Adjusting Girl Group Music Show Wins to Account for Win Inflation Over the Years

    A while back, on my old forum thread comparing music show wins for top girl groups, dizzcity posted the following: I wonder if there could be some sort of "inflation-adjusted" chart to take into account how the number of music shows (and thus the rate of music show wins) have been increasing over the years?


    That gave me the idea to examine the number of music show wins awarded per year, and create the aforementioned "inflation-adjusted" graph of girl group wins.


    The first thing I did was to simply go through my win database and determine how many wins were given for each year. The results are shown below:


    MusicShowWinsPerYear.png


    As we can see, the number of music show wins increased dramatically in the 1990s, peaking around the same time as the top First Generation groups before declining noticeably in the early 2000s "soloist era".


    However, the annual win count started rising again around 2007 and has steadily increased before leveling off in recent years.


    In my initial post linked above, I was only concerned with Second Generation and later girl groups, so for the purposes of this analysis, I'll only be looking at years 2007 and beyond.


    In the table below, I show the both the raw number of music show wins awarded per year, along with an inflation scaling factor. This factor is determined by dividing the number of wins per year by the number of wins awarded in the base year of 2007.


    Year Wins Awarded
    		 Inflation Scaling Factor
    2007 136 ÷ 136 = 1.00
    2008 131 ÷ 136 = 0.96
    2009 143 ÷ 136 = 1.05
    2010 148 ÷ 136 = 1.09
    2011 156 ÷ 136 = 1.15
    2012 177 ÷ 136 = 1.30
    2013 227 ÷ 136 = 1.67
    2014 228 ÷ 136 = 1.68
    2015 270 ÷ 136 = 1.99
    2016 227 ÷ 136 = 1.67
    2017 245 ÷ 136 = 1.80
    2018 264 ÷ 136 = 1.94
    2019 272 ÷ 136 = 2.00
    2020 267 ÷ 136 = 1.96



    For example, in 2019 we had a total of 272 wins awarded, compared to exactly half that number (136) in 2007. Thus, 272 ÷ 136 = 2.00, which means that a win in 2019 will be divided by 2 to account for inflation. In effect, a win in 2019 is only worth the equivalent of half a win from 2007. Or, since there were double the amount of wins awarded in 2019 compared to 2007, an artist would have to will twice as much in order to capture the same percentage of wins. Hopefully this makes sense to everyone.


    To be continued in the next post...

    Ok, now that I had all the yearly inflation scaling factors, I simply applied those factors to each girl group's yearly win count. My calculations are shown below. Note that my numbers are up to date as of the end of 2020.


    TableGirlGroupWinsInflationAdjusted.png


    The upper table shows the nominal (or raw) wins achieved by each group over each year of interest, along with running totals in adjacent columns (the "Σ"). The lower table is similar, except that I've applied the scaling inflation factors to each yearly win count.


    I can now present inflation-adjusted win totals for each group, which are shown below along with nominal wins.


    Ranking by Nominal Wins
    		 Ranking by Inflation-Adjusted Wins
    		 Change in Rank
    #1. Twice - 112 wins
    		 #1. Girls' Generation - 79.21 wins +1
    #2. Girls' Generation - 100 wins
    		 #2. Twice - 60.83 wins -1
    #3. Red Velvet - 73 wins
    		 #3. Wonder Girls - 42.13 wins +3
    #4. GFriend - 71 wins
    		 #4. GFriend - 39.08 wins --
    #5. Apink - 51 wins
    		 #5. Red Velvet - 38.78 wins -2
    #6. Wonder Girls - 45 wins
    		 #6. 2NE1 - 35.84 wins +1
    #7T. 2NE1 - 43 wins
    		 #7. Apink - 28.49 wins -2
    #7T. Sistar - 43 wins #8. Sistar - 27.20 wins -1
    #7T. Blackpink - 43 wins #9. f(x) - 23.53 wins +3
    #10. Mamamoo - 42 wins
    		 #10. T-ara - 23.32 wins +3
    #11. Itzy - 34 wins
    		 #11. Blackpink - 22.53 wins -4
    #12. f(x) - 33 wins
    		 #12. Mamamoo - 22.45 wins -2
    #13. T-ara - 28 wins
    		 #13. Kara - 21.67 wins +1
    #14T. Kara - 26 wins
    		 #14. Itzy - 17.12 wins -3
    #14T. Iz*One - 26 wins
    		 #15. 4Minute - 14.91 wins +1
    #16. 4Minute - 23 wins
    		 #16. Iz*One - 13.20 wins -2
    #17. EXID - 22 wins
    		 #17. EXID - 11.68 wins --


    So what does this all mean? Well it means that, taking into account inflation, newer girl groups may not be doing as well as their raw win numbers would suggest. Notice how older groups generally see their rankings improve once inflation adjustments are applied.


