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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.
