Biggest first day sales of Japanese releases by Kpop GGs this year! | TWICE at #1 as always

    Quote from Water_oWl

    So your take is that NewJeans will surpass Twice in Japan? :whatb:

    Anything is possible. They only officially debuted there a month ago. Way too soon to have that conversation.


    But while Twice have the longest charting song in Billboard Japan history with TT, NewJeans have the second longest with Ditto (still charting).


    And they are far ahead of their peers in terms of streaming. It's not even close.


    They're also the fastest foreign act ever to sell out Tokyo Dome, and like Twice they did it with fanclub presales alone.


    I don't think they're bigger in Japan than Twice, but if anyone will challenge Twice, it will be them.

    Quote from LilacGirl

    I think LSF has a better chance because of Sakura and to some degree Chaewon/Kazuha.


    Idk how they chart or whatever but I think I remember them doing exceptionally well there.

    Their charting is below NewJeans by a considerable amount. They sell more albums but so does aespa.


    Otherwise, the only K-Pop girl group whose songs are listened to as much as NewJeans is, well, Twice.


    If LSF can perform better digitally, they have a chance, but so far there is still a massive gap.

    Quote from YamaChwan

    Their charting is below NewJeans by a considerable amount. They sell more albums but so does aespa.


    Otherwise, the only K-Pop girl group whose songs are listened to as much as NewJeans is, well, Twice.


    If LSF can perform better digitally, they have a chance, but so far there is still a massive gap.

    Yeah I can't argue about charting because I don't know shit xD so I will take your word for it.

    I think if they come up with some song similar to Perfect night/Magnetic for Japanese comeback they might chart good. I think their debut was bunch of old songs sung in Japanese anyways

    Quote from LilacGirl

    Yeah I can't argue about charting because I don't know shit xD so I will take your word for it.

    I think if they come up with some song similar to Perfect night/Magnetic for Japanese comeback they might chart good. I think their debut was bunch of old songs sung in Japanese anyways

    I'm sure everyone is tired of me posting the graphics and numbers, but you can find them easily enough in my thread history.


    But to your comment about their Japanese promo strategy, that's exactly the problem. They need to go all in for Japan promos and not just release uninspired Japanese versions of all their Korean songs

    The figures in the OP made me curious, so I went to look things up and was a bit shocked: only like 100-150k at most for Japanese albums for TWICE, are these numbers correct? And this is even the most for Japanese album sales for Korean girl groups, this is the top?


    I'd expected that with the worldwide increase in album sales, Japanese album sales would increase significantly too, but apparently not?

    Is this decrease in album sales an overall Japanese trend, or just for K-pop groups?


    I'd expected SNSD's and KARA's sales per album records of 700k-1M to be surpassed in this era, but things took an unexpected turn, apparently.

    Think you got some numbers wrong but I get what you mean but its not that simple. GG and Kara had 1 hugely selling album but many average to low selling in between. Twice hasn't had as big of a peak but have been selling pretty consistently hence them being ahead. The worldwide increase hasn't really impacted Japan because until recently, it was hard to buy Japanese albums outside of Japan due to licencing and it wasn't till recently Twice could even perform their Japanese discog outside of Japan. I-fans also ignore Japanese release and don't have the tradition or fandom routes to buying them.


    Kara has 36 (about to be 37) Japanese releases, the highest sales being 275k first week and 746k all time whilst the lowest was a couple hundred. Only 10 of the 37 sold over 100k all time, 18 failed to get beyond 50k all time and 12 didn't get beyond 10k. Thier all time sales are 3.1 million so they averaged 86k per release.


    GG has 18 Japanese releases, highest sales being 231k first week and 872k all time and lowest being 5k all time. Of the 18, 8 didn't get past 100k, 4 didn't get past 50k and 1 didn't get past 10k but their at 2.6mill all time. They average 144k per release.


    Twice has 18 down (not including Dive), their highest being 262k first week and 363k all time and their lowest is 81k all time for a total of 3.9mill so average 216k per release.


    I think there are two main factors Twice never beat the single album sales of GG.


    1 - Promotion is also very important in Japan. Twice's sales decreased during the pandemic from 200k minimum to 80-150k because pre-pandemic they had loads of J-fan exclusive content and promotions including handshake events. I don't think Twice has ever gone as ham with Japanese promotions as Kara and GG did back in the day, they simply didn't have the time. Kara and GG had 2 CB's per year which would be heavily promoted then they'd do 2-3 Japanese releases in between and fully promote those on Japanese TV. Twice did 4 CB's the year they debuted in Japan but have been dropping 2-3 Japanese releases per year. They only dropped down to 2 CB's because of their world tour, and have now dropped down to 1 due to the scale of this world tour.


    2 - China, the Tyuzu scandal really hurt them so their fanbase there has always been small and whilst its hard for western fans to get Japanese albums, Chinese fans are well known for flying over to Japan for a concert and buying Japanese albums.

    Quote from YamaChwan

    I'm sure everyone is tired of me posting the graphics and numbers, but you can find them easily enough in my thread history.


