Hanteo vs Gaon : Who has most accurate numbers???

so there are fanwars

and now album charting wars???

let he who is without sin throw the first flower pot!!!!

I was under the impression that both are independent of each other? How will one know the actual number of the other? Aren’t they tallying different things?

really lol, i have thought hanteo only counts if someone bought it

Gaon is Korea’s oldest and most reliant chart and hence only those numbers are correct IMO.

They track across the board form physicals, streams and over all digitals. I’d believe them.

Quote from Cringe_fest

I was under the impression that both are independent of each other? How will one know the actual number of the other? Aren’t they tallying different things?

Yes, but being logical, sales on Gaon should always be higher or at least equal to Hanteo. They are basically saying Hanteo is reporting sales or shipments of albums that haven’t even been shipped from the distributor to retailers.

Both has its own problems from what I see.

Gaon counts shipments but to the stores not to the customers.

Hanteo counts sales from Hanteo certified stores to customers but only from their certified shops so it doesn’t reflect every sale.

I said back then that there was a problem with Gaon counted shipments, looks like they are the real problem here

Quote from kpopace26

Yes, they are independent from each other.

In a nutshell, from what I know, Hanteo supposedly counts real-time and retail album sales from all of Hanteo-certified/accredited stores. (C2C)

Gaon counts all album shipments from distributors. (I'm not sure if I used the correct term.)

I think I've also read here in the forum before that there are distributors who don't report shipments to Gaon? (I'm also not sure though if I remember that correctly.)

But these two always have differing numbers, with lower sales numbers on Hanteo most (if not always) of the time.

Display More

If they are using the same distributors in general to report these numbers, what is the point of having gaon AND hanteo? What end purpose are they aiming for in reporting album sales that one may accuse the other of falsifying. Are they gaining some kind of profit from reporting true or false information? I’m just confuzzled on the fact that they get their numbers probably from the same distributor, which I thought was not the case, hence why there is BOTH and not just one entity reporting these numbers. I don't follow numbers of sales like other people do but I thought when others post stuff like this on here, what hanteo reports is separate from what gaon or whoever else reports, thereby you combine each of those to get a total. Maybe I was misunderstanding the concept this whole time…?

Quote from Lilina

Yes, but being logical, sales on Gaon should always be higher or at least equal to Hanteo. They are basically saying Hanteo is reporting sales or shipments of albums that haven’t even been shipped from the distributor to retailers.

I think for Lisa because Hanteo counts different versions like a vinyl case as the same album but Gaon counts them separately. The gap is little so this is likely the case.

Quote from kpopace26

Let's find out who are the Hanteo and Gaon stans.

On a serious note, Gaon's response is just too interesting to pass it up.

are they the only two? like are there any other entities that count albums or anything?

Quote from Cringe_fest

If they are using the same distributors in general to report these numbers, what is the point of having gaon AND hanteo? What end purpose are they aiming for in reporting album sales that one may accuse the other of falsifying. Are they gaining some kind of profit from reporting true or false information? I’m just confuzzled on the fact that they get their numbers probably from the same distributor, which I thought was not the case, hence why there is BOTH and not just one entity reporting these numbers. I don't follow numbers of sales like other people do but I thought when others post stuff like this on here, what hanteo reports is separate from what gaon or whoever else reports, thereby you combine each of those to get a total. Maybe I was misunderstanding the concept this whole time…?

No, you don’t have to combine Hanteo and Gaon sales as Hanteo sales are included in the sales Gaon reports.

Hanteo: reports shipments from retailers to end customers (example: shipments from Ktown4u to its customers).

Gaon: reports shipments from distributors to retailers (example: shipments from YG Plus to Ktown4u). Retailers include both Hanteo-certified stores and non-certified stores.

This is why it doesn’t make sense that an album could have higher sales on Hanteo than Gaon

Quote from Lilina

No, you don’t have to combine Hanteo and Gaon sales as Hanteo sales are included in the sales Gaon reports.

Hanteo: reports shipments from retailers to end customers (example: shipments from Ktown4u to its customers).

Gaon: reports shipments from distributors to retailers (example: shipments from YG Plus to Ktown4u). Retailers include both Hanteo-certified stores and non-certified stores.

This is why it doesn’t make sense that an album could have higher sales on Hanteo than Gaon

Oh I see. Thanks for clearing that up.

Gaon is so shady lmao but these fans making theories about an official chart supported by the government sabotaging their fave are even more hilarious

Im not sure why theres still confusion after all these years.

Hanteo counts sales from affiliated stores and extrapolates from that, their numbers will never be exact but a close approximation.

Gaon in turn counts shipped from distributor, not actual store sales.

Gaon shading Hanteo? Interesting.

Quote from kpopace26

From Gaon's response to the inquiry, they're kinda saying Hanteo also counts albums not yet shipped? How does that work, if you have any idea? Or I'm just plain dumb, hehe.

