charts discussion South Korea album market bigger than US?

[Cloröx]

10 hours ago, Swirl900 said:

No because for physicals, Gaon tallies shipments (not sales) worldwide, and not just in South Korea. Most kpop albums will come with a little stickers saying they count towards gaon and hanteo. So if you walk into a target into the US, all the kpop albums there were already counted with Gaon. And if someone buys it, it will also count towards Hanteo (which is the chart that tracks physical sales).

 

Billboard on the other hand, only tracks sales and only in the US.

Is that mean ChartMaster/Mediatraffic are double counting Kpop artists which inflates the stats? Damn it

[Eternium]

21 hours ago, Saintlor said:

Why are none of the best selling SK albums solo artists?

 

It's interesting how it's the opposite of western countries how solo stars are bigger

They were about 20 years ago. But they’re more performance based and it’s much easier to train and create strong group choreo where members can help cover each other’s flaws. 
 

Plus, SM entertainment really revolutionized the market with Girls’ Generation (and Super Junior, to a lesser extent, after their initial concept failed). They picked girls with different backgrounds to appeal to different countries (Jessica and Tiffany were American and could speak English, Sooyoung was Japanese, etc.) and each girl had a talent they excelled in (Taeyeon for singing, Hyoyeon for dancing, Seohyun for acting, Sunny for her variety show skills and personality, YoonA for her beauty, etc.) and then they trained all of the girls for most of their adult life so they’d all be exceptional performers even where they lacked certain natural talents. It helped revolutionize their market because they not only conquered and dominated every field in Korean entertainment, but their members garnered interest overseas and helped them break 100k+ with their first album (a huge revival for the Korean market back then especially for females). The blueprint has just been copied over and over again since and their market has just grown.

21 hours ago, KillingYourCareer said:

I'll never understand why they do this

South Korea was a poor country. To help remedy this, they invested a lot starting in the 1980s to help their entertainment market grow so they could be like Japan/the U.K. - a small country with a huge market with global influence. It’s why all of their top stars are known for Hallyu (the Korean wave) and get pushed in so many different countries like Japan, the U.S., China and the U.K. They strategically replaced a lot of our global superstars through years of hard work.

 

To top it off, they do weekly music programs like Top of the Pops or TRL. If you want to help your fave win and guarantee a long career, they need to do well. So South Korea allows international fans to buy albums/stream on YouTube. And it has saved their market.

20 hours ago, Swirl900 said:

The digital charts are a much better reflection of who is actually popular within the country.

This is a myth started by YG stans because their company had stronger connections with certain download sites. The South Korean public both buy music and stream/download it. It’s just that international fanbases keep getting excluded more and more from the digital charts. But sajaegi is still incredibly popular - especially for boy group stans. And artists are always going to do better on certain digital sites if their label has a connection.

11 hours ago, Coklek92 said:

Is that mean ChartMaster/Mediatraffic are double counting Kpop artists which inflates the stats? Damn it

No to either one. MediaTraffic makes up global numbers and doesn’t do SPS in countries where the official chart counts it (meaning any streams or digital single sales in Asia aren’t counted). It took their chart almost a month to catch up to what BlackPink has sold in pure sales - meaning they missed all of the streams, YT views, etc. of the most streamed female album of the year. It’s why their charts have no validity.

[Swirl900]

9 hours ago, Eternium said:

This is a myth started by YG stans because their company had stronger connections with certain download sites. The South Korean public both buy music and stream/download it. It’s just that international fanbases keep getting excluded more and more from the digital charts. But sajaegi is still incredibly popular - especially for boy group stans. And artists are always going to do better on certain digital sites if their label has a connection.

I don't really understand the point you're trying to make though...cause yes why would INTERNATIONAL fans be reflected on the South Korean digital charts? It reflects Korean tastes not the tastes of people outside the country. It is also not a myth that the songs that get more streams and downloads are more popular than songs which get almost no traction whatsoever and can barely chart. With the Melon reforms things are even stricter now, and one can compare the Unique Listeners from different songs to get an idea of how much the public actually likes it, vs. how much is just fangirls spamming their boygroup's songs. Other than for BTS, this spamming rarely works for more than a week anyway.

 

Artists like AKMU, IU and Paul Kim are just genuinely popular with the public and it's reflected in how well their songs and album tracks do across platforms over time. Meanwhile, many boygroups and some girlgroups move many more physical copies than these artists, but struggle to get hits (let alone get anyone to buy/stream their album tracks), and considering the good majority of these physical copies are sales from outside the country (from c-bars, western fans, japanese fans, etc.), it's clear to see they don't have the same GP appeal in Korea outside their fandoms.