SM exposed for allegedly committing sajaegi by faking RIIZE's 1.01 million album sales in their first week of release

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    1. RIIZE's Get A Guitar


    1st week sale - 1.01M

    Total sales 1.09M


    Circle - Physical albums shipment count

    Hanteo - Merchant sales count


    2. The agency told the record labels

    "We're going to hold this many events for you, so you can go ahead and register this many orders already"

    So the even before opening said events (lucky draw, fansigns, etc.), the record labels already created more "orders" than the actual amount of "sales"


    3. The reality is not that they have sold 1.01M physical copies in the first week sales and then sold another additional 80K, the 80K comes from the number that was not captured during the first week sales

    To illustrate:

    Company A orders 1M

    Company B orders 10K, then later adds another 80K > the first week sales becomes 1.01M and the total sales becomes 1.09M


    So how many thousands were lost in the middle?


    t/n: basically, OP claims that RIIZE sold 1.09M copies during the first week sales, but instead 80K was ordered during that time but added after the first week sales. OP claims that SM basically told labels to sell 1.09M albums ahead of time (to match the events they will be holding) but the first week sales showed 1.01M because there was 80K that failed to be captured in the record. However, chronologically speaking, they haven't sold 1.09M in only a week


    4. And let's look at all the events RIIZE held since September

    Even after their promotion (for Get A Guitar), they released another digital single and other lucky draw events and all these numbers went into the Get A Guitar album


    image.png


    (RIIZE Get A Guitar's sales events)
    bullet 1: fansigns
    bullet 2: lucky draw)


    5. They've held this many events, but at the turn of the year, they've only sold 1000 extra copies

    ???: Doesn't this mean that they have sold 1M copies over the span of 3 months?
    Either there is a record label that has not yet returned the sales or is accumulating album inventory, but either way, the actual number of albums sold may be less than a million.


    For the reasons above, some are claiming that RIIZE are in fact not million sellers and that it's sajaegi but in a new form



    Comments:-


    Screenshot_2024-01-11-12-15-38-41.jpg

    dont all companies do this?

    That's how companies/stores continue to hold "fansign" "videocall" events to continue clear their stock.


    The same for all companies especially those groups you always see them doing fansigns. Because stores need to sell the album stocks

  • AllKill VIP
  • AllKill VIP
    Quote from Ves

    I'm going to admit that I had to read that more than once and I'm still not sure I fully understand. So SM reported the numbers ordered by stores, then padded it with the additional number they planned to give away in upcoming 'lucky draw' promotions?

    I think what they mean is SM tells stores order and show that Riize sold 1.09 mill during the first week, and don't worry about losses, they plan to hold loads of events like fansigns and lucky draws that fans will have to buy extra albums to get tickets to attend. So although those sales for the fansign happened maybe months after the first week, they are counted for the first week because they were bought in advance and then the sales post first week aren't updated for months after because they are still trying to get rid of the albums they falsely said were sold during the first week.


    If you read the pann thread (its worth it this time) there are people talking about companies buying back the albums that didn't get sold and shipping them to stores overseas via outsource sellers at ‘discounted’ inflated prices and waste centers. They also mention that with some unboxing vids that we see, people run 'stores'. As in they buy these albums at a bulk price and sell the photocards as individuals and that as long as it is shipped out, each photocard sale is counted as an album sale.

    Quote from gerrard174

    dont all companies do this?

    That's how companies/stores continue to hold "fansign" "videocall" events to continue clear their stock.


    The same for all companies especially those groups you always see them doing fansigns. Because stores need to sell the album stocks

    Yeah but this poster is saying they counted the albums as sold before they sold to include them in the first week sales, normally stores pre-order loads of albums but those aren't counted towards the total sales until they actually sell and the events are to make them sell.

    I still refuse to believe companies are dumb enough to do album sajaegi. We've all seen labels do the most idiotic things known to man, but i still cannot believe they would ever waste a single cent on this nonsense.


    THE WHOLE POINT OF SAJAEGI IS TO CREATE BUZZ AND HYPE TO GET THE GENERAL PUBLIC TO NOTICE YOUR ACT. LITERALLY NOBODY BUT MUSTY KPOP FANS CARE ABOUT ALBUM SALES CHARTS, NOT A SINGLE RANDO IN HIS OR HER THIRTIES WASTES ONE MICROSECOND THINKING ABOUT GAON OR HANTEO CHARTING ACCOMPLISHMENTS.


    Like, i understand sajaegi to get your song put on the top of the streaming charts, that shit will get noticed by rando GP who will stream top 100 while they drink their Americanos and wolf down their boongobbangs on their way to work. But the album sajaegi makes literally no sense and i refuse to believe it.

