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Hi again Samsas!
The huge thing you are missing here is that popularity and price aren't independent notions. With the exact same popularity, the cheapest is the product, the highest is the number. Saying "money technically should not matter" is fundamentally wrong. If 1080p TVs sell way more units than 8K QLED TVs, it's not because people like the more, but simply because they are way cheaper. For that reason, we can't just ignore the real market size of a China. Saying that a stream is a stream no matter what would be the same as saying that an youtube stream should be weighted the same as an apple music stream. If we go that way, then why weighting sales at all? One sale must be one sale, no matter if it's a box, an album, a physical single, or a download. That's the whole meaning of weightings, putting every unit on par, taking off the variable part of the context. Just like a download isn't the same thing as a stream in the US, a stream in the UK isn't the same thing as a stream in China. They do not have the same worth, they are also not used the same way.
I'm not sure you follow the movie industry, but China is now just as big as the US. Movies can gross $500 million there. It's not like we are talking about a poor country, it's the richest in the world. If their market is at the same level as Australia and Canada, it isn't for no reason. As I already said countless times, China will get there. It's only a matter of time before we see Chinese albums among the most popular ones globally and that will be very nice to see. It's just not a reality as of now.
About Be Apart, my bad for the wrong conversion from the automatic translation, I haven't challenge it in her case since I haven't check her CSPC, it's only for the matter of the example though, if you prefer you can look at numbers of her MV to see if Xiami is really as tiny as you claimed. As for the relative popularity of her career to Taylor Swift, it doesn't matter at all. That's the main issue here, your main point is to inflate Taylor stats, not to look at an accurate model. Elseway, you would be concerned about India too.
Hi Chris!
they are very different situations. That was an outlier, and the full price was actually paid by Amazon. Also, the average price of the album once all units are accounted for is standard. You can't put head to head an outlier with a norm. It would be last saying that a random football player is the best of all-time because yesterday he scored two goals while nobody ever averaged that number over a career, that doesn't make sense as you can see.
Hi, thank you for this amazing article!!
I just have an important question!
U said that "At 8, BTS have the most million sellers of the decade, tied with Drake."
Could u plz tell us more informations about this point? I mean, no. Of sales that Drake have? How BTS tied to Drake, or from which point?
I hope u will answer as soon as possible!
Wait... I’m really confused about the Gaon charts. Is it based on the albums sold in South Korea only or is it based on both domestic and international sales?
Hi Maria!
Gaon charts are about units manufactured in South Korea, no matter where they are sold. BTS' label produces all their copies in the SK itself (there has been some minor versions of them in Japan and Taiwan), so their Gaon numbers represent the global sales of these albums. It's all about physical copies though, there is still need to add global downloads to them, which is why figures from the article are always a bit higher.
Will you be using Soribada, Xiami, and AWA to more accurately calculate other artist's sales in future updates?
"the full price was actually paid by Amazon"
And yet you didn't count Rihanna's copies of Anti which were paid by Samsung.
Your "norm" argument also doesn't make sense. It's hardly a norm in China considering only a handful of artists manage to actually get decent and significant album sales anyways. You are saying you have no problem counting an "outlier", and that the problem is when it becomes a norm. Yet in Korea you systematically count 1 CSPC unit as 6.66 singles sold, which sums up to around $2.3 for one unit. And yet again, you have no problem counting this fully. I know you'll probably justify your choice by saying South Korea's music market is bigger, but that barely is the case anymore. They are neck and neck (#6 and #7), so even that argument is slowly falling.
Hi Tommy!
Yes, we are testing what's the best way to come with realistic data for all strong emerging markets without getting into a bottleneck of hundreds of data to be retrieved. We are close to conclude that we will retrieve data for the top tracks of all artists in Genie (replacing Soribada), Xiami and AWA and thanks to them set a weighting proportional to the artist's success in these areas, rather than the fixed Spotify extrapolation.
Hi Chris!
You are once again completely off the mark, a pair of you are so centered into Taylor that you completely miss the real meaning of the data. I explained about SK already several time that the price of a download doesn't matter, what does matter is that it is reflective of a success in a strong market. Since there was virtually no data for album sales (as international artists don't sell there anymore) and their streaming platforms were unaccounted for, sales for ringtones (which used to be huge there), these downloads, no matter how cheap they were, do the job to reflect who's doing well or not. If we had data to account for every format for past years and with specific weightings for the country, we would conclude on similar totals, that is the point.
As for Rihanna, the Samsung copies were then given away, I don't even know how you can compare. It was a situation similar to the ones of Jay-Z and U2. It's the issue with fanatism, people like you try to look at who's biased towards who, while I can't care less about Taylor, Rihanna, Gaga, Jackson, the Beatles, Elvis, Eminem, or Queen when I talk about numbers. They are what they are no matter how much more you like the music of one of them.
