What caused the recent massive inflation in physical sales?

The inflation in general started from covid era, where fans have nothing to spend on so they spend on physical albums

The extra inflation after covid era is more controlled, and I might be wrong about this, is from ego of fans wanting to maintain that number, and this is more prevalent for BGs

I don't see GGs having the same trajectory, they are still getting higher but not on the level of BGs

Quote from ForgottenSoul

peaked maybe 1/2 years ago

It did. Expect the numbers to drop in 2024.

I think K-pop exploded internationally during covid more than ever. Noone listens to cds anymore so the albums purchased are more like merchandise and collectibles. Companies now release more versions than ever before and fans eat up all of them.

Most of the people buying are teens using their parents money or young adults that are still living at home and have minimal expenditure, high disposable income.

1) China

2) Japan

3) Global Distribution

Distribution lol I thought everyone knows this.

Can't explain in details about Seventeen or Dream, cause I don't follow them closely.

But last year, Stray Kids' sales increased significantly due to 5 circustances.

• CASE 143 was a hit in Japan (Billboard reported last year It surpassed over 100 million on-demand streams on the Country) and It's recognition made them growing massively on the market. They went from 400k sales on Oricon in 2022 to 1.9 million in 2023. So they got a big market in their hands last year.
• in 2022, MANIAC was viral in China (It'a audio has over 1B views on Douyin), It also increased their following there massively. For Maxident, they sold around +900k from China, but for 5-STAR they got around 1.2M in total, so It also helped increasing their sales in 2023.
• A very important reason: 5-STAR was Stray Kids first album with Global Distribution. Previously, their albums were only sold on US and Korea stores. Since 5-STAR, they started to be distributed even in Oceania and Europe (And It's important to say Stray Kids is comfortably the 3rd biggest K-pop group on Europe).
• Natural growth in between on other markets too.
• 5-STAR has one more standard version than the previous 2021-2022 albums.

From 2020 to 2021 I'd say It's a mix of natural growth from God's Menu impact (in 2021 was the first standard album (NOEASY) they released since God's Menu) + increase of versions and photocards (NOEASY was the first album they started to get individual jewel cases/digipacks) + 11 months of hiatus.

Also I must add, kpop albums these days have a different meaning to what an album will be from back in the 2000/2010s.

These days it is more of a collection of photo cards, stickers, posters rather than a bunch of songs to be listened to.

Fans buy it because it looks cute or like the design. It's like buying pokemon cards or a figurine. The music doesn't matter. They may have bought multiple versions of the album but wouldn't even have streamed the songs on youtube or spotify.

For SKZ at least, a part of this is that the distribution increased. So albums were made easily available places they didn't use to be so accessible (like Europe which is a very big market for them, they got good distribution here only this year, and the US in 2022). When we saw that JYP finally added official album distribution in countries like France and Germany for the first time, it was clear sales most likely would increase. So because of this + the fact that they gained a lot of traction in China since Maniac and big popularity in Japan after CASE143, plus general excitement for a full album, sales reached all-time high.

I'm assuming distribution for other groups also got better, and add overall kpop popularity + covid + Chinese/Japanese popularity, and I think those might be the biggest factors.

But the sales boom is calming down now for all groups it seems.

people were sitting on a crapload of savings from being unable to travel/vacation/etc. during covid.

mostly fraud

Chart obsession and Chinese citizens having an excess of money saved up from Covid

Lots of versions. The number of versions is getting a little wild at times.

I really thought the huge spike was due to Covid, people at home, less things to spend on = more disposable income etc

But what's strange to me is that it's continuing through 2023 and possibly 2024. Many countries are experiencing various inflation, currency and especially "cost of living" crises which are supposedly meaning people have far less discretionary spending because everything else is much more expensive. Japan, one of the countries named here, isn't immune to this. The value of the Yen is toilet right now and they are also having a cost of living problem with high housing/rent costs and high prices on living necessities.

Yet, amidst this, people are still throwing money at record numbers on physical kpop stuff.

Quote from AyanEva

Lots of versions. The number of versions is getting a little wild at times.

It’s not versions that’s causing increased sales. EXO exodus had like 22 version or something crazy like that. EXO album before that didn’t and after that also didn’t and they all sold as expected.

It’s the decreased price of albums e.g the digipak and increased distribution (literally I can walk to target or Walmart and buy these albums and Gaon counts ALL these shipments so imagine) that’s caused the sales boom.

I guess the question is will this be sustainable in the long run given that covid is over and touring is back on again

I think the most popular and well known reason is increase in different albums and various verisons of photocards, sites like makestar sometimes have an event with an artist where you can only get a special/super rare photo card in a chance to get a meet and greet video call with that said artist or idol.

Not sure for other groups, but Seventeen recently released all older albums from their debut to most popular fan favourites that helped with a lot of people buying more albums to get the inclusions or album of their choice.

But ofc there was a massive inflation during covid that helped' with album sales.

Too many versions with randomized pcs to generate more sales. We need to go back to 3-4 versions