JYP Entertainment announced the start of “Nizi Project” season 2 in 2022.
The “Nizi Project” is an audition project that first began in February 2019 after the business agreement ceremony between JYP and Sony Music, Japan’s largest record company, and has produced a girl group named NiziU in 2020. NiziU, which was discovered by JYP Park Jin-young himself and completed by a combined training system, has accumulated brilliant achievements from their pre-debut, ensuring success as a popular girl group.
Season 2 will hold auditions in a total of 11 cities in Korea, Japan and the United States with the aim of creating a boy group. Accordingly, JYP and Sony Music announced the specific audition schedules on Dec 16th. Season 2 auditions will be held in eight Japanese cities in a particular order of Nagoya, Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Sapporo, Okinawa, Tokyo, Sendai and Kobe in March and April next year, in New York on April 15th, in Los Angeles on April 17th, and in Seoul, the center of K-pop, on May 5th. In particular, Park Jin-young, JYP’s Chief Creative Officer (CCO), will visit each global audition venue again this time as in season 1 to find new talents in person.
Along with the announcement of the audition schedule, Park Jin-young also delivered a message supporting the applicants through a YouTube video, saying, “We are going to meet you all next year, so all boys who dream of becoming idols should not hesitate to participate. We see your potential, so don’t worry and challenge yourself.” He also congratulated on the success of the project and the launch of Season 2 at an online press conference on July 12th, saying, “I was surprised and still can’t believe that you guys sent me such unexpected support for Season 1.”
The sign-up for “Nizi Project” Season 2’s auditions will be accepted until February next year, and there will be a total of five categories: vocal, dance, rap, model, and lyric writing – composition. The project aims to develop in 2022 and prepare for the chosen team’s official debut in June 2023. More detailed recruitment information can be found on the official website.
NiziU was born in June 2020 after a global audition in eight Japanese cities and two U.S. cities from July to August 2019, a survival camp in Korea and Japan, and a total of four missions, and officially debuted in December of the same year. As a member of JYP, they are setting new records every day in the local area. Their pre-debut song “Make You Happy” was the first female artist’s track to rank first in three Oricon digital rankings at the same time, with 280 million views of the music video on YouTube, and 290 million cumulative plays on Billboard Japan.
In addition, NiziU’s official debut single “Step and a Step” recently drew attention, recording 8,916 points on the Oricon weekly combined single chart (based on December 6, 2021) and exceeding a total of 2 million points. This is the third time such a thing happened in the history of the Oricon combined single chart and the first time for a female group.
NiziU’s latest full-length album “U” released on November 24th won a platinum album certification by the Japan Record Association on Dec 10th. Earlier, the Oricon weekly album chart (based on Nov 22th to 28th tally) recorded 179,000 points in the first week of release, proving the group’s hot popularity as the first female group to sell more than 100,000 copies in the first week of its release as of 2021.
