Touring is the most important criteria to judge the success of a group and it is the most important metric across the board

The most important metric is whether or not icyruios thinks you are successful

So yes Day6 is the best

the most important metric is the number inside the artist's bank account

but since we will likely never know that we gotta interpolate (if that's even the right word) and thus touring data is certainly a key component in idols making money

(if I'm not mistaken touring is one of if not the most profitable means for an idol to make money since they get one of the highest splits compared to other sources of income)

100%

+streaming money mostly goes to the song's writers, which often idols themselves have little to no credit

even if we aren't considering things financially, the core of a song's charting success is still the music team. while the idols are just a catalyst. though this might vary based on the popularity of an idol/group (top idols can make any song chart, while lower tier idols are carried by the song's success)

Their success is based on how much I, personally, care for them.

I think combination of both. Solely charting can’t prove that you are the most successful act, same for touring.

In current economy in kpop I would say touring plays heavier part, since you can fake charting until you make it. While you can’t fake touring unless you give away tickets for free. But I truly believe that Korean charting of top groups aren’t faked, so it is an exception.

So IMO

Korean Charting

Touring

International charting in that order.

If touring is Huge like Skz does then, it overpowers other criteria.

The number of Brand deals would also be a nice add to the basket since it is very crucial these days in kpop world.

wouldnt a group need success in other metrics first to become established enough during their rookie period before the company decides that it would be profitable to start touring? seems that every criteria is just equally important and plays a crucial part to a groups success

Quote from ISaidISaid

These other metrics are very inflated due to numerous things. Even virality for example. So songs can chart a lot without real ppl ever caring about it.

Lot of tiktok famous artists face this issue.

yeah but still, i havent heard of any group that just toured from the start without making a name for themselves first through charts etc and subsequently building a fanbase thats big enough to make touring worthwhile. i agree with the real people part but i look at the road to success as a step by step process no matter how fast the rise to fame. touring seems the to be most profitable aspect but i dont think you can just skip to that part without putting in the numbers-- whether artificial or not-- in all the other metrics. in that sense, i have to say that they all play an equal part in determining a groups success

Quote from ISaidISaid

I agree the numbers will be reflected somewhere or the other. It more that kpop fans don’t accept numbers as being legitimate unless it’s “chart topping”

well, unfortunately thats another issue. kpop fans will always have a ricky bobby if you aint first, youre last kind of mentality. i dont think anybody can do anything about that. if were talking just financial success tho, then yeah. touring seems to be the best for groups

unless kpop can also fake touring idk whats real anymore

I think it's part of an overall picture, but touring is the most important one of those.

If nobody cares enough about you to buy tickets, then it's the kind of artist that is easily replacable on radio and playlists.

Touring is the least easy to manipulate by mainstream media wanting to create fake buzz and popularity for an industry plant.

It’s up there yes

Sadly we won’t see newjeans tour anytime soon

I used to be the biggest charting fanatic on this site, esp Korean charting. But after seeing how easily Korean charts are manipulated (you literally have a ginormous mega conglomerate Kakao-SM owning the biggest one, Melon) and how low unique listener counts have dropped....i just dont have much interest anymore. Who cares about making 30 weeks in the top 10 of Melon when you literally only need like 99k listeners to be on it?

Of course, global and Western charts are no better. Hot 100 and Billboard in general are all payola controlled by UMG, Sony and Warner. Spotify could still be payola-ed by labels buying into playlists to get their songs the most exposure. Streaming farms for Spotify and YT probably exist everywhere.

But then...if not charts then what? Album sales can obv be manipulated by bulk buying. Same with merch.

Even touring can be manipulated if we're playing devil's advocate. Like one fan could go to multiple stops on a tour inflating the group's impact. Imagine if the 50k that went to SKZ SoFi last Sat were the same ones that went the next day on Sun. So already instead of 100k attendance, you technically only have 50k fans that went two times each. Now imagine 10k of these fans bought up all the seats to their next concert in say Phoenix. Then another 10k from the So Fi concert bought tix to see them in Dallas. And so on and so forth.

You could theoretically end up with the same 50k fans that went to So Fi accounting for all the attendance numbers of the entire tour! So instead of 200k attending SKZ concerts in the North American leg, the actual popularity could be 1/4 that, only 50k. It's almost like bulk buying albums except these fans are collecting concert tix not albums. There was one Twice fan that was infamous for this, he had a fairly well known YT channel and basically went to every concert they had for awhile. Not sure if he's still active.

Agree. Streams and album sales are inflated, the only thing that isn't is concert tickets. Not everyone has time to stream songs gazillion times or have rich companies for payola. Or have money to buy multiple copies. I don't believe in charts at all.

Success of the group? Yea I would say so. I'm at the point where I pretty much disregard any album related achievements because that shit is so inflated, and streaming numbers are a close second.

I just don't see how BB charting and melon #1 hits matter if you can't sell tickets. So I think they are the best indicator of success since it's harder to fake people showing up to a concert.