  • AllKill VIP

    The only thing that is mostly organic are the global charts like billboard global and spotify global. They are just too big and too expensive to sajaegi for a long time.

  • AllKill VIP
  • AllKill VIP
    Quote from BlackpinkHouse

    I still refuse to believe companies are dumb enough to do album sajaegi. We've all seen labels do the most idiotic things known to man, but i still cannot believe they would ever waste a single cent on this nonsense.


    THE WHOLE POINT OF SAJAEGI IS TO CREATE BUZZ AND HYPE TO GET THE GENERAL PUBLIC TO NOTICE YOUR ACT. LITERALLY NOBODY BUT MUSTY KPOP FANS CARE ABOUT ALBUM SALES CHARTS, NOT A SINGLE RANDO IN HIS OR HER THIRTIES WASTES ONE MICROSECOND THINKING ABOUT GAON OR HANTEO CHARTING ACCOMPLISHMENTS.


    Like, i understand sajaegi to get your song put on the top of the streaming charts, that shit will get noticed by rando GP who will stream top 100 while they drink their Americanos and wolf down their boongobbangs on their way to work. But the album sajaegi makes literally no sense and i refuse to believe it.

    Brings attention. "Oh, this group already sold more than 1m albums? Oh, i have to look"

    Quote from K-PL

    The only thing that is mostly organic are the global charts like billboard global and spotify global. They are just too big and too expensive to sajaegi for a long time.

    Yeah I disagree with this statement. You can “fake” Spotify with playlisting… and I read not too long ago an article about Jay Z faking his sales on Billboard 200 (album sales). Billboard global is just a sum of several charts, right? I usually find Korean charts more transparent. That’s the one thing I give to SK.


    That being said, I knew some SM sales were suspicious. Like they used to mediaplay with preorders numbers and then, changed their method. I believe NCT Dream album sales are suspicious too and not a SM group but I’m convinced Treasure’s sales are highly fudged. It’s the good old fake it till you make it.

    Quote from LCJK

    Yeah I disagree with this statement. You can “fake” Spotify with playlisting… and I read not too long ago an article about Jay Z faking his sales on Billboard 200 (album sales). Billboard global is just a sum of several charts, right? I usually find Korean charts more transparent. That’s the one thing I give to SK.


    That being said, I knew some SM sales were suspicious. Like they used to mediaplay with preorders numbers and then, changed their method. I believe NCT Dream album sales are suspicious too and not a SM group but I’m convinced Treasure’s sales are highly fudged. It’s the good old fake it till you make it.

    I also find Treasure numbers a bit sus tbh

    Quote from KarimaJ

    I don't have an opinion because I can't decipher what the problem is.

    TLDR: SM overshipped Riize sales


    Ordered 1 million albums by themselves and never registered returns and are selling the non sold albums in fanmeetins and videocalls


    That's why despite releasing a hit song Riize album sales has increase 0 copies since the first week


    They advertised 1 million sales in first week, but the actual number of copies sold were much less than 1 million

    i'm still confused lol


    so they sold 1.01m on hanteo first week? but they're overall total on circle/gaon to this day is 1.09?, been reading the comments on pc and one says it's suspicious because they should be having small jumps in sales in accordance to the fansigns but they don't.

  • AllKill VIP
  • AllKill VIP

    So basically they counted too many eggs before they hatched and got caught. Interesting. I wonder how many artists are doing this and to what extent :/


    I assume artists that have a consistent steady stream of sales for many months after each release probably aren't doing it. Companies could buy back the albums to fudge the numbers, but that's not really a sustainable strategy for the long term, so you'd think that sooner or later the sales would come to a sudden standstill and reveal the truth :/

    F5vCxxpawAAG-ps?format=jpg&name=large


    fyi Nmixx sold ~35% week 1 sales on days 2 to 7 i.e. they sold ~65% of their 1st week sales on day 1.


    In the era of pre-orders where everyone can easily pre-order online everything weeks in advance, the bigger the % for days 2 to 7, the dodgier.

    Quote from Clmlrv

    i'm still confused lol


    so they sold 1.01m on hanteo first week? but they're overall total on circle/gaon to this day is 1.09?, been reading the comments on pc and one says it's suspicious because they should be having small jumps in sales in accordance to the fansigns but they don't.

