The Kpop Experience: The Audition

Every Kpop fan has the dream to one day become a Kpop Idol and to be put into a group like BTS, Girls Generation, Seventeen, or BlackPink, but fans don’t quite understand the full process of becoming a full fledge idol. I will be sharing my person experience of what it was like to audition for a Kpop entrainment company in my home town.

[TORONTO, CANADA] I happen to get very lucky and have insanely weird sheer luck, and one of my odd moments was falling upon a website saying that FNC Entertainment company was holding open auditions in Toronto on a Saturday in July from 10:00am to 4:00pm. I was so excited and with very supportive parents, they let me go to the audition.

At this time, I was 16 years old so I was at the age where I was not too young nor too old to not be accepted. So I took the chance and drove to the audition site. They held it in a well known University in Toronto, but was hard to navigate my way around it. There were no guards or workers/volunteers to guide me to the audition room and such. Since I happened to get there around 9:45 in the morning, very few people were around at the time. Once I found my way into the building with a few signs here and there, I found myself in a room with no more than 6 people in the whole room. There were multiple chairs and tables set up in rows and 2 ladies sitting at the front with papers. I walked up to them and grabbed a piece of paper and realized it was the audition form. It asked for all the basic contact info such as name, date of birth and such. They were also asking for my weight, height, skills, and awards that I have won, along with my SNS. Once I finish the application, I sat in the room while more people started to flood through the doors. I saw people with musical instruments, scripts and sheet music. It was quite overbearing seeing all the people look super serious and focused. The room was petty silent as if all competitors or opponents for a game were all in the same room. Not to long after, the ladies in the front called out to everyone and told us to hand back the finished forms and get out audition number. Since I was one of the first people to hand it in, my number was 10.The applicant number was a sticker, and so I stuck the sticker onto my chest and followed the ladies out into the hallway. They said they were taking 5 people into the audition room at a time, meaning that I was going to be part of the second group.

While the first group was auditioning, The women from before said we could go into the other hallway to practice for our auditions. Myself and the four others walked into the other hallway and started to practice. While practicing, some other girls who were auditioning came up to me and started to make conversation about why we are here and our goal at the end. The girls I spoke to were very nice and friendly, and had no competitive aura around them. We then all took turns and performed the songs we were going to sing (we were all auditioning for the vocal category).

Around 10:30 am, A different lady came and brought us into the audition room. We all stood in a line going from 5-10, meaning I would be last to audition. The atmosphere in the room was very tense and nerve wrecking. In front of us, there were 3 people. One women who seemed to be the translator, a man and another women on his other side. When it finally came to be my turn, I took a step forward and started my audition. During the time while watching the other people take turns, I started to freeze up and was re thinking my song choice, so right when I was about to go up, I changed my song choice without any practice. They told us before to have 3 songs ready and that they will tell us when to stop. When I started singing, I sang to the end of the 1st chorus, and right when I didn’t know the rest of the lyrics, they told me to stop. I saw it as a blessing in disguise. After I sang, the man who was taking notes down, wrote some stuff on a piece of paper, then spoke to one of the workers/volunteers who seemed to have been a translator. The lady then told us we can leave and one by one, we all left the room in a single file order.

Walking out of that room I was finally able to breath and feel comfortable again. All the stress has lifted off my shoulders and started speaking with the other people about the experiences. I found out that multiple people here have done at least 3 auditions before coming to the FNC addition.

I finally left the building around 11:00am and realized that even more people were here to auction and have been waiting an hour to audition. I was lucky that I decided to come first thing in the morning.

This experience was crazy fun along with stressful at the same time, but I will never regret doing it. I believe if you have the opportunity, you should aways take it because you have no idea when the opportunity will come back.

Thanks for reading my fun experience for auditioning for a Kpop entertainment company!

~ Samantha Szwed