But I feel for popularity/trendiness it is different. Like clearly a group that can sell as well as SKZ IS popular, you can't just write it off as "fandom metric" imo, even if it is. But it's much easier to say when they have the charting + touring.

Quote from Petrified

I think it's part of an overall picture, but touring is the most important one of those.

If nobody cares enough about you to buy tickets, then it's the kind of artist that is easily replacable on radio and playlists.

Touring is the least easy to manipulate by mainstream media wanting to create fake buzz and popularity for an industry plant.

you can manipulate smaller venues or one concert in bigger venue. Our singer here officially sold out arena (12k people is capacity) but it turned out she gave away more than half tickets. Everyone knows she did it, even i know a person who got a ticket (and she doesn't even listen to het). mediaplay doesn't help, you cannot fight people on social media.

Manipulating big venues or more than one concert date is really hard. People nowadays can find out what's selling well and what's not because concert tickets are bought online.

depends how you define success. Making money? Yeah, touring brings in the lion's share of revenue. Look at Stray Kids, massive album sales and can sell out large overseas venues, but unless you're a part of the fandom, most people can't name a single member or song from the group.

IMO it's one of a number of important criteria, along with other things like charting, endorsements, social media etc.

Where touring kind of lacks as a criteria is that it's not accessible. Everyone can stream. Not everyone can attend a concert. Like why is performing once for 20k in Paris any better than 100k streams a day out of Vietnam? Why is New Jeans success on charts and streaming platforms any less impressive than having a successful world tour?

It also depends where a group is at in their lifecycle. Are people attending the tour as they are a legacy act with a dedicated fan base or are they a current trendy group. That's two different versions of success and who is to say which one is necessarily better?

Also depends on what you call success and how you weigh different metrics that make that up.

Quote from BlackpinkHouse

I used to be the biggest charting fanatic on this site, esp Korean charting. But after seeing how easily Korean charts are manipulated (you literally have a ginormous mega conglomerate Kakao-SM owning the biggest one, Melon) and how low unique listener counts have dropped....i just dont have much interest anymore. Who cares about making 30 weeks in the top 10 of Melon when you literally only need like 99k listeners to be on it?

Of course, global and Western charts are no better. Hot 100 and Billboard in general are all payola controlled by UMG, Sony and Warner. Spotify could still be payola-ed by labels buying into playlists to get their songs the most exposure. Streaming farms for Spotify and YT probably exist everywhere.

But then...if not charts then what? Album sales can obv be manipulated by bulk buying. Same with merch.

Even touring can be manipulated if we're playing devil's advocate. Like one fan could go to multiple stops on a tour inflating the group's impact. Imagine if the 50k that went to SKZ SoFi last Sat were the same ones that went the next day on Sun. So already instead of 100k attendance, you technically only have 50k fans that went two times each. Now imagine 10k of these fans bought up all the seats to their next concert in say Phoenix. Then another 10k from the So Fi concert bought tix to see them in Dallas. And so on and so forth.

You could theoretically end up with the same 50k fans that went to So Fi accounting for all the attendance numbers of the entire tour! So instead of 200k attending SKZ concerts in the North American leg, the actual popularity could be 1/4 that, only 50k. It's almost like bulk buying albums except these fans are collecting concert tix not albums. There was one Twice fan that was infamous for this, he had a fairly well known YT channel and basically went to every concert they had for awhile. Not sure if he's still active.

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Paying someone to see multiple times is not inflating concert tickets, it's you being rich to be able to afford expensive concert tickets to enjoy your fave's music several times. It's like when you love a movie and you go to see it multiple times. You are a paying individual who does to the movies for yourself and because you can afford, not because you want to help Disney have better box office.

Manipulating charts and sales cannot be compared with people who buy tickets with their own money with the only goal to have a nice time watching their faves.

Quote from 0ppar

depends how you define success. Making money? Yeah, touring brings in the lion's share of revenue. Look at Stray Kids, massive album sales and can sell out large overseas venues, but unless you're a part of the fandom, most people can't name a single member or song from the group.

And that's almost always the case with today's new artists. Ask a random 40, 50, 60 yo person do they know who chappell roan is? And if they knew if they could tell you three songs?

Groups with older fans will have better tour numbers, since older people have jobs and more disposable income. (Rich young people will still go if their parents give them money)

Groups with younger fans will have better streaming numbers and more social media interaction because younger people have the time to do that.

The very top groups have both.

Quote from thelightoftruth

IMO it's one of a number of important criteria, along with other things like charting, endorsements, social media etc.

Where touring kind of lacks as a criteria is that it's not accessible. Everyone can stream. Not everyone can attend a concert. Like why is performing once for 20k in Paris any better than 100k streams a day out of Vietnam? Why is New Jeans success on charts and streaming platforms any less impressive than having a successful world tour?

