What determines the streaming behavior of one fandom vs another?

    Why for example is NCT so weak on streams but huge in physicals? Where did this behavior start and what rewards it?


    BTS has killer streams for any artist but especially insane for a Korean act. BP is very strong, too. Yes, both have good playlisting compared to every other K act, but even without, the fans know to show up.


    Why is this less the case for Twice and NCT et al? Twice can still sell out large venues worldwide and move units but the streams aren’t there. Is it that they lack the playlisting so fans don’t receive the “signal” to stream — or is this behavior coming from something else?


    Even more puzzling is the streaming issues for young 4th gen groups, who seem MASSIVE when it comes to instantly selling out tours and physicals (Stray Kids landing 2 Billboard #1s in a year!). Their fans also are mainly Gen Z, who literally came of age when streaming was the norm. So why do the streams lag? How are fans, who know every single word at these shows, listening to the music if not streaming? You can’t tell me it’s on CD.


    I just would love some quality discussion on this because it’s an interesting topic without clear answers. No need to shade any particular group. What are your thoughts on why some fandoms take streaming more seriously than others?

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    I think groups like TWICE and Stray Kids have good streams for groups who are only known within K-pop community and basically supported by fans. It's not that the fans aren't streaming, It's just that only K-pop fans are streaming, If you know what I mean.


    BTS and BLACKPINK broke the K-pop bubble to an extent where not only their fans or K-pop fans care about their releases, but a bigger audience too. Not to mention that BTS themselves have a much large fandom than any other on top of that.

    BTs and BP have more support globally in countries where Spotify is popular but that is accentuated by the fact that they get playlisting.


    New Jeans are already about to hit 10m monthly listeners on spotify and they're only right at the bottom of the TTH playlist. BP and BTS get put right near the top on release day. Ive get good playlisting as well and unsurprisingly their streams can beat much bigger groups.


    Fans try to deny there impact but then during release the lack of playlisting is one of the first things they will blame if the numbers are lower than a previous release or versus someone else. You saw that when fans were arguing the initial streams of Lisa v Rose.


    It's why growth in streams and popularity is hard to measure when there is so much payola involved.

    Groups that only sell well but lack streams have older fans who have to focus their attention on work. Though I've seen a kpop fan who works inside a laboratory tweet like every 5 minutes. If I was her boss I'd fire her ass.

    Quote from They keep talking I keep walking (67)

    Groups that only sell well but lack streams have older fans who have to focus their attention on work. Though I've seen a kpop fan who works inside a laboratory tweet like every 5 minutes. If I was her boss I'd fire her ass.

    You need to explain about BTS then. They also have a large chunk of adult fans, hence their unmatched buying power. But the streams are still huge too. I’m a working adult and I listen to BTS on Spotify while working when I can. Earphones exists.

    Some fandoms just don't care that much about streaming.

    Quote from Pink Venom (351)

    Some fandoms just don't care that much about streaming.

    Streaming means listening to the music. So some fandoms don’t like to listen to music, and only buy albums because of photo cards?

    Instead of questioning streams you should question sales of these groups. All these nobodies are selling more than western pop stars.

    Quote from 숨 참고 love dive (502)

    You need to explain about BTS then. They also have a large chunk of adult fans, hence their unmatched buying power. But the streams are still huge too. I’m a working adult and I listen to BTS on Spotify while working when I can. Earphones exists.

    adult fans do the buying. Teens do the streaming. 50-50 Duh

    Quote from 숨 참고 love dive (502)

    You need to explain about BTS then. They also have a large chunk of adult fans, hence their unmatched buying power. But the streams are still huge too. I’m a working adult and I listen to BTS on Spotify while working when I can. Earphones exists.

    They have a far greater adult fandom and a far greater young fandom then other BGs, there's nothing really to explain, BTS is big to the point of being useless as a point of comparison to anything else.

    Idk about other groups but TWICE's music is mainly consumed by their fandom and I have no idea if this is good or not.


    There is no improvement in streaming from FOL album. The Feels remains their best performing song on global platforms. Even ICSM did better than TTT. TWICE streaming numbers depend a lot on songs. Their fandom isn't starved of content so ONCEs don't tend to take things seriously like Blinks who get music every two years and if the song doesn't click then it won't do well, that's it. The difference between them and BP/BTS is that both have much bigger fandoms and ALOT of casual fans on top of that. Anything they put out is gonna garner attention.


    They don't get good playlisting as well. We have seen from NewJeans it can massively increase MLs.


