Something Never Before Attempted: Comparing 14 Years of Boy Group Versus Girl Group Physical Sales
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That was the general consensus, and is what I still subscribe to, but this framework been disputed, especially when Fourth Generation groups became dominant a few years ago. For example, this thread claims a 2021 start.
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That was the general consensus, and is what I still subscribe to, but this framework been disputed, especially when Fourth Generation groups became dominant a few years ago. For example, this thread claims a 2021 start.
"On March 12, the Korean media outlet Seoul Economy wrote an article commemorating the beginning of K-pop's fourth generation era, as well as those girl groups who are heralding to showcase new trends."
that is but one media site
obviously I'm not korean but I'm pretty sure most media outlets and award shows and such have said the 4th gen started way earlier than 2021
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What we see is that girl groups were able to sell more than boy groups in only eight out of 168 months: October 2011, December 2011, August 2022, September 2022, March 2023, May 2023, January 2024, and February 2024. Notice the huge gap between December 2011 and August 2022, which spans almost 11 years and brings up some obvious questions:
- Throughout the entirety of the Third Generation, girl groups never once came even close to out-selling boy groups, even at the peak of Twice and Blackpink's popularity. Why?
- Conversely, why was it possible during the Second Generation, and currently in the Fourth Generation?
Pretty late but it's a combination of these factors:
Why it wasn't possible in 3rd generation (vs 4th generation)?
1. Boygroups always have better sales than girlgroups of the same popularity levels. So in average, at any big enough time frame, total sales of boygroups expected to be higher,
2. Before 4th generation. 1st days/weeks sales weren't matter that much. Fans actually prefer to spread the purchasing over weeks/months so their faves could win more music shows,
3. Album sales inflation for top groups, both ggs and bgs.
2. and 3. mean if a top ggs release new album in 4th gen, they'll get 1M+ for the first weeks, effectively boost total ggs sale this month. And because there are no top bgs release anything around that time + most of bgs old albums sales concentrated within 1st weeks, total bg sales this time will be lower.
TLDR: in 4th gen album sales are more fluctuating, allowing ggs to surpass bgs sometimes.
If you sample the data in a bigger time frame, for example a quarter, there won't be any fluctuation.
Why it was possible during second generation?
Girls' Generation. - Throughout the entirety of the Third Generation, girl groups never once came even close to out-selling boy groups, even at the peak of Twice and Blackpink's popularity. Why?
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If you sample the data in a bigger time frame, for example a quarter, there won't be any fluctuation.
As requested, I've generated a version of the chart using quarterly sales data:
GaonCircleAlbumSalesByArtistType2011-2024_Quarterly.png
Fluctuations are smoothed out somewhat, though girl groups do still manage to outsell boy groups in the fourth quarter of 2011, largely due to the release of SNSD's The Boys.
We also see that girl groups began challenging boy groups again around the middle of 2022. I believe this is mostly due to the rise of high-selling Fourth Generation girl groups such as Ive, Nmixx, Aespa, Le Sserafim, (G)I-dle, and Itzy.
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