Maybe we're reading it wrongly or we need to know more details.

from my understanding Gaon makes it seem like albums even in warehouse is counted by Hanteo? But that doesn’t sound right. I’m confused

The shots are fired

I am confused? Hanteo is doing the same thing gaon is doing?

Quote from kpopace26

From Gaon's response to the inquiry, they're kinda saying Hanteo also counts albums not yet shipped? How does that work, if you have any idea? Or I'm just plain dumb, hehe.

Maybe we're reading it wrongly or we need to know more details.

I don't see how this still confuses people all these years later. It doesn't matter on Hanteo if the album has been shipped.

Hanteo is POS data, Gaon is not.

Once you pay for something at a store Hanteo counts it assuming the store is certified, even if it hasn't been shipped yet. For example, if you bought a package from Amazon when you check out and pay Hanteo would count it at that point, however, Gaon won't count whatever it is you bought until it has been shipped, there's always some lag between the two unless you buy in store.

Hanteo - counts albums at the point of purchase on/after release date

Ganon - counts albums at the point of shipment

Hanteo being more than Gaon and this response would insinuate people have purchased albums (and because they've paid for them Hanteo count it) however the albums have not yet been shipped to these people. So theoretically, you should have people that have paid for the album but are still waiting for whatever reason for it to be shipped to them. This could be for example because stores have taken orders they haven't been able to fulfil yet as they haven't had the stock shipped to them yet for whatever reason. Another reason and someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm 99% sure Hanteo does not adjust for returns/refunds (they didn't used to in the past definitely), so if stores took orders they couldn't fulfil and eventually refunded it, Hanteo won't adjust for that. So Hanteo also has "refunded" album sales sitting in there.

Quote from kpopace26

From Gaon's response to the inquiry, they're kinda saying Hanteo also counts albums not yet shipped? How does that work, if you have any idea? Or I'm just plain dumb, hehe.

Maybe we're reading it wrongly or we need to know more details.

Quote from sheryllee3

from my understanding Gaon makes it seem like albums even in warehouse is counted by Hanteo? But that doesn’t sound right. I’m confused

Im thinking its just lost in translation, probably ran their korean answer throu google translate and it was mangled

I think what they mean is that hanteo counts sales from their connected stores, but not all stores are connected to hanteo, thus their numbers can never be 100% accurate.

Gaon counts all shipments from all korean distributors, thus all retailers ww are included in their numbers (As long as the distributors report the correct numbers). But it also means their numbers are in most cases higher than whats actually been sold, but it wont be off by much in most cases as retailers dont like having overstock.

Gaon : distributor -- > store

Hanteo : store --> consumer

main problem for them :

Gaon : they fk up their numbers, they count too many albums for various reasons, sometimes they count too few albums. Because the albums aren't really "sold" when they count them it's not that precise. Because they use distributor numbers they have the most chance to count every single album sold so this is why everyone use gaon in the industry.

Hanteo : they count like 95% of the stores worldwide, but sometimes there are stores that do not count or sometimes the albums do not report correctly so the numbers tend to be lower. I usually prefer their stats cz it's actually album being sold and I don't want my album be counted if I don't buy it in the end.

Preorders Gaon is always more reliable of course. If hanteo manages to certify every single store they should be better

Quote from kpopace26

Let's find out who are the Hanteo and Gaon stans.

Let's make some badge

Quote from kpopace26

From Gaon's response to the inquiry, they're kinda saying Hanteo also counts albums not yet shipped? How does that work, if you have any idea? Or I'm just plain dumb, hehe.

Maybe we're reading it wrongly or we need to know more details.

Hanteo basically has relationships to fanbases, for example Chinese fan bars. They will count orders from those bars as albums sold even if they aren't printed yet.

Gaon Charts are literally produced by the Korea Music Content Association and sponsored by South Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. They are the most accurate measurement for sales we have. Any ecxess albums will be returned at the end of the year and subtracted from the total.

Hanteo on the other hand is relatively unreliable as they only use their verified stores and also double count albums that are returned and bought again. It is extremely Korean and Chinese heavy, especially Chinese buyers basically all buy from Hanteo certified stores (especially Ktown4u) with their mass buying.

It's basically always Hanteo heavy fandoms that try to discredit Gaon because they want to make their groups look better.

Quote from laleria

Really? I've been on their site (Hanteo) and couldn't find a list of stores that are certified by them. Could you help me with this information?

I just quote them lol, I don't think that they released the full list of hanteo affiliated stores, but all the "big" and "reliable" store I found are Hanteo affiliated. So it's probably true, though the number should be (95% of all the big stores were most albums are sold are counted). The weird kpop store that sell a BTS album that doesn't exist probably isn't affiliated.

It’s always kinda funny to me that Korea considers Gaon the standard, but most I-fans insist on Hanteo. (Yes, I understand why but it’s still funny.)

Maybe someone can help me understand: it sure doesn’t seem like Hanteo covers 95% of the shops worldwide, when I know they don’t cover major U.S. retailers and there don’t seem to be a lot of Hanteo certified retailers on their website?