    TWICE have a lot of potential. I feel if JYPE gives them another English song with a FS/CFM concept, it would increase their popularity greatly. Not even an English song is needed. ICSM is Korean and did well on global platforms.


    TWICE have been doing retro/cute concept for two years now. It's time to bring mature/GC concept back. If Perfect World was a Korean song, it would've absolutely smashed.

    I feel like it it has something to do with the culture of the fandom.


    Some fandoms are very focused on streaming totals and hyperorganized about achieving those goals, while other fandoms just aren't.


    It's not just about whether you like or dislike the music, but can often be about your level of commitment to develop or discover the playlists, follow the guidelines for plays to count and commitment to continue doing this over days and weeks. There's lots of footage on Twt of arenas and domes and stadiums full of people singing along to every word of NCT 127 songs. We listen to the music and we love it and we know the words even tho it's in another language for some of us. But we aren't necessarily going to play three other songs to play a song to make it count for a Spotify stream. :spammerpepe:


    Of course, that's not the only thing that elevates streaming totals, but just like it's an overstatement to say no one listens to a song because the totals aren't what you think they ought to be, it's also an overstatement to say Spotify totals in kpop do not include a large element of coordinated streaming efforts.


    I just want to listen to Tasty or Gold Dust on a godamned endless loop.

    Fuck what that means for the Spotify streams. (Sorry, 127.)


    If I listen to Forever Only 19 times in a day, it's reflected in my personal Spotify stats, but not in the overall Spotify statistics. That's the nature of streaming stats. It can certainly be a great indicator of popularity but it never tells the full story.


    This current 127 comeback is one of the few times I've seen Czennies being hyper focused on getting the streams and views up to offset the distro issues and even tho we all tried hard for the week or so, you can see where it clearly fell off for us once we ran out of steam not because we don't like the song or the MV but because I don't want to watch it over and over and over and over. That's just not the fandom we are. We want them to do well, of course, because we love them, but we're not terribly worried about being the first group to do whatever.

    We can't even get to 100M on a song when it's RIGHT THERE. ;judgingpepe:


    Competitiveness seems to play a role for some fandoms - I see a lot of Twts where they are trying to better each other's records, so that too can play a role in streaming behavior. Again, chilzens can't relate. I think Dreamzens are stronger at this and well, Wayzenni just don't have the numbers.


    Finally, it seems like some fandoms are focused primarily on listening to just one artist and not multiple artists. For example, I see fans of some fandoms say "they only listen to that group" and aren't interested in anything else. In contrast, other fandoms are much more explicit multis and listen to many groups, which again, spreads out the streams.


    And actually, this is a rather specific issue for NCT - I can listen to NCT all day but be listening to 4 different groups, which is true of many NCTzens. This divides the streams because it's not all focused on one group even tho it kinda is. LOL


    Okay, one last thought that I never see discussed, but find really interesting: it feels like a lot of bg have the streams more dispersed across their discography. It seems like many gg have a few blockbuster songs with 100M+ streams, but bsides with 15M or less. In contrast, when I look at the most popular bgs, they may have fewer 100M+, but the streams are more evenly distributed across their tt and bsides than the very large gap with gg. I get that this has to do with the fact the gg blockbuster is gp-driven where the bg disco is fan-driven, but I do think it's quite interesting when people talk about much groups get streamed. There's the "I stream this hit" vs "I stream this group's work," but this creates another variable in looking at streaming across groups.


    Okay one more last thought: it's strange to see you cite SKZ as being weaker in streams when they are now the second most streamed bg on Spotify. In general, the 4th gen groups seem to me to be well streamed on Spotify in comparison to their 3rd gen peers. Are you talking about only Korea?

    For nct and twice it's easy to explain.


    Twice have very little engagement with their bsides. Their titles are doing good~fine but their bsides streams are bad for someone at their level selling out arenas for touring. I would say it's because The sheer amount of songs and albums they've released and the lack of acknowledgement towards bsides since the beginning from the company and group. The absolute focus on title track promotions only. I can't predict the future but you'll see this happening with IVE too if they ever release an album.


    For NCT they just don't have casual listeners. Their title tracks drive whatever casual fans away from the bsides too. And from what it looks like their last 2 cbs were not as well recieved within the fandom itself.


    Both of them are surpassed in streams by 4th gen ggs(who aren't comfortably playing arenas yet) and bgs. That's why people say their streams are weak. No one can keep the longevity with streaming culture. They just have less people checking them out for their music.

    You overstate how important the Twice fandom is and understate how dependent they are on casual listeners.