    In effect, newer girl groups may tend to have more wins since there are simply a lot more wins being awarded each year currently, compared to what we saw in the Second Generation era.


    To be continued in the next post...

    Interesting thread. Thx for your work.

    Quote from wsoet

    In effect, newer girl groups may tend to have more wins since there are simply a lot more wins being awarded each year currently, compared to what we saw in the Second Generation era.

    We already know that. That's just confirm that fact.

    But I think such reasoning is incorrect. We now have more awards, but we also have more society and group. The groups are also now competing on the national and international market, which was not the case before.

    "If you have time to fantasize about a beautiful end, then just live beautifully 'til the end."


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    Wouldn’t this work against a group like BLACKPINK though? They only attend 2 shows and most of their wins do not come from shows that didn’t exist when older groups existed. inflation wouldn’t really affect them like it would other groups in this manner.

    Quote from FSXP

    Wouldn’t this work against a group like BLACKPINK though? They only attend 2 shows and most of their wins do not come from shows that didn’t exist when older groups existed. inflation wouldn’t really affect them like it would other groups in this manner.

    This might work against groups that don't take "advantage" of the many music shows. Also this formula doesn't take into account the new triple crown rule that was implemented in many music shows. This would also be cool to see the win% of each girls, meaning the % the group was winning when they participated. For the last 5 years i anticipate BP to be first with fewer releases and fewer attendance. Twice most likely plummeted their win% in the last 2 years with multiple clashes with big groups.

    Quote from citron-icy

    Interesting thread. Thx for your work.

    We already know that. That's just confirm that fact.

    But I think such reasoning is incorrect. We now have more awards, but we also have more society and group. The groups are also now competing on the national and international market, which was not the case before.

    well said

    Quote from motorp77

    This might work against groups that don't take "advantage" of the many music shows. Also this formula doesn't take into account the new triple crown rule that was implemented in many music shows. This would also be cool to see the win% of each girls, meaning the % the group was winning when they participated. For the last 5 years i anticipate BP to be first with fewer releases and fewer attendance. Twice most likely plummeted their win% in the last 2 years with multiple clashes with big groups.

    interesting perspective so you're essentially saying divide the number of total wins by the total number of music shows each group has attended?

    i can agree with that

    Quote from selfmate

    interesting perspective so you're essentially saying divide the number of total wins by the total number of music shows each group has attended?

    i can agree with that

    No this wouldn't make sense as there is too little sample size and it would absolutely destroyed comebacks that overlapped between big groups. Just adding win% as an additional stat to get further context is better. Dividing isn't the solution.

    Quote from motorp77

    No this wouldn't make sense as there is too little sample size and it would absolutely destroyed comebacks that overlapped between big groups. Just adding win% as an additional stat to get further context is better. Dividing isn't the solution.

    sorry i'm a bit confused now by what you mean by win%

    it seemed like in your original post that you meant % the group was winning when they psrticipated so as in wins over participation...can you maybe claify it for me

    Quote from selfmate

    sorry i'm a bit confused now by what you mean by win%

    it seemed like in your original post that you meant % the group was winning when they psrticipated so as in wins over participation...can you maybe claify it for me

    I just think that a chart about the win% of groups of each generation would be cool and add more context to these graphs. Not combining them.

    Quote from motorp77

    I just think that a chart about the win% of groups of each generation would be cool and add more context to these graphs. Not combining them.

    okay gotcha


    I was thinking more like divide the number of wins v the number of times they participated lol

    Thank you, great work! Interesting to see how so many of the 2nd-gen groups rose in rank after the adjustments. (I was especially surprised at how much the Wonder Girls rose... they were a lot more celebrated than I thought). I had a sneaking suspicion that SNSD and TWICE would switch places at the top given the inflation adjustments, and I see your results bear that idea out. Still, looking at the graphs, TWICE's trajectory is actually rising faster than SNSD's was at a similar stage in their career, so I'm not too worried about their future - all they need to do is accumulate longevity and a steady win rate to eventually overtake SNSD. Pretty impressed with Gfriend staying extremely solid and maintaining their position, even after inflation adjustment.

