The Definitive 2021 Music Show Win Summary

Next, in the chart below, I'll provide a breakdown of this year's 257 music show wins by company:

MusicShowWinsByCompany2021.png

Note that I did not combine companies that ultimately share the same ownership. For example, Big Hit Music and Pledis Entertainment are listed separately, even though they all fall under Hybe Labels, which is part of Hybe Corporation.

Quote from quarkie

Astro multiple wins era is so beautiful.

Yeah, they won 7 times in 2021, compared to only 2 times from their debut in 2016 to 2020!

Quote from russianvelvet

Great to see Oh My Girl with three wins!!!!! (I thought it was more though lmao, they still digitally did great this though.

Oh yeah, before looking at the data, I also thought that Dun Dun Dance won more than three times.

In the chart below, I've categorised each of the 257 wins awarded this year by artist type:

MusicShowWinsByType2021.png

As you can see, girl groups had a pretty bad year in 2021. To put things into perspective, in 2020, girl groups scored 120 wins while boy groups scored 105 wins. Thus, the ratio of girl group to boy group wins was 120 ÷ 105 = 1.14. In 2021, that same ratio is 66 ÷ 127 = 0.52!

What do you think is the cause of this decline in girl group wins?

To expand on my post above, I decided to break down music show wins by artist within each of the four artist types. The results are shown in the charts below:

MusicShowWinsByTypeArtist2021.png

Again, this shows how much better boy groups did compared to girl groups in 2021 versus 2020. And of course, I have to note that female soloist wins were absolutely dominated by IU, which was actually not the case in 2020.

Quote from thelightoftruth

Was Next Level the song that was nominated most without ever winning?

That would be my guess, though I don't have the data to say that definitively (since I don't track nominations).

For the next part of my 2021 music show win summary, I've categorised all 257 wins awarded this year by generation:

MusicShowWinsByGen2021.png

It's obvious that the Third Generation is still dominant. However, the Fourth Generation is definitely rising: for example, in 2020, they won only 49 times, compared to 190 wins for Third Generation artists.

The gap is closing, but when will the Fourth Gen finally be able to overtake the Third Gen?

As a follow-up to the post above, shown in the charts below are breakdowns of music show wins by artist, but within each generation:

MusicShowWinsByGenArtist2021.png

What's perhaps the most surprising to me is how much better Third Generation boy groups are doing compared to their girl group counterparts. I suspect that some of this has to do with the huge increase in physical sales we've seen over the past year, which has mostly benefited boy groups.

Quote from keaji

The Boyz doing nice

Yeah, I was actually a bit surprised by how well they did. As a Deobi yourself, can you help explain their seemingly sudden rise over the past year or so?

Quote from keaji

Their rise started after Road to Kingdom in 2020, it's what helped them get attention. For me as well, I wasn't interested in 'stanning' another group but with that show they got my attention, performance factor is what makes kpop different and they show spectacular performances that made people look into them and discover amazing music etc.

Before Road to Kingdom they only got 1 win, in 2019, with Bloom Bloom.

They're from the lesser known company, so to get some attention/exposure, they had to work a lot. Rtk really helped them like that.

After that show they made a comeback with The Stealer in september 2020 and already got 4 wins on music shows with it (Reveal, in february 2020 before RTK, got 0 wins). The rise just continued through the rest of 2020, because after the show they got more and more chances to expose themselves.

Since they were the winners of Riad to Kingdom, they were guaranteed a spot in Kingdom. Groups with bigger fandoms participated and 50% of the score depended on the voting, but they still ended up on 2nd place at the end, thanks to korean deobis, because streaming on korean platforms had some weight in finale. They're actually big in Korea, ome of the most popular groups there, all the surveys done among korean fans show that The Boyz became one of the top bgs in Korea. After Kingdom ended in june 2021, they made a comeback in the beginning of august 2021 and again in less three months in november 2021. Each got them 5 wins. They made a comeback so quick that we were doubtful how successful it can be, but it was just the same as the one in august. They are also doing better and better in Korean charts each time they release something.

So in 2021 their 'success story' continued with Kingdom + they're usually invited to the big shows, the members do variety conent seperately, magazine shots, osts etc, which is getting them more and more exposure by little and they're continuing to rise.

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I appreciate the detailed response! I think this does a good job of shedding light on The Boyz's tremendous growth over the past couple years.