Red velvet fails to crack 400K copies, Aespa suffers a 36% decrease of sales, is this finally the end?

    Red velvet 4th full album had lot of hype and revelus were arguing this was about to be their biggest era because of the anticipation and engagements on social media but it couldn't even crack 400K sales, after their hiatus their sales started to grow at a very curious rate multiplying x10 and finally joining the million seller groups.


    Aespa debuted breaking album sales records and their last album got over 2 million of pre orders, it sold 1.4M in it's first 2 days and 1.8M after the second week on gaon but drama, their current era, is still below 1.2M after 10 days...


    What the fuck happened? Is finally the the era where inflated kpop sales keep increasing for no goddam reason and without an explanation over? is this the end of the "yeah the sales got a huge jump because somehow my group cbars got x2 or x3 more pre orders barely some months after the last comeback" thing? Even seventeen and stray kids the biggest culprits in the indiscriminated inflation of kpop sales couldn't increase their sales and instead sold considerably less... Kpop is going through hard times right now, youtube views hit an all time low, korean charts are dying and now even the inflated sales are getting affected lmfao.


    If that's the case good riddance friends, let's ce-ce-ce-celebrate :pepe-toast:

  • randkpopstan

    Changed the title of the thread from “Red velvet fails to crack 400K sales, Aespa suffers a 36% decrease of sales, is this finally the end?” to “Red velvet fails to crack 400K copies, Aespa suffers a 36% decrease of sales, is this finally the end?”.

    This is the end of KPOP as we know it! ;( I know it's because of C-fans no longer bulk buying, but maybe interest in K-pop is going down too. BTS are off to the military, Blackpink are doing their own thing, 4th gen is doing okay and 5th gen isn't making any big groups anytime soon (aside from ZB1). Maybe if the queen of K-pop IU comes back, all will be well. :/ Or maybe this is just the end of fraudulent sales, who knows. It's fine to me, I just hope tiktok gets banned so kpop music will go back to being good.

    Quote from K-PL

    imo cbars have been bleed dry earlier in the year when each fandom wanted to outdo other fandoms, and ive shifted their priority from ULs to albums.

    Ive did increase their sales very slightly while completely under performing everywhere else, is very curious that big discrepancy in results.

    Quote from gerrard174

    for SM groups, definitely is shipping issue..

    Thanks Kakoa for that

    Wouldn't kakao want to recover financially after all those problems with sm? It makes no sense this auto sabotage

    Quote from Onewbias

    Why do C-fans stop buying though?

    Maybe that's the thing, c-fans were never actually "buying"

    Quote from ellenote

    This is the end of KPOP as we know it! ;( I know it's because of C-fans no longer bulk buying, but maybe interest in K-pop is going down too. BTS are off to the military, Blackpink are doing their own thing, 4th gen is doing okay and 5th gen isn't making any big groups anytime soon (aside from ZB1). Maybe if the queen of K-pop IU comes back, all will be well. :/ Or maybe this is just the end of fraudulent sales, who knows. It's fine to me, I just hope tiktok gets banned so kpop music will go back to being good.

    I think interest for kpop has probably decreased a lot in the last year but albums sales were still increasing, stray kids albums movements in the last year with their 3 albums has been insane, in a couple of months they increased like 90% in their sales and then lost that 90% of sales again.


    And sadly tiktok will still rule the music industry for a long time so kpop companies have no other option than make 2 minute songs suited for tiktok virality and prioritize their idols doing 50 tiktoks with 30 different idols in the hopes of landing a hit.

    Quote from Coldhit

    IVE, ZB1, and EN- are doing well as they have easily outsold their previous albums. However, it’s possible that certain groups’ sales with their previous albums were inflated. The drop in sales may be coming from China for extremely popular groups such as SVT, TXT, aespa, and SKZ. I feel like Le Sserafim, NewJeans, Itzy, and NMIXX will be fine, as the majority of their sales are not from China

    :pepe-notes:

    I suspect itzy, nmixx and lesserafim sales are also inflated by supposed cbar pre orders, their numbers make no sense.

  • AllKill VIP
  • AllKill VIP
  • AllKill VIP
    Quote from Icaro_Ribeiro

    Chinese fans stopped their bulk purchases. No clue about the reason. Stray Kids decreased over 1 million compared to their last album as well

    It's hard to believe is all because chinese fans, stray kids got a jump of almost 2M of copies in 8 months and then 6 months later lost almost 1.5M of sales, that plus the actual albums bought by the cbars would amount for like +3M of sales just from chinese fans, just impossible, last time i heard about huge chinese purchases it was aespa and blackpink doing 1M-1.5M of purchases from china thanks to their massive individual subfandoms.