    Very interesting way of analysing music show wins in a fairer manner.


    There are still however factors that need to be taken into account, such as music shows awarding points for appearances (which as someone said puts groups like BLACKPINK at a disadvantage), and boycotts.


    For example, during the beginning of SNSD's peak SM artists were boycotting Mnet (M Countdown). This meant that songs like Gee, Genie, Oh, Run Devil Run, Hoot could only possibly get wins from 2 music shows

    The breakdown of SNSD's wins brings more light to how unfortunate the timing was https://katherinedoeskpop.word…sic-show-wins-and-awards/

    tumblr_mbacq1PDzs1rvedkto1_500.gifv

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    Quote from Zazatwin22

    So in the overall scheme of things what does this mean? That wins are losing relevance because they are easier to get? Or is it a gg is more favored by the GP thing

    I wouldn't say it means wins are easier, you still need successful comebacks. I would say successful comebacks earn more wins.


    For example: SNSD Lion Heart (2015) won 15 times but if it was released in 2009 it would have won 7-10 times. Conversely, Gee (2009) won 14 times but if it was released in 2015 it would have won 20+ times easily.


    This is obviously ignoring music trends, just analysis comeback success.

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    少女時代

  • AllKill VIP

    we have more shows yeah, but we also get hella more groups...

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    Quote from Reclaimer

    ...who aren't necessarily competitive. I wouldn't be surprised if the % of wins from top groups year by year hasn't changed much

    I'm pretty sure it has. There's more Big 3 (now Big 4 with Bighit) shows competing than ever, they alone fill up the year and there's a lot of next tier groups as well, the produce groups, the ex produce groups, all the 2nd gen soloists, it's more crowded than ever.


    I mean does it matter? music show wins aren't really comparable anyway, since some groups only attend some but not others, some need attendance, some have a triple crown rule now (and not before), etc etc. There's too many factors to make a 1:1 comparison.

    Ooh this is interesting even if I don't like maths lol


    Good effort and it helps recontextualise things but this still doesn't provide the full picture because there are a lot more variables than just more music shows these days: shows have used different scoring systems, some shows had very sus or broken criteria (music banks infamous broadcast score), some shows arbitrarily not giving out awards (music core didn't used to give awards, inki at one point stopped giving awards), some show banned certain artists and so on.

    Quote from citron-icy

    We now have more awards, but we also have more society and group. The groups are also now competing on the national and international market, which was not the case before.

    Yes I agree that there are more groups these days. Now intuitively, an increase in the number of active groups would seem like it would make it more difficult to win, and so perhaps one could implement another scaling factor to account for this growth (an overly simple example: number of groups in the current year ÷ number of groups in the base year) and then *multiply* yearly wins by that factor.


    However, I don't think it would be that straightforward, since the majority of groups don't really have a chance at winning a music show, so simply introducing a bunch of new groups would, I believe, have a comparatively minimal effect on the wins of top-tier artists, who would continue to dominate.


    To your other point, I do concur that groups today are competing on a larger international stage, so the relative importance of music show wins is likely decreasing.

    Quote from FSXP

    Wouldn’t this work against a group like BLACKPINK though? They only attend 2 shows and most of their wins do not come from shows that didn’t exist when older groups existed. inflation wouldn’t really affect them like it would other groups in this manner.

    Maybe. However, keep in mind that attendance is only required for SBS MTV's The Show, so BP is still eligible to win on the five other music shows. I've included a breakdown of all their 22 wins for 2020:


    Show Champion - 4 wins (3 HYLT, 1 LSG)

    M Countdown - 3 wins (2 HYLT, 1 LSG)

    Music Bank - 3 wins (2 HYLT, 1 LSG)

    Music Core - 3 wins (3 HYLT)

    Inkigayo - 9 wins (3 HYLT, 3 IC, 3 LSG)

    Quote from motorp77

    Interesting can you do that for boy groups?

