Do people exaggerate kpop's spotify achievements?

  • no matter how you look at it, kpop is still a niche globally and all the spotify achievements kpop fans talk about are relative to the kpop niche but utterly meaningless outside of it. charting toward the bottom of the spotify top200 for less than a week doesn't make anyone an international star.

    Unless your faves' streams are of the calibre of BTS or Blackpink then they are still closer to other kpop groups below them in spotify streams than you think. For example, many people here look at Aespa's and Itzy's latest albums and think that Itzy is the top 4th generation gg globally while Aespa is flopping, but the gap between Loco and Savage is merely 20M. 20M streams in a platform such as Spotify is NOTHING. same for people who call Enhypen's Polaroid Love a viral hit when it has only 40M streams, that's also NOTHING.

    to put things in perspective: the least streamed song in Blackpink's The Album is You Never Know and it has 95M streams and the least streamed song in BTS' BE is Stay and it has 128M streams and you know what? no one considers those songs hits or talk about them going viral. No one makes a big deal about Fly To My Room having almost 20M over Stay as if that puts them in different leagues. So in what world is Polaroid Love a hit? and why does a gap of 20M apparently put Itzy and Aespa in 2 different tiers where one is considered a flop while the other considered internationally successful? It's only 4th generation fans that keep exaggerating streams and gaps to create non existent achievements to establish their faves' superiority. But in reality, all these groups are like fish in a small pond with some of them being slightly bigger, but not enough to devour the others.

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  • It's true that k-pop is still very much a niche thing,but that doesn't change the fact that Spotify is a very relevant metric.

  • It's true that k-pop is still very much a niche thing,but that doesn't change the fact that Spotify is a very relevant metric.

    i am not denying that, it is a fact. And i also think it is nice for these kpop groups to have these streams. what i don't like is how 4th generation fans act like having a couple millions over another kpop somehow elevates their faves above kpop when, like i said, those achievements are relative to the kpop niche but outside of it they mean nothing.

  • i am not denying that, it is a fact. And i also think it is nice for these kpop groups to have these streams. what i don't like is how 4th generation fans act like having a couple millions over another kpop somehow elevates their faves above kpop when, like i said, those achievements are relative to the kpop niche but outside of it they mean nothing.

    Ah well yes,that's your typical k-pop fan ''my fave is better than yours'' mentality.Don't take it too seriously.

  • Just because itzy is slightly ahead of aespa doesn’t mean spotify doesn’t matter

    Who even looks at one platform only to define succes :facepalm:

    One time people say sales don’t matter, then they say youTube views don’t matter. Now streams don’t matter. Then what does matter? Nothing by that logic. Let’s remember that most kpop groups still get more streams on Spotify than on melon, so yes it matters

  • It's all in the perspective *shrugs

    Besides most kpop fan dismissed and exaggerates metrics to suits their narratives.

  • Not you using enhypen as an example when that song was released just a month ago and barely anyone calls it a hit. The ones who are calling it a hit are always being shut down. But even when engenes say it’s an achievement there’s salty people everywhere not being able to let engenes celebrate in peace when it’s impressive for a rookie

    That’s what all fans do, is celebrate every achievement Even when it’s small. But for some reason spotify achievements gets everyone so pressed

  • Niche or not, they still matter

  • Why use Polaroid love as an example for you point? It's viral in kpop circles and you shouldn't deny that. It has that many streams because it's a new song so your argument is weird. Not even viral songs debut with 200m streams off the bat

  • Not you using enhypen as an example when that song was released just a month ago and barely anyone calls it a hit. The ones who are calling it a hit are always being shut down. But even when engenes say it’s an achievement there’s salty people everywhere not being able to let engenes celebrate in peace when it’s impressive for a rookie

    That’s what all fans do, is celebrate every achievement Even when it’s small. But for some reason spotify achievements gets everyone so pressed

    The thing is "is impressive for a 4th gen rookie" because 4th gen bg specially can't rely on the gp of anywhere and are flopping hard digitally speaking so using an ok number and trying to make it seem like a hit isn't right neither will make the song a hit.

    Op is right about the comparations. As kpop is growing, the numbers should grow too, not the contrary, putting some little numbers as a hit.

  • Why use Polaroid love as an example for you point? It's viral in kpop circles and you shouldn't deny that. It has that many streams because it's a new song so your argument is weird. Not even viral songs debut with 200m streams off the bat

    It isn't a viral song. Viral songs have way more streams.

  • kpop fans often exaggerate Spotify achievements bc it's the platform most groups perform the worst at.

    besides bts, every kpop group does better on youtube than spotify, so every 10M stream on spotify is seen as a very big deal while getting 30m views on youtube isn't "that" hard anymore to get compared to spotify.

  • this screams salty fan of …..

  • Yes. The groups are irrelevant flops on Spotify.

  • The thing is "is impressive for a 4th gen rookie" because 4th gen bg specially can't rely on the gp of anywhere and are flopping hard digitally speaking so using an ok number and trying to make it seem like a hit isn't right neither will make the song a hit.

