's fanclub became angrier at the company resulting in a complete loss of profit for not only Gloria, but for other artists as well.
As Nova was hit with the worst profit loss, Fantasia responded by adding a new foreign member, Keiko, to Nova to improve the groups popularity overseas. Nova promoted with 8 members for ten months until August of 2017 when another new member, Didi previously of The Voice Kids fame, was added. Nova was still not meeting the standards that Fantasia held for their artists, CEO Younghwan decided that adding another member that already had a small fanbase to Nova would be more profitable than to disband the group and risk another scandal. Not only that, but the company lacked the proper funds to debut a new group at that time and didn't want a repeat of Cherry Day.
Soloist HM also released an anniversary project in 2017 to celebrate his 10th year since debut, along with Fantasia Entertianment holding a joint concert for all of their artists entitled "Fantasia Fam.ily".
Despite not having a group comeback in 2017, Gloria debuted their third unit Clover in June of 2017. The groups title songs "What's My Name?" only peaked at number four on the Gaon Music Charts, much different than their previous years, but still managed to win on a few music shows which proved Gloria's popularity was still going strong.
Gloria had their 10th year anniversary project in 2018 with all members joining, including their previous member. However, it was around this time that Gloria members had been lowkey throwing shade at Fantasia Entertainment and other members through social media. Fans feared the worse for the group but pulled together to make the double title tracks "Party" and "You Think" have a secured spot on the Gaon Charts at numbers one and the later at three. Promotions only lasted a week as this was used as a prerelease single for their upcoming anniversary album. Fans had also became worried about the production of Gloria's upcoming album as Nova had released a mini album before promotions for Gloria's prerelease was even over. Fans of Gloria's and Nova's went head to head in a fan war, which for Fantasia Entertainment, meant profit.
With Gloria members not putting their all into performances due to internal problems, fans were left very disappointed. When Gloria's album was finally released on the anniversary of their 10th year as a group, the song struggled to reach within the top five on the music charts. Gloria cut promotions short for lead track "All Night" and ended abruptly after a week. Shortly after Fantasia announced that some members of Gloria were not renewing their contracts and Gloria will in fact disband after holding one last concert in Seoul in late June.
With Gloria disbanding and Nova's promotions overlapping Gloria's last album, Nova was seeing a loss in profit one again due to the outrage from Gloria's fanclub. Nova released another mini album in late 2018 but promotions were cut short despite possibly being Nova's best selling album so Fantasia could do what they did best. Almost immediately after promotions ended Fantasia Entertainment announced that they would be adding two new members to Nova to make the group a total of 11 members to make their biggest girl group yet. Fantaisa also released news of their new boy group set to debut early 2019.
2019-present: The rebranding of Fantasia Entertainment
Fantasia debuted boy group 1TEAM on March 27, 2019. 1TEAM's concept was said to be different from any artist that Fantasia had previously debuted with them being more of a r&b influenced group that wrote and produced their own music. Due to two members being contestants of YG survival show MIXNINE (member Rubin making it into the final "group") 1TEAM saw popularity right from their debut.
Nova made their first comeback with 11 members in April of 2019 with lead single "Hi High" and unfortunately still didn't meet the same popularity that 1TEAM had saw. Despite Nova's popularity growing overseas in America and Japan, in Korea "Hi High" was heavily critiqued by the public for the songs cheesy lyrics and the album for having a minimalist look despite the high quality of the music video and hype Fantasia had created for the comeback. Not to mention this was the groups first full album since their 2015 debut.
With the popularity of HM and 1TEAM soaring and Lee Yumi and G.nie formaly of Gloria still doing well for themselves, the only group that seemed to still be left in the shadows was Nova. CEO Younghwan was advised to disband the girls despite his decision of wanting to keep the group active as he had already poured so much money into the group. This led Choi Younghwan to birth his greatest idea yet.
With the help of his connection to DSP Media that seemed to grow after the death of former DSP CEO and long time friend of Younghwan, Fantasia Entertainment had scored a reality competion show for Nova called "Make or Break: The Birth of a Star" on JTCB. Nova Make or Break was said to split Nova into two different units called Luna and Solar. The two groups would compete against one another as they acted as their own promoters and participated in the writing, composing, and choreographing of each release. After all, the less people hired for promotions the more money Fantasia could be saving for their other groups.
AUTHOR'S NOTE. — enjoying the new and improved fantasia entertainment? they scandalous. also peep the shade at both fantasia and yg oops
will update when i get the final line up for Gloria and their solo activities! i'll also be uploading a profile for other artists / staff of fantasia entertainment and then finally opening up applications for both Gloria and Nova!
more info on Nova here! both Nova's and Cherry Day's discogrophies can be found here!
will update when i get the final line up for Gloria and their solo activities! i'll also be uploading a profile for other artists / staff of fantasia entertainment and then finally opening up applications for both Gloria and Nova!
more info on Nova here! both Nova's and Cherry Day's discogrophies can be found here!
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