    Ok, I've gone through and applied the same methodology for all Second Generation and later boy groups with over 20 wins. Here are the calculations:


    TableBoyGroupWinsInflationAdjusted.png


    And here are the resulting nominal and inflation-adjusted rankings:


    Ranking by Nominal Wins
    		 Ranking by Inflation-Adjusted Wins
    		 Change in Rank
    #1. BTS – 124 wins #1. Big Bang – 89.49 wins +2
    #2. EXO – 107 wins #2. BTS – 77.86 wins -1
    #3. Big Bang – 92 wins #3. EXO – 71.24 wins -1
    #4. Super Junior – 61 wins #4. TVXQ – 64.55 wins +1
    #5. TVXQ – 60 wins #5. Super Junior – 63.67 wins -1
    #6T. Shinee – 59 wins #6. Shinee – 50.41 wins --
    #6T. Beast – 59 wins #7. Beast – 46.48 wins --
    #8. Wanna One – 49 wins #8. 2PM – 45.04 wins +2
    #9. Infinite – 43 wins #9. SG Wannabe – 34.11 wins +7
    #10. 2PM – 41 wins #10. Infinite – 32.59 wins -1
    #11. Seventeen – 38 wins #11. Wanna One – 31.55 wins -3
    #12. CNBLUE – 35 wins #12. CNBLUE – 30.14 wins --
    #13. Got7 – 32 wins #13. F.T. Island – 28.95 wins +2
    #14. VIXX – 30 wins #14. Seventeen – 26.43 wins -3
    #15. F.T. Island – 28 wins #15. Got7 – 20.85 wins -2
    #16T. SG Wannabe – 27 wins #16. VIXX – 20.23 wins -2
    #16T. iKon – 27 wins #17. iKon – 17.01 wins --
    #18. Winner – 23 wins #18. Winner – 15.13 wins --


    So just like the girl group case, the leader of the Third Generation is eclipsed by the leader of the Second Generation once win inflation is taken into account.


    And before anyone states that EXO has 117 wins, keep in mind that I'm not combining wins from their EXO-K sub-group. :wink:

    Impressive work, BTS got absolutely destroyed by this formula lmao, 50 wins being "nerfed" to 30. 50 wins in 2020 is approx the same as 23 wins in 2008 lol.


    SG Wannabe got a 26% increase where as BTS got a 37% downfall.


    That's very impressive, I would have never think 2nd gen groups would have thrived that much with this formula.


    Also i didn't think Beast would have lost that many wins, their "music show peak" really came up late. Infinite also got destroyed lmao.

    Beast is even more surprising when you see 2pm thrives, a group that isn't that much older.

    Quote from motorp77

    Also this formula doesn't take into account the new triple crown rule that was implemented in many music shows.

    That's an interesting point you bring up about the Triple Crown rule, so I looked into it a bit, and here's what I found:


    The Show - Always had a Triple Crown rule

    Show Champion - Triple Crown rule implemented in 2015

    M Countdown - Always had a Triple Crown rule

    Music Bank - Never had a Triple Crown rule

    Music Core - Never had a Triple Crown rule

    Inkigayo - Triple Crown rule implemented in 1999


    Thus, for the purposes of this analysis, I don't think Triple Crown restrictions would change things all that much, since the only newly-implemented Triple Crown rule was Show Champion's in 2015.

    Which music shows were existing during the early 2nd gen ?

    Quote from motorp77

    This would also be cool to see the win% of each girls, meaning the % the group was winning when they participated.

    I think the difficulty with this proposal would be to define what "participated" means, since an artist doesn't have to appear on a show to be eligible for a win (in most cases). I can't figure out how to properly calculate a win percentage given the data I have.

    Quote from dizzcity

    Thank you, great work! Interesting to see how so many of the 2nd-gen groups rose in rank after the adjustments. (I was especially surprised at how much the Wonder Girls rose... they were a lot more celebrated than I thought). I had a sneaking suspicion that SNSD and TWICE would switch places at the top given the inflation adjustments, and I see your results bear that idea out. Still, looking at the graphs, TWICE's trajectory is actually rising faster than SNSD's was at a similar stage in their career, so I'm not too worried about their future - all they need to do is accumulate longevity and a steady win rate to eventually overtake SNSD.

    Haha I figured that you, as a Wonderful, would be pleased to see Wonder Girls rise.


    But yes, going into this analysis, I also suspected that Twice would be surpassed. If they end up extending their contract next year, I could see them retaking the top spot, even with inflation. There's a gap of about 20 inflation-adjusted wins, which is likely closer to 40 nominal wins.

    Quote from Reclaimer

    There are still however factors that need to be taken into account, such as music shows awarding points for appearances (which as someone said puts groups like BLACKPINK at a disadvantage), and boycotts.


    For example, during the beginning of SNSD's peak SM artists were boycotting Mnet (M Countdown). This meant that songs like Gee, Genie, Oh, Run Devil Run, Hoot could only possibly get wins from 2 music shows

    The breakdown of SNSD's wins brings more light to how unfortunate the timing was https://katherinedoeskpop.word…sic-show-wins-and-awards/

    Yep, I agree that both "broadcast points" and boycotts can add further wrinkles to the data. Unfortunately, I can't think of a way to account for this, since you would almost have to go group-by-group and identify such irregularities.


