Visualising the Growth in Girl Group Physical Sales Over the Years (Or: Yes, They Really Are Selling More These Days)

Over the past few years, it has been said that physical sales have risen significantly due to the growing popularity of K-pop throughout the world. This totally makes sense, but I wanted to visualise the growth myself, which, of course, meant creating a chart.

Thus, using figures compiled by halfdavid, I gathered Korean release sales data for the top 30 best selling Second Generation and later girl groups, and graphed each series of sales on a common chart.

The result is shown below. Note that I used different line/marker styles for each generation: 2nd = solid lines/circular markers, 3rd = dotted lines/triangular markers, 4th = dashed lines/square markers.

GGPhysicalSales.png

Observations:

• As we can see, the top selling girl groups of today (Twice, Blackpink, Iz*One) clearly outsell, on average, the top group of the Second Generation, which of course is SNSD.

• In fact, even Red Velvet, Itzy, and (G)I-dle are selling at around Girls' Generation levels (or higher) currently.

• However, there are still plenty of releases selling in the 50K to 100K range today, which has been the case over the entire duration of this chart. The difference is that these days, a mid-level group such as fromis_9 or WJSN can achieve those numbers, whereas previously, only higher tier groups such as Wonder Girls, Kara, or T-ara could.

• It is interesting to note that physical sales overall declined heading into the mid-2010s. I believe this is because Second Generation groups were losing popularity over that time period. Conversely, I see a rise in sales starting around 2015, which coincides with the advent of Third Generation girl groups.

• In addition, I have to point out that sales have increased even more dramatically starting from roughly 2019. What do we think is the cause of this? My guess is that it's largely due to increased buying levels from Chinese fans.

• Finally, keep in mind that the sales figures utilized here are total lifetime sales. If I had used, let's say, first three months data instead, the overall physical sales growth witnessed would be even greater given that lifetime sales favour earlier releases (as they've simply had more time to accumulate sales).

Quote from WhimsyLand

Sales dipped in 2010 not because of loss in popularity (in fact, it was the peak time digitally of a lot of second gen groups like SNSD, Suju, and SHINee), but because of a dip in the physical market in general.

Physical sales only started picking up once EXO debuted and only really started taking off once Growl/Overdose came out.

I think that's right for boy groups, but the story is slightly different for the ladies. EXO's debut likely helped revitalize the physical market, though that wasn't reflected in girl group sales until a couple years later. This makes sense, since although EXO kicked off the Third Generation for boy groups in 2012, the Third Generation for girl groups didn't start until 2014 with the first appearances of Red Velvet and Mamamoo.

Quote from stan12345

The government made them raise their prices in 2013 which is why downloads started to drop from then and for newer groups albums probably became a more attractive proposition.

I'm glad you brought that up, since I forgot about the price increase for downloads. I imagine the rise of streaming also plays into this.

To try to make things clearer, I've now created a chart that simply graphs the release date and sales figures for each album, not segregated into individual artists. A 10-period moving average line is also included below:

GGPhysicalSalesOverall.png

Again, we see a decrease in sales heading into the mid-2010s, but a drastic increase beginning around 2015. Furthermore, this increase in sales has accelerated noticeably since 2019.

Quote from harambelives

Still though the way SNSD was thrashing everyone including bgs was incredible.

Yes that's a good point that you bring up. So over the past decade or so, why has boy group physical sale growth been so much larger than the analogous growth for girl groups?

As an additional piece to this analysis, I've calculated and graphed total sales and average (mean) sales for each year in the data set, as shown below:

GGPhysicalSalesAnnual.png

As we can see, the Second Generation appears to have peaked around 2010 before declining heading into the mid-2010s. However, the arrival of Third Generation girl groups marked an inflection point in the data, and sales have been increasing since the 2014-2015 time period.

Quote from harambelives

It's pretty obvious isn't it? BG have much more dedicated fans than ggs. Always have. Ggs rely more on public while bgs rely on fans which often means they can bring in more money and have greater staying power. Same situation regardless of how strong or weak the album market is

Looking now multiple bgs can sell half a mil to over a million. Meanwhile only a handful of ggs can get to half (Twice, BP and I think formerly iz one?) and only 1 can pass million. Quite a disparity no?

In SNSD era same story. Multiple bgs could get 100k and some of the biggest even higher. Meanwhile most ggs could barely achieve 50k and 100k was the dream with only a handful like 2ne1, FX and Kara could get. SNSD was the only gg that could go beyond and somehow even beat bgs which was massive feat. Them getting 1m in Japan at the time was simply insane and the icing on the top.

Oh yeah, boy groups having much more dedicated fans than girl groups is a well established fact. No question there.

I was just curious as to why the *growth* in boy group sales over the past decade has been so much greater. For example, a top BG in the Second Generation was selling only around 100K-150K more than a top GG. However, these days, the gap between a top BG and top GG can be 1 million or more.

Thus, it seems like the bulk of the physical sales growth witnessed over the past decade (which has been driven by "international" fans) has gone to boy groups, i.e. the ratio of top BG sales to top GG sales is noticeably higher now.

stan12345 mentioned the "taboo" factor above. This implies that it's not as acceptable for "Western" males to be K-pop fans (who would naturally favour girl groups), which does offer some explanation for what we're seeing.

Quote from harambelives

males think it might be gay to support a gg to that extent, it might be embarrassing (older male fans are often called creeps), they only like them for looks rather than music, they rather spend money on other stuff like games or tech and so on.

As a heterosexual male who's been interested in Korean music since the First Generation, I've heard this all before, sadly. I can vividly remember hearing K-pop being describing as "gay" before.