    But to your comment about their Japanese promo strategy, that's exactly the problem. They need to go all in for Japan promos and not just release uninspired Japanese versions of all their Korean songs

    that one of the reasons why Twice did so well in Japan, they treated there japanese discovery as its own separate entity, they followed the Kara and SNSD route

    100! 1 thing for me is SNSD and KARA had such short peaks/relevancy in japan, SNSD,KARA and Twice had huge peaks , I believe SNSD/KARA sold 1mill+ for 1 each album because of the start of the Japan hallyu wave and Twice brought it back to life, but the thing is Twice managed to keep there japanese popularity, doing dome tours, stadiums and know nissan stadium,


    SNSD only managed to do it once, (they could of done it in 2011/2012/2013 easily)

    and that's about it, and then once Jessica happened there popularity just started decreasing and then when they had Phantasia world tour, they couldn't do any domes at all? one would think if you can sell out tokyo dome in 2014 then you can again in 2015/2016 but they didn't, even there sales slowly started decreasing,


    the Same can be said about KARA, what happened? there peak was massive but as time went on there sales decreased and there venues even decreased, at least SNSD could still sell out arenas (saitma super arena ) but even kara couldn't,


    I heard about there was a Japanese soft ban during the time but anyone care to elobrate?

    i heard that Kpop was getting so popular in japan that the Japense media starting soft banning content around the time snsd/kara popularity was decreasing


    harambelives you know a lot about snsd, care to add anything +

    I think we've really heavily underestimated Twice in Japan, Kara and GG are more the norm Twice is the exception. I was being nosey (as I tend to be) and wanted to see how the concert attendance has changed for kpop groups in Japan. Colour me surprised when I realised that only 4 kpop groups have ever performed in a stadium in Japan (TVXQ, BTS, 17 and Twice), the most anyone normally goes to is domes (even huge groups like big bang stick to domes) but most stick around arena's and halls. Now bear in mind how huge we all know TVXQ to be over there, TVXQ did Nissan 3 times then stuck to domes and eventually, downgraded to arena's and halls. BTS did 4 stadium days for the love yourself encore and haven't been back since due to covid and enlistment, for the follow tour 17 did dates in domes then added 4 stadium dates at the end as an encore.


    Then you have Twice, their first 4 Japanese dates were stadiums, they then had to add 4 dome dates due to demand and then added 6 stadium dates for an encore. Now I'm unsure about the rest, but you can only buy a Twice concert ticket if your in the fanclub, and even then it only allows you into the ticket raffle, no guarantee. So Twice is not only the 3rd kpop group ever, first GG ever, but also the only ones who seems to have moved from domes to stadiums in Japan. We've long know older gen GG's were more GP reliant and from third gen on they've become more fandom driven, Twice is proof of that.

    Quote from Water_oWl

    Why would they regress to a dome tour, which they've done multiple times, now that they're doing stadium tour as part of their world tour ? :whatb: The next in line for that are MiSaMo but they need way more songs

    If they don't they'll be the first kpop group not to, and the first to do a stadium tour. I mentioned above but Twice is the 4th kpop group to ever do a stadium in Japan. TVXQ went right back to domes after Nissan, BTS haven't toured since theirs and 17 started out in domes for their last tour and did encores in stadiums so its unclear if they will start out in stadiums next time.

    Quote from onwards

    you can only buy a Twice concert ticket if your in the fanclub, and even then it only allows you into the ticket raffle, no guarantee.

    This!!, I lost four lottery rounds and still need tickets for next week's concerts.

    But since I have a non-refundable flight, I'm going to Japan next week, no matter what.

    In the worst-case scenario, I'll watch the concert in the movie theater if I miss getting tickets again for the last round.


    Also, some of the merch cost more than album

    Quote from bubble-head

    This!!, I lost four lottery rounds and still need tickets for next week's concerts.

    But since I have a non-refundable flight, I'm going to Japan next week, no matter what.

    In the worst-case scenario, I'll watch the concert in the movie theater if I miss getting tickets again for the last round.


    Also, some of the merch cost more than album

    Crossing fingers for you :pepe-pray: I was outside the Dome when they had their first Dream day date :pepecry:

    Quote from bubble-head

    This!!, I lost four lottery rounds and still need tickets for next week's concerts.

    But since I have a non-refundable flight, I'm going to Japan next week, no matter what.

    In the worst-case scenario, I'll watch the concert in the movie theater if I miss getting tickets again for the last round.


    Also, some of the merch cost more than album

    Good luck to you but also this is what I mean. Twice in Japan is genuinely insane and the physical album sales don't do them justice. I really hope their next tour is a Japanese Stadium tour where we can buy tickets like we could for the start of RTB.

    Thanks for the elaborate explanation, those were some informative points.


    If I compare, I think that KARA and especially SNSD had higher peaks in Japan like you also said. SNSD had maybe 1-2 years at peak in Japan, but in that year they dominated intensely in Japan, not just in sales but in overall popularity in Japan - unfortunately only as a hype or the 'hot thing of the year', and after the Japanese public moved on towards the next hype, Japanese interest in SNSD suffered immensely too. In contrast, KARA had a healthier peak that lasted more years. However, even outside their peak, their album sales were good considering those times, reaching 100-300k sales per album.



    I haven't really been keeping track of Japanese sales, so that's why maybe my surprise seeing that the top K-pop groups incl TWICE have merely sales per album in the 100-200k range at best. I had expected far higher in this age of global K-pop album sales increase - or at least sameish figures as in former gens.

    I mean, even when KARA hit 700k sales per album and SNSD 1 million sales per album, that was still not comparable with the top Japanese groups who scored easily 1-2M sales per album in those same years, somehow.

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