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sorry, I dont think it was clear. What im trying to say is the Hanteo-Gaon gap doesnt matter when youre collecting stats from a korean streaming service or studying sales in only Korea. Its only a factor when youre considering foreign markets too.
For everyone asking about the Chinese downloads, they are all included and explained in the compilation section.
We would have preferred to use Melon to estimate their South Korean streams but they don't provide any streaming numbers.
Those who are claiming this are referring to the Gaon figure for the album which stands at over 3 million. But a huge percentage that figure is shipments to other countries. That being said, the best selling album off the millennium is "Let Me Love" by Jo Sung-mo from 2000 stands at about 2.1 million copies which is definitely not out of reach.
So basically, despite IFPI fully counting them now, you will still undermine the total numbers by dividing the total revenue by 50? Based on what exactly? Why 50? Why not just follow IFPI? This is completely subjective
Wow thanks for your amazing work. I didn’t know BTS was already so big. But I don’t really understand why only China’s album sales are adjusted? Is this the beginning of a revamp of the formula where all countries sales are adjusted?
If we're adjusting the prices of albums in China, then why don't we do the same for every other country? In Japan, albums cost way more than in America, yet MJD counts them as the same. Even for songs, South Korea's song sales are also super cheap, yet they are also counted the same. China is the only exception. Why?
Even as a Korean native fan of BTS, I didn’t know all the calculation behind here in Korea, which I have big doubt about them, and still do, but I get to know general idea of charts and figures thanks to you. I appreciate your intensive work for BTS!
It's just a strategy. It doesn't have anything to do with it, most western artist have the "concert strategy": the artist join ticket sales for concerts to sales of their albums. In this way, artists like Adele sell so many copies.
So what's the point? It's pretty fair though. They aren't the only ones using this strategy, most K-pop groups do it.
True and Justin Bieber is singing in English and has been in the industry for a very long time. He does not only have a massive fan following but also the public by his side. Actually if anything bts got very late popularity in Asia. They got quicker and far more success in America than in Asia despite the language barrier.
What a fascinating breakdown of BTS' discography! I'll be very curious to see how the numbers change once Korea gets Spotify.
A) All Kpop artists do that
B) Even Western artists do that
C) BTS still outsold
I kindly disagree. Bts are currently conquering every major music chart and have sold-out stadium tours around the world. Their popularity is not just "restricted" to Asia. According to Forbes, they were the 2nd best-selling artist in USA in 2018, only behind Drake. That sounds pretty popular and global to me^^
A correction, they were the 2nd best-selling artist in the USA in 2018 in traditional album sales after Eminem. You must be thinking of their worlwide sales (IFPI), where they were 2nd after Drake.
Hi Renate!
Although it seems kinda unfair, if we really compare Justin Bieber at his early stage of his career with the current level of popularity of BTS, I would say that's a rather close battle. Hard to tell who's bigger really. Of course, from English-speaking axes, it seems Bieber was bigger, but if we look at the whole picture altogether things are certainly closer to be even.
Happy to see you happy then 🙂
This article had me bugged for quite some time - a lot of my formulas sheets just don't work anymore for such a specific case. A lot of numbers required new techniques / new raw data to come up with them. Added to my current lack of time since I'm working full time and marrying soon, it took way longer than I first though. I don't even want to think at how late I am on answering comments ^^" 🙂
Hi Leah!
I have to disagree with that. Their pure sales aren't high thanks to multiple versions of the same albums, they have multiple versions of the same albums because their sales are high.
Nowadays, most artists struggle to sell 200k pure copies WW with only 1 version. If they start releasing 4, they would just completely loose the very last ones enthusiastic enough to buy these records. It's something to release 4 versions of a record, it's something else to be able to sell them!
Hi Samsas!
About Chinese streams, the most regular misconception is that we tend to see tools like QQ and NetEase like their Spotify and Apple Music. The thing is, these tools replace YouTube before anything else.
Everywhere in the world YouTube is far and away where most music consumption happens. It's very cheap though and their methodology is debatable. If you stick to numbers yet, they have over 10 times more users than Spotify. YouTube is for quick-cheap consumption, while people more into music will use a proper audio streaming service.
In China, there is no YouTube. There is near 1 billion users of QQ and the likes. Not because the general public is more into music than elsewhere but simply because they are also used as their first local video streaming platform. That's also why when most foreign streaming sites have from 50% to 100% of their user base that pay for it, Chinese platforms have less than 4%, in spite of their subcription fee being 5 times lower than elsewhere.
This doesn't "undermines" the market, it's quite the opposite, this make it what it is. Just a few numbers: Faded by Alan Walker has over 2 billion streams in China. That's over 1.3 million EAS with the 1/1500 ratio. That is, 1 song has nearly twice as much EAS as Sheeran's Divide in Canada / Australia, markets larger than China when Faded exploded there. Last but not least, as shown in the newly created Chinese Hot 100, the local market is massively dominated by local singers. Does it feel correct to you that one song that hits a restricted part of the population does twice more EAS than a monster crossover like Divide in markets of the same size? Basically, counting 1/1500 for China would undermine every other market in the World.