Great! Hope you guys find a way to include India's streams numerous streaming services.
This is a slightly unrelated question - how do BTS' sales in South Korea compare to the overall size of the country's album market? I know that revenue-wise the market has exploded in the 2010s after collapsing in the 2000s, but I assumed streaming was the main driver of that. Are BTS' numbers a complete anomaly there, or are idol groups in general boosting physical sales as well?
Actually, South Korea is the only major market in the world where physical sales have grown the past years, and not just by a small margin either. In 2015 the physical market was worth 89.5 million dollars making it the 9th largest market globally. In 2017 however, it ranked 6th and had grew to a staggering 181.4 million. That's almost half of the UK physical market the same year.
Back in 2011 only the biggest groups like Super Junior and Girls' Generation could sell over 200k, now groups like BTS, EXO and Wanna One are selling from 500k to over a million for each release and smaller groups can easily sell over 100k!
Even though the album market is very strong now doesn't mean their sales there aren't impressive, No one have sold over 2 million copies of an album there since 2000! They definitely are the biggest group at the time in their home country.
Thank you Al!
That's a really interesting development. I do remember reading years back that just a few hundred thousand units would qualify as top-tier sales in South Korea, so seeing the sales of BTS really floored me. Given the different market it's more understandable, though still extremely impressive like you said!
Hi can you do BIGBANG next? Since there is a very large confusion between their sales... considering there was a claim they surpassed Backstreet Boys sales of 180M+ totally. I would really like to know how many physical, single album, streaming and YT equivalent streams worldwide, along with info coming from Gaon and Chinese and Korean streaming apps that may contribute to the sales. Thank you if ever you see this =)
their fans claim that they "surpassed" backstreet boys but most of bigbang's massive sales are from singles not albums. they had a couple of mega hits in china and korea but none of their albums could even cross 500k sales. there's no way they could surpass the legendary backstreet boys who had albums selling millions and millions.
There's actually a lot of debate about the validity of most of the claimed sales numbers for BigBang since accurate, reliable sources are hard to find and the vast difference between the information released by YG as opposed to what some charts (like Oricon for eg) have recorded. The numbers have too many discrepancies to support the claim that they outsold the Backstreet Boys. At one point ringtone clip downloads were being included in their sales figures and that obviously caused a problem. I honestly think for BigBang it would be harder to find the required information, at least for older figures anyways. For newer releases the info is more easily available, but it's safe to say they didn't outsell them considering BSB were global superstars (and had the global sales to match) whereas BB were mostly only famous in parts of Asia where the majority of their sales came from.
Hello Sir! I'm aware there's been an update for map of soul. Will this article be updated by any chance?
The fact that their digitals are insanely high is not hard to prove since Gaon have been quite transparent with DL sales in the past. They very likely sold more singles + albums than the Backstreet Boys in terms of volume but that really doesn't paint an accurate picture of success since a track download or a ringtone sale is not close to being worth as much as an album sale, especially not in South Korea. For me these claims that some 2000's artist outsold an older act due to digital downloads are just as relevant as Ed Sheeran having more total streams than Rihanna's digital downloads.
Hi, MJD
I think you double counted their streams and track downloads. In Korea, since 2013, the download platform and the streaming platiform is the same thing. For example, if you subscribed Melon for a month, I mean pay some money to be something like VIP or subscriber for a month, you are able to stream whatever and download all tracks. YOU DON'T HAVE TO PAY FOR ONE SINGLE TRACK. This is the same as subscribing Premium Spotify, the difference is the download figures are also counted. Both download and streaming figures are counted into Gaon, separately. But, the download figures actually worth the same as streams. This is totally double counting.
Hi djdj!
I know both are from same subscriptions, that's why we used to count downloads from SK and why I commented that we will discontinue them for recent years. Pure downloads are now down to $9 million for the year there, they are basically dead. I still have to set a end date for them yet. BTW, Gaon ranking since the start of 2018 merges both streams and DLs, we have set calculations to separate them. Their total coming from SK is still a bit inflated, although they are climbing so fast that they will no doubt make up for it in the future.
I check this site almost daily because I want to see the number of sales for Switzerland, since we don't actually get to know them..
With 10'000 units, BTS would get a gold certification in our country so I am anticipating to know the number of physical Persona album sales.
Hoping for an update soon! 🙏
I hope this is updated soon since we know Map of the Soul: Persona and Love Yourself: Answer did 500k+ in the US each but it doesn’t say as such in the graphs. Thank you for doing this tho!
They still have no albums over 500k pure in the US. The two albums mentioned are certified gold there for 500k units, but that includes streaming and track equivalent sales.
