Can foreign markets keep nugu groups from disbanding?

they need enough international fans to keep them out of nugudom, unless i dont think they survive in this saturated market

20k sales can’t save anyone. And youtube views are completely useless no matter how much kpop fans like to pretend otherwise.

That being said, touring can definitely keep them afloat for longer. See KARD with Latin America for example (before one of them enlisted). If it wasn’t for the group having a solid fanbase there and constantly touring, KARD would probably be long gone.

Isn't this Kard's case? Their Korean fanbase is almost non existent but they are very popular overseas. So far they've survived 5 years and still keep going.

20k is soo low lmaoo

Yes, of course.

It looks like a lot of people aren't familiar with the smaller groups, but extract it to something else you may be familiar with. Consider something like Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare was considered a "commercial disappointment" for "only" selling 13.6 million copies in its first month. Whereas a niche game like Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town was cheerfully ecstatic over selling 1 million copies in 8 months.

Nicher studios are like this too. Of course you can have commercial failures where the executives don't spend their money well, but generally speaking, smaller studios understand the size of their fanbase and succeed on balancing costs against content. Think of a group like U-KISS that has been around since 2008 and has never made a splash in South Korea. For all the people above who are mistakenly going "lol 20K could never save a group," U-KISS has been around for more than a decade, has 13 albums (many of which never broke 20K in sales) and 17 mini albums (again, many of which never even broke 10K in sales).

Quite frankly, there are large groups with companies that ooze money whose fanbases would kill to have even a fraction of their songs and content.

They could, but it's hard for a nugu group to get foreign attention

Yes but only if they keep increasing their popularity internationally, like Monsta X and Dreamcatcher did. Then they will even eventually get slowly recognized in SK.

Just 2x,xxx copies per EP/single and some millions views on youtube can save no group unless the group gets various gigs oversea in addition.

Quote from alexS

This is pretty much what Dreamcatcher did. And it worked for them

NO. Doesn't Dreamcatcher sell way more than 20,000k?

Quote from bartkun

fromis_9 kind of survived those long hiatuses thanks to last two albums selling more than 50k on GAON

other groups one was already mentioned - Dreamcatcher, and second one will be LOONA

but as you can see by the names of groups those ain't nugus, those are mid-high groups

but overall if nugu group from small label would have 3 releases in one year and they will get 75k total sales (10k+25k+40K) from those then yeah this might be a factor which would make agency think 'let's continue, let's manage bit longer because our girls sales are growing'

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I believe Fromis_9 resorts mainly on domestic market. It is not relevant to this topic.

Dreamcatcher and Loona sell way more than 20,000k. And, 100k sale can't save Loona, reportedly failing to pay outsource employees.

More singles released, more money invested. if a group can sell 75k through 3 singles, its budget costs 3x thus, low income per each won invested.

Yes.

Look at Fast and the Furious franchise. It doesn’t do well in America but China loves em so they keep making those lame movies.

I don't think 20K is enough for any group to survive without some other really high metrics