By: Tian Davidson, SFU Student

tripleS, the newest, up-and-coming K-pop girl group released their newest mini album, ⟡(Mujuk). It’s the first album from their subunit, EVOLution, which consists of eight selected members of the mega-group. tripleS’ music has so much variety, from EVOLution’s EDM sound to another subgroup of tripleS, LOVElution’s pop sound. However, tripleS offers more than what meets the ear. Ever since their debut in October 2022, tripleS has become a more prominent group in the K-pop scene, and for good reason: they’re doing things never before seen in the K-pop realm. 

What makes them stand out is their voting system, in which fans can vote for directions for the group to go in. This includes which members go into which subunits, the primary singles for an album based on teasers, and which photo concept should be released first for each subunit. Fans can vote by buying an album and scanning the QR code on an objekt, the photocard of each member provided in the album, and registering it into the Cosmo app. With this method, they’ll vote on a monthly basis. The other method, which only allows you to vote once, involves buying digital objekts from the Cosmo app store. When you buy objekts from the app, the group members receive income on top of their current paycheck.

One concern that fans of tripleS have is that the objekts are NFTs, and thus have an environmental impact. Objekts use the Polygon Blockchain, which is allegedly carbon neutral. Along with this, no cryptocurrency is involved, as votes cannot be transferred anywhere else other than the Cosmo app. However, carbon neutrality has been criticized for relying on offsetting carbon rather than making real environmental progress.

Another concern fans have is the large number of members in the group. They think it’ll be hard to memorize each member, since there are 20 announced so far and the company plans on having 24 members in total. However, some also think the large amount benefits everyone, as MODHAUS (tripleS’ management company) rotates the idols in subunits to not overwork each member. Every member so far has offered a unique addition to the group.

tripleS not only has a system set up to give their members fair treatment, but also gives us some really good bops. Some of my recommendations from tripleS would be “Access,” “Beam,” and my favourite, “Girls’ Capitalism,” about how girls want ‘more.’ Not more money, but more love and better compliments; pretty isn’t good enough, they sing, “call me beauty.”