    They are saying they told the shops to order 1.01m even if they only needed 800k and report them as sold and promised them they'd run events later specifically for their stores to make the amount of sales match what they initially reported. They say the math isn't mathing because if they sold 1.01m in 1 week with 62 independent events that you need to buy albums to enter, they'd have sold way more than 80k in 3 months. If the math is right they'd have sold an average of 1200 copies per event, and considering they are popular enough to sell 1 mill in a week, why is there so little interest in fan meetings when fans buy 3-10 copies trying to get a ticket?


    Quote from bangmenah

    Am i understanding that they sajaegid what they eventually were going to sell and just pre-reported them all as sold copies?


    Like they ordered the albums —> didnt sell yet —> reported a number —> set up events to match said numbers?

    Yes but the numbers are what they hoped they'd eventually sell with all the events, not what they did. If they didn't sell them all they kept adding events until they did or found some other way to dispose of the albums without decreasing the sales numbers.

  • AllKill VIP
    Quote from K-PL

    F5vCxxpawAAG-ps?format=jpg&name=large


    fyi Nmixx sold ~35% week 1 sales on days 2 to 7 i.e. they sold ~65% of their 1st week sales on day 1.


    In the era of pre-orders where everyone can easily pre-order online everything weeks in advance, the bigger the % for days 2 to 7, the dodgier.

    Preorders only count as official sales once they've been shipped, even if they were paid for weeks in advance. Most companies aren't great at getting everything out in a single day, so it's not rare for it to take a few days, or even up to a few weeks, for all of the preorders to be shipped out (and thus counted as official sales).


    What people are identifying as suspicious isn't the trickle of sales throughout the first week, but that the numbers stopped going up after that even though more sales were happening, which would mean that they pre-counted the sales before they actually happened.

    Quote from BlackpinkHouse

    I still refuse to believe companies are dumb enough to do album sajaegi. We've all seen labels do the most idiotic things known to man, but i still cannot believe they would ever waste a single cent on this nonsense.


    THE WHOLE POINT OF SAJAEGI IS TO CREATE BUZZ AND HYPE TO GET THE GENERAL PUBLIC TO NOTICE YOUR ACT. LITERALLY NOBODY BUT MUSTY KPOP FANS CARE ABOUT ALBUM SALES CHARTS, NOT A SINGLE RANDO IN HIS OR HER THIRTIES WASTES ONE MICROSECOND THINKING ABOUT GAON OR HANTEO CHARTING ACCOMPLISHMENTS.


    Like, i understand sajaegi to get your song put on the top of the streaming charts, that shit will get noticed by rando GP who will stream top 100 while they drink their Americanos and wolf down their boongobbangs on their way to work. But the album sajaegi makes literally no sense and i refuse to believe it.

    its for marketing, especially those companies that publish this kind of "accomplish" in the group sns, its to create more engagement and bring the illusion they are doing far beyond what they expected


    this companies post multiple Naver articles about this with "super rookie this" and "new gen leader that" (some do it for old groups tho...) just for a shiny headline that then cant be back up and do more damage to that group than anything

    Quote from K-PL

    The only thing that is mostly organic are the global charts like billboard global and spotify global. They are just too big and too expensive to sajaegi for a long time.

    you can absolutely manipulate billboard and spotify...it's why they have to keep making changes to close loopholes and exploits.

  • AllKill VIP

    Huh .....


    Does that mean I can "buy" and advertise 5mil sales, and say I will sell them eventually in this lifetime and report 5mil sales


    :pepe-use-head:

    Quote from onwards

    I think what they mean is SM tells stores order and show that Riize sold 1.09 mill during the first week, and don't worry about losses, they plan to hold loads of events like fansigns and lucky draws that fans will have to buy extra albums to get tickets to attend. So although those sales for the fansign happened maybe months after the first week, they are counted for the first week because they were bought in advance and then the sales post first week aren't updated for months after because they are still trying to get rid of the albums they falsely said were sold during the first week.


    If you read the pann thread (its worth it this time) there are people talking about companies buying back the albums that didn't get sold and shipping them to stores overseas via outsource sellers at ‘discounted’ inflated prices and waste centers. They also mention that with some unboxing vids that we see, people run 'stores'. As in they buy these albums at a bulk price and sell the photocards as individuals and that as long as it is shipped out, each photocard sale is counted as an album sale.

    Circle chart reports suck but if that stock doesnt sell sales will drop so dont get the idea behind doing this. I like Treasure but YG also didnt something weird with reboot


    reboot at like 750k on hanteo but 1.6m circle

    Quote from Deeznutz123

    The group has been unexpectationally doing amazing so far since they got noticed by GP so why tf even SM wanted to did this from the first place they're dumb

    No they are not. They built buzz around them. No one wants to stan flops. You make them look successful and people will start talking about them and stan them. It’s a trick as old as showbiz.

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