    Quote from HardcoreBLINK

    C-bars are pulling back on purchases


    Even skz sales are lesser this time around


    Will be interesting to see if it extends to Jennie & BP next year 👀


    Quote from ellenote

    This is the end of KPOP as we know it! ;( I know it's because of C-fans no longer bulk buying, but maybe interest in K-pop is going down too. BTS are off to the military, Blackpink are doing their own thing, 4th gen is doing okay and 5th gen isn't making any big groups anytime soon (aside from ZB1). Maybe if the queen of K-pop IU comes back, all will be well. :/ Or maybe this is just the end of fraudulent sales, who knows. It's fine to me, I just hope tiktok gets banned so kpop music will go back to being good.


    Quote from Onewbias

    Why do C-fans stop buying though?


    Quote from K-PL

    imo cbars have been bleed dry earlier in the year when each fandom wanted to outdo other fandoms, and ive shifted their priority from ULs to albums.

    China is in/has been in a real estate collapse, Evergrande Group the second largest property developer declared bankruptcy in August of this year after defaulting on its debt payments to investors in 2021.


    Sunac China Holdings Limited went bankrupt in September of this year, and Country Garden Holdings Company defaulted on bond payments last month.


    Other large companies like Kaisa Group are in trouble as well.


    2020–2023 Chinese property sector crisis - Wikipedia
    en.wikipedia.org


    Evergrande Group - Wikipedia
    en.wikipedia.org


    Country Garden - Wikipedia
    en.wikipedia.org

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    Edited 3 times, last by Yseki ().

    Insightful 5 Like 5 Wow 1

    i don't think BTS and BP group hiatus in particular affect the kpop hype especially at western countries. music at large seems to lost relevancy rn, like the pop medias only talk about beyonce's tour and taylor swift and that athlete (i'm sorry i know he's like big name or something but i can't be bothered to care) as opposed to many new cinema and TV series after the strike ended

    Quote from randkpopstan

    Wouldn't kakao want to recover financially after all those problems with sm? It makes no sense this auto sabotage

    Maybe that's the thing, c-fans were never actually "buying"


    I suspect itzy, nmixx and lesserafim sales are also inflated by supposed cbar pre orders, their numbers make no sense.

    kakao is delaying shipment. The sales will eventually be there. Let's see the total sales again after 1-2 months when most of the albums are actually shipped. Moreover, dont forget that the fansign and luckydraw events have all yet to start


    For itzy and nmixx, their C bar is not significant. For Lesserafim,mostly sakura bar and some Chaewon bar. Dont think they are super material in that sense

    Quote from Nevaeh14

    It was only a matter of time before the Chinese became more cost conscious


    Quote from Icaro_Ribeiro

    Chinese fans stopped their bulk purchases. No clue about the reason. Stray Kids decreased over 1 million compared to their last album as well

    Economic issues in China right now.

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  • AllKill VIP

    ^ the only thing I feel is legit now is the global digital charts at the global level.


    Yes you can buy into Spotify playlists like you can buy ads on television, but how much can that help a song on one chart out of several that are available.

    Huh? I thought I read that RV's new album Chill Kill sold over 400k in the first week


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    In any case, I think it'd be understandable if the global popularity of K-pop would diminish somewhat: the whole popularity growth was for a big part carried on the back of BTS and their massive popularity, and with their diminished activity and presence as a group, it wouldn't be strange if K-pop popularity as a whole would decrease somewhat too, among people in the west who regarded K-pop as a temporary hype trend.

    But so far, the album sales as a whole are still increasing on a year on year basis.

    Well, I suppose after the heat we saw coming following Nmixx last fake sales other groups dropped too.


    Companies could only pretend for so long the sales were legit rasing sometimes 5 or even 10 fold in a year while streaming, views, engagements, etc were all stagnant or going down.


    When you have million sellers playing conference halls or 5 million sellers struggling to sell out some arenas questions start getting asked. Lol. I mean several mid table groups stomping BTS sales? Washed groups like RV selling 1m lol and 4th geners debuting with 1.5,m sales but can't barely enter Spotify?

    so far right on gaon 337,937+59,900 so i'm not sure where korean sales got that figure.

    Quote from TheBotter

    Well, I suppose after the heat we saw coming following Nmixx last fake sales other groups dropped too.


    Companies could only pretend for so long the sales were legit rasing sometimes 5 or even 10 fold in a year while streaming, views, engagements, etc were all stagnant or going down.


    When you have million sellers playing conference halls or 5 million sellers struggling to sell out some arenas questions start getting asked. Lol. I mean several mid table groups stomping BTS sales? Washed groups like RV selling 1m lol and 4th geners debuting with 1.5,m sales but can't barely enter Spotify?

    Fill me in, i'm not aware of that case

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