    Twice's streams depend on the song because of their dependence on causal listeners who aren't going to eat up everything they put out, not due to the volume. The fact that their b-side streams are very weak compared to their average title track popularity also shows that the fandom isn't that big or important in their title track popularity. As their b-sides actually only get listened to by their fandom as they get no push to people outside of it and their b-sides are supposedly as popular as ever with the fans.

    Quote from Aegyo Supporter (441)

    adult fans do the buying. Teens do the streaming. 50-50 Duh

    It's true that teens have more time to stream a lot of hours, but they have parents or relatives who buy them the albums or they can save money from Christmas or birthdays to buy stuff. Adult fans buy more, but we also stream while we can. I listen to music at work for like 9-10 hours and it is mostly my faves. And one can stream at home while taking a shower and getting ready to go out, doing the chores, cooking, or just to relax.

    Quote from YG Dungeon Dweller (399)

    You overstate how important the Twice fandom is and understate how dependent they are on casual listeners.


    Twice's streams depend on the song because of their dependence on causal listeners who aren't going to eat up everything they put out, not due to the volume. The fact that their b-side streams are very weak compared to their average title track popularity also shows that the fandom isn't that big or important in their title track popularity. As their b-sides actually only get listened to by their fandom as they get no push to people outside of it and their b-sides are supposedly as popular as ever with the fans.

    Twice before comeback had around 8/9M MLs and they peaked at 11M in FOL era. It fell down by a couple of millions due to the 9 month hiatus but they reached a new peak when B1&2 was released by what? 500k I think.


    They depend on their fandom the most. There is never a significant increase in followers, views, streams that show that they gained fans and people outside of the fandom are consuming their music. If the song is liked by the fandom and casual fans like The Feels or Pop, it will do well. TTT wasn't well received by either so it underperformed everywhere.


    Who said Twice bsides are popular within the fandom? ONCEs suck at streaming. Like their bsides only started getting attention after Love Foolish I think. Most people didn't even bother to check out their bsides before.


    Twice's music is consumed mostly by their fandom. Their MLs on Spotify after a whole new album hardly increasing shows that.

    Quote from Anons Resident (802)

    And from what it looks like their last 2 cbs were not as well recieved within the fandom itself.

    Eh? The last two cbs have been well received in the fandom. Their last two comebacks (Sticker and Favorite) have some of their fastest moving tt in streams, with the albums overall reaching higher numbers faster than their predecessors. The latest cb is only a day or two off many of these totals. While Sticker might have been polarizing to some, people sure are streaming it.


    Just a few examples:


    Sticker was tied with Hot Sauce as the fastest NCT song to reach 600K ULs until it was passed by Glitch Mode. It’s the second longest charting song on Melon behind Kick It. The album is the fastest 127 album to pass 100M streams on Melon.


    It was the fastest album to reach many records for 127 on Spotify, as was the song. Some were lapped by Favorite, the repack.


    (I actually found the speed and strength of its streams surprising for how polarizing the tt was initially.)


    Their most recent comeback 2 Baddies is only a day or two off many of these totals.


    When Czennies actually dislike a song, it’s reflected in the numbers, like Wakey Wakey (the lowest tt), Punch (the lowest Korean tt aside from the Korean version of Highway to Heaven), Far, Dreamer, Paper Plane or My Van (the lowest Korean bsides).


    In contrast, Sticker is the 14th most streamed 127 song. Favorite is the 9th. Even amongst all NCT songs (all units), they are in the top 30.


    2 Baddies is moving at a decent speed.


    As someone who’s been tracking the numbers since Sticker, I was surprised by the stability of Sticker in the streams. Favorite shot past it but it actually continued to climb much faster than I would have thought.

    Twice have pretty much never been on a proper hiatus, in the "hiatus" you're referencing it included touring, Japanese releases and a solo debut. There's pretty much always a driver back to their music.


    There's a reason why songs of theirs that aren't well received (a bunch of their recent ones) can get outdone by 4th gen groups. Because as soon as you take away kpop casuals their numbers start looking a lot less impressive versus other popular kpop groups.


    Twice with only fandom streaming don't put out great numbers. But Twice numbers remain big as they constantly put out content and music (so also have a huge catalogue).


    If Twice actually ever went on a proper 6 month hiatus you'd see a big drop in their numbers to make it more in line with their b-sides.


    There's not a kpop group around that has such a big disparity in their title streams (fandom + public) and their b-sides (purely fandom pretty much).


    Conclusion: Their numbers are very casual dependent and the way Twice are presented makes the group a big attractor of fans that stan for personalities/visuals/para-social relationships rather than music.

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