“PAYOLA!” — “2024 MTV VMAs” “Best Group” Nominations Spark Wildly Mixed Reactions

Four K-Pop groups made the list this year.

The 2024 MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) will be held on September 10, 2024, and honor various artists across many different categories. On August 6, the initial list of nominees was announced, including many K-pop artists across several categories.

The K-Pop Artist Nominees For The “2024 MTV VMAs” Across Every Category

One category not announced then was one of the larger awards for “Best Group.” Since the award was added back to the list of categories in 2019, a K-Pop group has won, with BTS winning each year except last year’s event, when BLACKPINK took home the award.

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BTS | MTV

The VMAs recently shared the list of the groups nominated for the award, which has sparked mixed reactions from netizens.

On August 30, the VMAs added the missing categories and nominees to the original tweet thread made earlier this month.

NewJeans, NCT DREAM, SEVENTEEN, and TXT are the K-Pop artists included in the list, while Coldplay, Twenty One Pilots, and N*SYNC represent other genres. While many fans were excited to see their favorite groups listed among industry legends like Coldplay and N*SYNC…

…others have heavily questioned the list.

Some have questioned the selection process for the nominees, questioning why certain groups, specifically aespa and Stray Kids, who had better streaming and video performance did not make the list.

Others have questioned how of the three K-Pop nominees only one is a female group, and only one is a non-HYBE Labels group. Some have even brought up old accusations of “HYBE Payola” in regards to the nominations.

Even outside of the K-Pop nominees, questions about N*SYNC’s nomination have been presented.

“Best Group” is a fan-voted category, and will begin on September 3. Voting will happen first with two rounds of bracket face-offs, with the final two being a tap to vote.

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