    Op is right about the comparations. As kpop is growing, the numbers should grow too, not the contrary, putting some little numbers as a hit.

    no one is putting them as hits

  • if u compare anyone's achievement to bp and bts then kpop besides them is major flop, so whats the point in talking about the achievement of anyone besides bts and bp, they are all flops

  • no one is putting them as hits

    Some are, let's not kid ourselves. If you aren't, great, but some really loud are. There is a reason why we have so many "who is the 4th gen king?" threads and it's funny because no 4th gen bgs are bringing great numbers overall including digitals, they just do good in 1 or 2 criteria and call it a top group or a lead group.

  • yes 4th gen fans over exaggerate spotify streams of their faves. Specially when they compare their 4th gen faves with 3rd gen groups. With spotify and kpop both growing, the territory of hit should also increase. 2021 song by 1million selling boy group and 500k selling girl group should not be called a spotify hit till it reaches 300million or 400million streams. That is with lowering the bar for kpop. Western songs with 400million streams are underperformance.

  • no matter how you look at it, kpop is still a niche globally and all the spotify achievements kpop fans talk about are relative to the kpop niche but utterly meaningless outside of it. charting toward the bottom of the spotify top200 for less than a week doesn't make anyone an international star.

    Unless your faves' streams are of the calibre of BTS or Blackpink then they are still closer to other kpop groups below them in spotify streams than you think. For example, many people here look at Aespa's and Itzy's latest albums and think that Itzy is the top 4th generation gg globally while Aespa is flopping, but the gap between Loco and Savage is merely 20M. 20M streams in a platform such as Spotify is NOTHING. same for people who call Enhypen's Polaroid Love a viral hit when it has only 40M streams, that's also NOTHING.

    to put things in perspective: the least streamed song in Blackpink's The Album is You Never Know and it has 95M streams and the least streamed song in BTS' BE is Stay and it has 128M streams and you know what? no one considers those songs hits or talk about them going viral. No one makes a big deal about Fly To My Room having almost 20M over Stay as if that puts them in different leagues. So in what world is Polaroid Love a hit? and why does a gap of 20M apparently put Itzy and Aespa in 2 different tiers where one is considered a flop while the other considered internationally successful? It's only 4th generation fans that keep exaggerating streams and gaps to create non existent achievements to establish their faves' superiority. But in reality, all these groups are like fish in a small pond with some of them being slightly bigger, but not enough to devour the others.

    What are you on about enhypen and Polaroid love? The song is one month old, 40M for a 4th gen bg is HUGE for that amount of time. The 4th gen bg song with most streams is around 150M, let's not forget.. This is a hit among the kpop community and platforms like Spotify show it. Enhypen hasn't left the Spotify charta ever since the release of the song and their peaks there are nice. Nobody is claiming that Polaroid love is the biggest hit of the generation or of kpop. But it is a fact that it's a hit in the kpop community.


    It's very obvious that you stan groups who don't do well in Spotify. Kpop stans like you glorify charts like genie and bugs - platforms where fandoms can manipulate and platforms that reflect only one country, but then put down Spotify - one of the world's biggest music platforms. If your faves were doing well on Spotify you wouldn't be thinking this way

  • I don't understand your logic.


    Why are you all comparing kpop songs streams on Spotify to western songs streams? Except bts and blackpink, no kpop group is known around the world. Each of your kpop groups is very famous only in the kpop community. Again, exception are bts and blackpink. You can't expect kpop groups to pull the same numbers as the biggest acts in the world


    Especially when we talk about 4th gen groups. If you haven't noticed, 4th gen groups have already surpassed majority of third gen groups on Spotify - monthly listeners wise, followers wise and streams wise. They are still growing and the streams they pull out are awesome for the KPOP COMMUNITY. Look at wannabe's streams - one of the biggest kpop hits -222M. This song was everywhere, it was very huge yet following your logic it shouldn't be considered a hit because it's far from having 400-500M streams? That's not it. Nobody is claiming Polaroid love, wannabe or any other song is a GLOBAL HIT among locals and nonfans. People are simply saying that those songs went big in the kpop community. Charts like Spotify, billboard, melon etc reflected that success too.


    Btw op, enhypen got their hit in the kpop community with Polaroid love, whether you like it or not

  • What are you on about enhypen and Polaroid love? The song is one month old, 40M for a 4th gen bg is HUGE for that amount of time. The 4th gen bg song with most streams is around 150M, let's not forget.. This is a hit among the kpop community and platforms like Spotify show it. Enhypen hasn't left the Spotify charta ever since the release of the song and their peaks there are nice. Nobody is claiming that Polaroid love is the biggest hit of the generation or of kpop. But it is a fact that it's a hit in the kpop community.


