In the light of blackpink inevitable end let's discuss one of the "biggest girl group in the world" weakest and most embarrassing points in the media played narrative of yg and blinks of them being a HUGE POPULAR and SUCCESSFUL act in the US market, their pure sales. Blinks sold blackpink to western stans as some sort of ultimate mega popular and successful act that was about to create a storm in the states with their debut, all those lies shattered when they barely cracked 110K units with 80K pure sales with their debut album despite months of selling bundles, lots of album versions and collabs with selena gomez and cardi b, the excuses and copium after it was hilarious not gonna lie.
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2 years laters with the early predictions of their second full album were around 80K units with barely 55K pure sales I was shocked, I knew blinks and yg mediaplay was a lie but not even I was expecting such numbers... 55K pure sales for a full album was barely above the 52K pure nayeon, a twice's soloist did with an unpromoted mini album like wtf?? After those crazily low predictions yg and interscope panicked and hit the emergency button: they send those girls to take photos on target stores with their albums, set a full week of buying parties on stationhead, they even went as low to paid twitter influencers to say "omg blackpink new album let me go get my wallet" to create fake buzz (one of the most embarrassing moments in kpop history in my opinion ), thanks to all that they managed to get them a pituful #1 on billboard 200 with less units and pure sales than their debut album 2 years before.
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And know we have seen groups like twice, bts, newjeans, stray kids, txt, seventeen easily surpass 100K pure sales without doing any of the tricks yg resorted with blackpink, hell even each bts soloists sold more pure sales than any blackpink album. So what's the reason for this? Blackpink is undeniable more famous than most of the names i mentioned, they are capable of selling lot of concert tickets too, why their fandom is so weak on billboard 200 pure sales?