Has Seventeen really surpassed Taylor Swift?...The overheated K-pop market
On April 25, Min Hee-jin, CEO of Ador, pointed out the entertainment industry through a press conference, and the method of producing and selling K-pop albums was put on the chopping block.
The recently released sales of American pop star Taylor Swift's new album in one week are less than half of the K-pop group's 'Initial Chodong' No. 1 record. Even taking into account the difference in counting method from Billboard, this is an indicator that the K-pop album sales market formed based on fandom is very overheated.
According to Billboard, Taylor's 11th official album, 'The Tortured Poets Department' sold 1.91 million copies of traditional albums, including physical albums and vinyl, in one week. It ranked first on the Billboard 200, beating Beyoncé's 'Cowboy Carter' by about 220,000 copies.
Meanwhile, if this figure is included in Korea's similar indicator, the 'Initial Chodong' ranking, it barely ranks in the top 20. Based on the Hanteo Chart, the all-time Initial Chodong ranking, which counts album sales for a week after release, is Seventeen's 'Seventeenth Heaven' released on October 23rd last year , with approximately 5.09 million copies, and Stray Kids' '★★★★', released on June 2nd last year. ★(5-STAR)' sold about 4.61 million copies, and 'ISTJ' which NCT Dream released on July 17 last year, sold about 3.65 million copies.
This phenomenon, called 'album inflation' in the K-pop industry, began after the COVID-19 pandemic when many entertainment companies began to consider album sales as a key way to secure profits. Album sales increased exponentially by leveraging the purchasing power of the powerful fandom through random goods and fan signing events.
Some say that this is thanks to the increased popularity and status of K-pop around the world. However, it is difficult to assert long-term growth given the high proportion of 'group purchases (tools)' in which buyers, mainly in China, purchase dozens of albums at once. Of the first-week releases of Stray Kids, which previously took third place, more than 1.14 million copies were sold, and more than 1.07 million copies of NCT Dream were sold through Chinese tools.
At a press conference on the 25th, Min Hee-jin, CEO of Ador, said, “In the industry, ‘push’, which involves taking album orders first and then filling up the sales volume, is becoming more and more prevalent,” adding, “If that happens, people will buy and re-buy the album, go to the fan signing event they went to, and go again.” “It’s not good for fans and singers, but also for the market as a whole,” she criticized.
