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Very well-researched and accurate data, with no prejudiced opinions like it’s unfortunately the case with many cheap Western media.
Thank you for this piece.
Hi! I'm confused with the single sales stats. Blood Sweat & Tears, Spring Day, DNA and Fake Love have all been certified by Gaon for reaching 2,500,000 downloads, so how come their total sales here are all lower than 2.5M? Am I missing something? Also is there a reason why Chinese sales are weighted but not other countries? I know the albums there are cheaper but theyre cheaper in a bunch of other countries too so I'm curious
if you see the charts, fr. LY: Answer in “asia” only japan and SK are explicitly written but asia sales are higher meaning that other countries are also included.
also ROW stands for “rest of the world”. most countries, like south asian’s ones aren’t considered big counties/markets in music industry that’s why they’re not written.
Hi Simone!
As we stated previously, South Korean 'downloads' post-2017 have been removed since they aren't downloads anymore. Right now this market is dead, Gaon considers downloads paid-for users of streaming platforms who download a song to some device. In the past we used these statitics since they still reflected popular artists in this area, but now that we are factoring in Genie streams into the formula, that would be double counting.
The weighting of Chinese digital sales (since physicals aren't weighted) follows the same logic of reflecting the real strength of a market. Chinese numbers are often reached with tons of multi-purchases because they are so cheap that fans can literally buy hundreds of units of a download. This distorts both the real success of an artist as well as the real importance of the market. The weigthing based on the selling price off sets this situation.
Yes I do know that BTS is a fast selling music group! But they are nowhere even remotely close to one of the top selling music groups in music history! I just don't get why pepple think they are????!!!! Once they hit 100 million in unit sales then they can begin to have bragging rights. And I seen a youtube video comparing BTS to the Beatles! Yeah riiiigjt!!!!! The Beatles sold over 1 billion units. Compare that to the tiny 12 million of BTS!!!! BTS are way overrated to what they really are in unit sales!!!!!
Downloads are still downloads, it is just that Gaon chart decided that instead of releasing country wide streaming and download numbers, they would create a digital points system instead which would have points for the number of downloads and the streaming numbers added together for the total digital index. Gaon still updates download and streaming numbers when a post 2017 song gets certified, or when a pre-2017 song reaches the milestones of the different certifications. Many of your download and streaming numbers for Bts's promoted singles could 100% be updated based on those Gaon updates. Also Genie is only one platform and is not even the biggest one. Melon is the biggest, but again that is only 1 platform out of many. Gaon is where all of the Korean sales (both physical and song sales) and streams are taken into account.
The Beatles have had nearly 60 years to rack up that many sales, BTS have had 7. How many album sales did the Beatles have in the same time. [and remember, the 12million is physical albums and does not include streaming and digital sales, which puts them in the 40million plus range. ]. No one is ever likely to catch up with the Beatles, they have been popular for far too long for direct sales comparisons. Are BTS as big as 1970 Beatles? I doubt it, but they are close.
They really aren't close. The Beatles were a worldwide phenomenom that is still uncomparable to this day. Interesting to see how BTS will develop though, what kind of impact they will have.
Maps of soul chinese sales , you underestimated? Like they had 560k in pre-orders and new upcoming album has 770 k in pre orders. Like kim taehyung solo bar is already at 210k. Can you clarify about underestimated chinese sales? These are not cheap digital copies but fully costed albums pre ordered
https://twitter.com/AttackonBTS_CHN/status/1230510681373282304/photo/1
https://twitter.com/AttackonBTS_CHN/status/1230529983497437184/photo/1
I hope you clarify this. As a fan of your work, this thing is bothering me. Because you have underestimated chinese album sales by a lot. Mass purchase or bulk buy, people paid for them at full price , so why are not they included?
We have Chinese physical sales included in their Asian pure sales since they are included in Gaon totals because they are imports from South Korea.
Those who are comparing BTS with Beatles are the media only. BTS is a Korean group a language which isn’t spoken by many people and still selling millions worldwide is something which should be written down in history. Plus, they debuted 7 years ago and beatles is a 60 years old group. There is no need to compare these two amazing groups. Plus BTS isn’t overrated they have worked hard to come up to this level. I hope you listen to bts and see how great artists they are. They are breaking the language barrier here and I am pretty sure their name would be written down for this.
No. BTS are worldwide phenomenon. BTS are popular everywhere: west and east. The Beatles were huge phenomenon for global music in times when global music= west music. This times are gone.