In fact, if we check a local example, say Tia Ray with Be Apart, she scored the equivalent of 11 million singles sales as per the IFPI last year. Does that sound correct that a song in a market similar to Canada / Australia can score 11 million units? This would be biased like hell. Numbers must mean something. We can't reduce the impact of YouTube streams to allow these mass Chinese streams/views that have the same function. If we account for their billions of streams with a 1/1500 ratio, then we should do the same with all these Indian singers scoring billions of views every year.
As for Xiami, their share isn't an issue at all. It's the good thing with streaming, it's organic and numbers are insanely high. To use back the example of Tia Ray, her song has 900 million streams on this "tiny" app. It's massive and easily meaningful enough to make it representative. BTW, the place of Xiami is also usually a bit downgraded because the mobile app has a much weaker share of its market (4%) than the laptop version (15%), but numbers add streams from both.
About paid downloads I'm answering in the dedicated comment.
Hi Nohr!
As Al said, it would have been better to use MelOn but there is simply no number provided. As stated for Xiami, what matters isn't the share but the representativeness of streams. Here, it's not an issue if the ARMY boycotted it. As mentioned, instead of using a multiplier based in the size of the market, we have set the multiplier at the needed value to reach Gaon streaming numbers (available for charting songs) and applied it to the entire discography.
For all additional questions about Chinese sales, some things need to be clarified.
The first point is that physical sales from China have been counted just like sales of anywhere else. It may sound silly but it's important to be precise, it's not Chinese album sales which are adjusted but only their downloads 🙂
Now, about downloads, as stated with streams, accounting for them with no ratio completely distort the real size of the market. Counting fresh new releases sold for $2 available on services available directly through the smartphone of hundreds of millions people would be strongly unfair to any other artist selling copies elsewhere. If tomorrow Adele releases an album to Spotify / Apple Music with streams blocked but available for sale at $2, she would top Thriller in no time, that would make very little sense.
About the IFPI, it's important to really understand what it all means. The IFPI list has no methodology. There is no 'chart rule' as the Billboard or the OCC has. They simply list the top selling records as per what was reported by labels. Big Hit decided to be all-inclusive for BTS, that's fair play from them. Once we get the full Top 50, we will notice that other Chinese downloads are not accounted for, because as I said there is no audit / fixed methodology. Taylor Swift own sales for 2018 may not appear on this Top 50. That's why we can't "follow IFPI", it's down to each label and we can't count them for one artist and ignore them for someone else. Had the IFPI to set up chart rules, they would logically do the same as the Billboard and every other similar national chart and set a minimum price.
We used 50 because it's slightly over $7, a price that is consistent with both a realistic entry price in other countries and consistent with the size of the Chinese market. As I stated in the past, when we build a model, the objective is to make it meaningful. It's not to pile numbers just like that. If the Chinese market is of the size of Canada, our model must conclude on similar numbers for similar successes in both countries. it's what happens with the model designed here.
Once we look at every metric, the markets on which artists can gain the most EAS are in line with market sizes, the US first, then Japan, the the UK, Germany, France, SK, etc. It's just China that if we stick to a model built as per international standards fails to make sense, simply because it is too different by the absence of both extremes (physical sales and youtube) which creates a huge bulk of cheap streams/downloads. If tomorrow India gets to a similar spot, an appropriate model will be set too in order to keep global numbers meaningful.
It absolutely sounds correct to me that China has more streams and downloads than countries like Australia and Canada. Australia has 25 million citizens, Canada has 37 million citizens. China has 1.4 billion. Why wouldn't we expect a country with a population 56 times bigger than Australia to have more units being moved? I don't see the problem. You say you measure popularity, but it seems to me like you measure revenue more than anything with these adjustments (despite the value of money clearly being different in China vs Australia and Canada). Simply going by popularity, money technically should not matter. A song getting 2 billion streams in China sounds to me like it's more popular than a song getting 50M streams in Canada.
That being said, I'm pretty sure you made a mistake. You say "for Xiami, their share isn’t an issue at all. It’s the good thing with streaming, it’s organic and numbers are insanely high. To use back the example of Tia Ray, her song has 900 million streams on this “tiny” app. It’s massive and easily meaningful enough to make it representative". I would very much like to see where you saw that Be Apart has 900 million streams, that sounds completely ridiculous. It says for me that it's at 87M on Xiami. It's also her only hit. In total, she has 105M streams on the platform. That's far from the 900M you are claiming for Be Apart. In comparison, Taylor Swift has almost four times more total streams on Xiami.
Again, why is it that $2 albums in China are not acceptable, yet you have no problem counting discounted album sales in America like Born This Way which was sold for $0.99?
Hi Karla! Yes, they are all included under the compilation section 🙂