    Now to your specific SNSD case, I did look through my data set, and indeed, they did not record a single win on M Countdown between the period from 2008-04-10 (Baby Baby) to 2011-10-27 (The Boys). However, other SM artists did win, so it appears that the boycott wasn't 100% complete. For example, Super Junior won twice for "Sorry, Sorry" in April 2009, and Shinee won for "Ring Ding Dong" in November 2009. Do you know why they were allowed to win, while SNSD wasn't?

    Quote from Reclaimer

    Another interesting factor to consider would be the total amount of songs released, and also the amount of songs released by year.

    Oh yeah, I would love to have that data on total releases per year in order to see how it affects the ease of scoring a win. My guess is that it actually wouldn't change things that much, since relatively few songs are actually competitive for a win.

    Quote from bartkun

    we have more shows yeah, but we also get hella more groups...

    Quote from Reclaimer

    ...who aren't necessarily competitive. I wouldn't be surprised if the % of wins from top groups year by year hasn't changed much

    Quote from sassily

    I'm pretty sure it has. There's more Big 3 (now Big 4 with Bighit) shows competing than ever, they alone fill up the year and there's a lot of next tier groups as well, the produce groups, the ex produce groups, all the 2nd gen soloists, it's more crowded than ever.

    You all have given me an idea for another analysis. I'd like to take a look at what I'll call "win concentration." That is, if we combine the wins for the top five(?) groups each year, what percentage of that year's total wins would that sum comprise?

    Quote from harambelives

    Good effort and it helps recontextualise things but this still doesn't provide the full picture because there are a lot more variables than just more music shows these days: shows have used different scoring systems, some shows had very sus or broken criteria (music banks infamous broadcast score), some shows arbitrarily not giving out awards (music core didn't used to give awards, inki at one point stopped giving awards), some show banned certain artists and so on.

    Yes you make some valid points! Now as for Music Core and Inkigayo not giving out awards during certain time periods, I believe that scenario should be accounted for, since such a time period would have a low (possibly less than 1) inflation scaling factor, which would effectively overweight whatever wins an artist was able to achieve during that period.

    Yeah I took a look at my data again, and BTS suffered the most of out any of the boy groups here due to the inflation adjustment, while SG Wannabe did indeed benefit the most. As for girl groups, Itzy suffered the most.


    As for Beast, I think it's because their wins were much more spread out across their career, whereas 2PM's wins were very front-loaded.

    Quote from wsoet

    Yep, I agree that both "broadcast points" and boycotts can add further wrinkles to the data. Unfortunately, I can't think of a way to account for this, since you would almost have to go group-by-group and identify such irregularities.


    Now to your specific SNSD case, I did look through my data set, and indeed, they did not record a single win on M Countdown between the period from 2008-04-10 (Baby Baby) to 2011-10-27 (The Boys). However, other SM artists did win, so it appears that the boycott wasn't 100% complete. For example, Super Junior won twice for "Sorry, Sorry" in April 2009, and Shinee won for "Ring Ding Dong" in November 2009. Do you know why they were allowed to win, while SNSD wasn't?

    Huh, that's very odd then. I guess the boycott was somehow targeted to only SNSD?


    But the only way to make sure it to check how a song like Gee lost every week on M Countdown but won 9 weeks straight on Music Bank. What songs were they competing against? What was the scoring like? I only found this:


    In my opinion, it's very, very unlikely that SNSD somehow never got a good enough combination of digital, physical, and voting points to win on M Countdown between 2008 and 2011.


    Furthermore, even if other SM artists did win, I don't believe they performed. And they didn't attend MAMA 2009 & 2010 either.

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    少女時代

    Here's are all the wins awarded during the period when Gee won nine consecutive times on Music Bank:


    Gee9WeeksMusicBank.png


    So it looks like there were only two other songs in play during this time-frame. I do find it suspicious that Gee wasn't able to win a single time on M Countdown, so I wouldn't be surprised if there was some manipulation going on behind the scenes.

  • AllKill VIP

    Just to point out that show champion used to be an attedance award show +no clear score revealed. And music bank is shady with the broadcast score. The music shows in 2019/2020 has started to become more transparent , maybe due to few high profile controversial cases - wrong trophies to wrong groups, mistakes in calculation

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