It also depends where a group is at in their lifecycle. Are people attending the tour as they are a legacy act with a dedicated fan base or are they a current trendy group. That's two different versions of success and who is to say which one is necessarily better?

Also depends on what you call success and how you weigh different metrics that make that up.

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Because you question if streams are organic. You can buy everything: streams on spotify (payola), youtube views -which is why nobody cares about youtube anymore, followers everywhere. I think that you cannot buy likes, or can you?

Everything is questionable especially if they coms from big companies because they can spend money for promo.

And it can't be "hypothetical touring numbers"

Quote from doesitneedsaying

Because you question if streams are organic. You can buy everything: streams on spotify (payola), youtube views -which is why nobody cares about youtube anymore, followers everywhere. I think that you cannot buy likes, or can you?

Everything is questionable especially if they coms from big companies because they can spend money for promo.

Yeah, I don't disagree that these kind of things can be manipulated.

I still don't think that it means they should be discounted though. Also, we don't actually know how much of it is genuine or not and it wouldn't surprise me if it is less rampant than people think. Maybe 10-20%. Has to be worth it for the company. They'll go broke if everything is inorganic.

There's also sly things you can do with touring/live performances as well though harder. Discounting ticket pricing, holding areas, obviously there's some strategy in picking locations to tour.

To use a few examples - is RV less successful because SM did them dirty? Is NJ less successful because they haven't toured? Is BTS no longer the biggest group because they haven't toured for 3 years?

For me the answer is no. So I guess there's a point where it may not matter as much.

Quote from DaisyTheGenuine

Middle aged and older people wouldn't know most new pop stars because they aren't the demographic

However, unlike stray kids, most younger people know Chappell Roan's music because she's actually mainstream

No, middle aged and older people knew who Britney, Cristina, Justin Timberlake, Eminem were during their early years, even in my country that's not English speaking country. Time was different and the way we consume music now and then is different. Nowadays popularity is based on fandoms. Gp may know songs but have no idea who sing them.

Quote from thelightoftruth

Yeah, I don't disagree that these kind of things can be manipulated.

I still don't think that it means they should be discounted though. Also, we don't actually know how much of it is genuine or not and it wouldn't surprise me if it is less rampant than people think. Maybe 10-20%. Has to be worth it for the company. They'll go broke if everything is inorganic.

There's also sly things you can do with touring/live performances as well though harder. Discounting ticket pricing, holding areas, obviously there's some strategy in picking locations to tour.

To use a few examples - is RV less successful because SM did them dirty? Is NJ less successful because they haven't toured? Is BTS no longer the biggest group because they haven't toured for 3 years?

For me the answer is no. So I guess there's a point where it may not matter as much.

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We now know how many youtube views aren't organic because youtube decided to not count ads in official chart. They implemented the rule when feel special premiered and we found out that out of 40m views in first 24h only 14.7m were organic. Which means that over 25m views were ads. They also implemented the rule regarding mass streaming, YouTube sees them as bot like behavior and won't count them. That's why YouTube views are way lower than 5 years ago.

Spotify doesn't want to disclose their payola, god knows what's happening there.

Even with lower prices or smaller venues you know they are real people. You can't know that with streaming.

People know SM screwed RV. Nobody says they had poor touring, everyone says that SM screwed them over. We don't know how well would NJ sell out their tour, they never toured and we can only speculate. BTS are on hiatus but we know their tour numbers. Just like we now know that stray kids have the biggest tour out 4th gen groups or currently in general because bts is on hiatus.

Quote from ISaidISaid

There are metrics released around how much money is made off cons.

NJZ is special case. And BTS and military enlistment is also a whole other case. They already showed their touring potential.

RV case indeed it’s true that they’re not as popular as Twice or BP and this is not because SM nerf’d them. We have seen over and over again SM acts not being able to fill arenas outside Asia. Opening this topic is a can of worms so I won’t talk much.

If you believe company nerf’d artists and that’s the only reason they can’t tour and so streaming is more important then by all means think that.

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Quote from doesitneedsaying

We now know how many youtube views aren't organic because youtube decided to not count ads in official chart. They implemented the rule when feel special premiered and we found out that out of 40m views in first 24h only 14.7m were organic. Which means that over 25m views were ads. They also implemented the rule regarding mass streaming, YouTube sees them as bot like behavior and won't count them. That's why YouTube views are way lower than 5 years ago.

Spotify doesn't want to disclose their payola, god knows what's happening there.

Even with lower prices or smaller venues you know they are real people. You can't know that with streaming.

People know SM screwed RV. Nobody says they had poor touring, everyone says that SM screwed them over. We don't know how well would NJ sell out their tour, they never toured and we can only speculate. BTS are on hiatus but we know their tour numbers. Just like we now know that stray kids have the biggest tour out 4th gen groups or currently in general because bts is on hiatus.

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I don't disagree that touring isn't a major factor. The fact that there are outliers though tells me that other factors can be just as important.

RV i'm just using as another example