That’s why I mentioned digitals and touring for example are important.
Album sales IS NOT the only criteria for a top group
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We are in the digital era and kpop really trying to stick with physical sales.
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It's not the only criteria but it's definitely more important for the success of a group than digitals, streaming or YT views. Only touring is more relevant than physical sales. There is a reason why big Kpop companies have been uninterested on releasing gp friendly songs lately, they barely bring anything to the table nowadays when compared to physicals. Even if they only got 1$ of benefit for each album (which is way more) it would be a lot better for getting profits than having a lot of streams on Spotify. Even having a hit song doesn't assure you getting a big fandom. Ofc Kpop companies want to keep the physical market alive, there is a reason why Japan is the 2nd biggest music market in the world.
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I mean, we don't list BG and GG together when talking about top groups, or else very little GGs will get in.
You also don't consider the fact the gap between mid tier physicals and top tier physicals is absolutely MASSIVE.
izone was a top group regardless of their digitals because of their insane physicals dominated over the groups ranked below them, regardless of say Itzy I believe at the time having Dalla Dalla but much lower physicals. Having 5 times the physicals of the group if #6 without digital would still put you at #5. Digital can be more competitive while physical is just a wall of china between top and mid.
If in another universal, BP/Twice/Oh My Girl/Etc never got a hit but sold like 3 million phy copies of one album, you would still look silly to say they're not a top group.
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I mean, we don't list BG and GG together when talking about top groups, or else very little GGs will get in.
You also don't consider the fact the gap between mid tier physicals and top tier physicals is absolutely MASSIVE.
izone was a top group regardless of their digitals because of their insane physicals dominated over the groups ranked below them, regardless of say Itzy I believe at the time having Dalla Dalla but much lower physicals. Having 5 times the physicals of the group if #6 without digital would still put you at #5. Digital can be more competitive while physical is just a wall of china between top and mid.
If in another universal, BP/Twice/Oh My Girl/Etc never got a hit but sold like 3 million phy copies of one album, you would still look silly to say they're not a top group.
Izone is really not a good example cause they have decent digitals too
Perhaps u should take Loona for example.
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Loona's physicals are only mid, izone at the time did not have good digitals but had stellar physicals that put them so much further above the rest. Izone had about 300k+ phy while Itzy was 100k phy, the gap pushing izone above at the time. Mid is 50k~100k
The only other snapshot example is when Twice would pull 300k per album, and the next highest was RV I believe at 80k. The physical gap now is even worse, as few groups move into the 500k+(possibly going even higher this year) range and others stuck at 100k+ range. The gap between mid tier physicals and hightier physicals is enough to push over the edge
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If we do the ranking just base on total sales it will be like this:
4. TWICE
6. Seo Taji and Boys
7. H.O.T
8. SUPER JUNIOR
9. SNSD
10. god
And we all know that ranking is off if we use it to determinate top groups.
Not completely. If we were to compile a list of the greatest K-pop groups of all-time, every group listed here would be under consideration, in addition to some other groups not listed of course (notably names like S.E.S., Shinhwa, Fin.K.L, Big Bang, Wonder Girls, 2NE1, Sistar, Red Velvet, Blackpink, etc.).
That being said, I certainly agree that physical sales should not be the only criterion. In fact, there is no one metric that can capture every facet of a group's "greatness". I think we need to take more holistic approach.
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The problem is we need to STOP talking about legacies. Fuck SNSD. They are irrelevant to kpop rn and contribute nothing. It’d be idiotic to put them in a ranking for Top groups.
When talking about Top 3 or Top 5, it needs to be purely based on active groups (not groups from years ago that had different environments for their success).
If you want to make a list of Top 5 of all time etc, then yeah you can break your brain trying to compare 10 year old achievements to current ones.
But in terms of competition, only active/relevant groups should be discussed.
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I agree on this, the top group needs to have a good balance between physicals, touring, digital charts performance, streaming numbers... a group who sells a lot of physical albums but have bad digital chart performance (for example: ranking in the lower half of melon) and terrible spotify numbers can't be considered a top group, the same goes to groups who have a very good performance on digital charts but have bad physical sales and very small touring numbers.
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I agree on this, the top group needs to have a good balance between physicals, touring, digital charts performance, streaming numbers... a group who sells a lot of physical albums but have bad digital chart performance (for example: ranking in the lower half of melon) and terrible spotify numbers can't be considered a top group, the same goes to groups who have a very good performance on digital charts but have bad physical sales and very small touring numbers.
By this logic, all ggs aren't top groups, because some have good digitals but they all are selling below 500k(except BP), but you won't agree, right?
People have double standards only for bgs i see...
We all know that ggs do better in digitals and bgs in physicals.
So if a gg can chart well and sell 100k , they are a top group...
but bgs have to sell a million and chart well to be a top group ?
how tf this makes sense ?
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I find it odd that album sales are always discarded in discussion because “tHaT’s tHe fAndOm” and yet who on earth do you think is doing the streaming on Spotify and YT? That also is the fandom, but whatevs.
To answer the OP, I think it is a combination of factors, especially as you talk about generations of artists. For example, if an artist is still selling millions of albums and generating millions of dollars from touring, that still is a top artist whether or not they suck balls at Spotify or YT views.
Touring and merch are the top money makers. Physical albums are lower but still bring in more money than streaming an digital.
Additionally, companies continue to aggressively pursue global expansion and interest in their groups, so when a group tops iTunes Charts in many countries or debuts strong on Oricon or US Billboard charts or is in the top music artists of discussion on Twitter, I don’t understand why all of that suddenly doesn’t matter because they didn’t debut high (or at all) on Melon.
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I find it odd that album sales are always discarded in discussion because “tHaT’s tHe fAndOm” and yet who on earth do you think is doing the streaming on Spotify and YT? That also is the fandom, but whatevs.
To answer the OP, I think it is a combination of factors, especially as you talk about generations of artists. For example, if an artist is still selling millions of albums and generating millions of dollars from touring, that still is a top artist whether or not they suck balls at Spotify or YT views.
Touring and merch are the top money makers. Physical albums are lower but still bring in more money than streaming an digital.
Additionally, companies continue to aggressively pursue global expansion and interest in their groups, so when a group tops iTunes Charts in many countries or debuts strong on Oricon or US Billboard charts or is in the top music artists of discussion on Twitter, I don’t understand why all of that suddenly doesn’t matter because they didn’t debut high (or at all) on Melon.
Nice answer
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