    It's very obvious that you stan groups who don't do well in Spotify. Kpop stans like you glorify charts like genie and bugs - platforms where fandoms can manipulate and platforms that reflect only one country, but then put down Spotify - one of the world's biggest music platforms. If your faves were doing well on Spotify you wouldn't be thinking this way

    I did the opposite of putting Spotify down and I couldn't care less about genie or bugs. You don't see people make a big fuss about groups ranking in the bottom of those charts but they make a big fuss about groups ranking in the bottom of Spotify top200. Those achievements are only relevant within the kpop niche buy they don't mean anything outside of it.

  • I'm saying since those achievements are relative to kpop standards, the gap between many kpop groups isn't as big as many fans pretend. Having few millions over another group doesn't mean you two belong in different tiers. You should look at the bigger picture of Spotify's international standards to realise how meaningless and tiny the gaps are between many kpop groups. But kpop fans, especially 4th generation fans keep nitpicking at these gaps and exaggerating their significance to draw a line between their faves and others. That's my point, I hope you get it now.

  • I did the opposite of putting Spotify down and I couldn't care less about genie or bugs. You don't see people make a big fuss about groups ranking in the bottom of those charts but they make a big fuss about groups ranking in the bottom of Spotify top200. Those achievements are only relevant within the kpop niche buy they don't mean anything outside of it.

    Well, you say that these achievements are relevant in the kpop niche then why do you get surprised kpop stans brag about them? It's perfectly normal. Doing so well on such huge platforms is a big achievement for any kpop group. If people will glorify melon then they don't have the right to complain about others glorifying Spotify

  • I'm saying since those achievements are relative to kpop standards, the gap between many kpop groups isn't as big as many fans pretend. Having few millions over another group doesn't mean you two belong in different tiers. You should look at the bigger picture of Spotify's international standards to realise how meaningless and tiny the gaps are between many kpop groups. But kpop fans, especially 4th generation fans keep nitpicking at these gaps and exaggerating their significance to draw a line between their faves and others. That's my point, I hope you get it now.

    It depends on perspective.


    Gap between groups like @@@e41b2e97-015b-4a0f-b835-efd86e4f3e77@@@, enhypen and txt is very small indeed. But, gap between stray kids, enhypen,txt and groups like omega x, elast, just b etc is really big

  • What are you on about enhypen and Polaroid love? The song is one month old, 40M for a 4th gen bg is HUGE for that amount of time. The 4th gen bg song with most streams is around 150M, let's not forget.. This is a hit among the kpop community and platforms like Spotify show it. Enhypen hasn't left the Spotify charta ever since the release of the song and their peaks there are nice. Nobody is claiming that Polaroid love is the biggest hit of the generation or of kpop. But it is a fact that it's a hit in the kpop community.


    It's very obvious that you stan groups who don't do well in Spotify. Kpop stans like you glorify charts like genie and bugs - platforms where fandoms can manipulate and platforms that reflect only one country, but then put down Spotify - one of the world's biggest music platforms. If your faves were doing well on Spotify you wouldn't be thinking this way

    I think you copied and pasted that paragraph way too many times in way too many threads LMAO

    Can't you say anything else besides achievements no one cares about besides you engineers :pepe-cringe::pepe-hehe:

  • just focus on whatever charts your fave is good at. If fans can brag about other metrics, other fans can brag about spotify. No one is gonna make a thread about how other platforms are exaggerated. Groups can have succes in different ways.

    It's not that big of a deal smh

  • OP is right.


    4th gen stans don't even have any achievements to speak of, unless they conveniently disqualify most of the competition by not counting 3rd gen groups. So that's why they exaggerate slight differences in numbers, to create a pecking order. In reality, they're all closer to each other than any are to real global stars.

  • Well, you say that these achievements are relevant in the kpop niche then why do you get surprised kpop stans brag about them? It's perfectly normal. Doing so well on such huge platforms is a big achievement for any kpop group. If people will glorify melon then they don't have the right to complain about others glorifying Spotify

    Melon achievements are absolute because they're comparative to the entire market. Kpop spotify achievements are relative because you have to remove them from the whole market and put them inside a small niche to make them look impressive. How is this difficult to understand?

  • very hard to defeat bts and bp dominance in spotify so everybody celebrating becoming #2, which is normal. What I find laughable is when kpop stans celebrating the spotify achievements like it was because of the group brand which they are wrong because unless the are bts/bp, international success are depending on the song.

  • I think so . Otherwise, what achievements to speak of?

  • I think you copied and pasted that paragraph way too many times in way too many threads LMAO

    Can't you say anything else besides achievements no one cares about besides you engineers :pepe-cringe::pepe-hehe:

    In threads that are about achievements and charts what do you expect me to talk about? Jake's pretty blonde hair?

  • Melon achievements are absolute because they're comparative to the entire market. Kpop spotify achievements are relative because you have to remove them from the whole market and put them inside a small niche to make them look impressive. How is this difficult to understand?

    ? Melon is a KOREAN chart based on KOREAN artists' performance. If koreans were streaming western artists on them then groups like aespa, itzy and any other nonbts-blackpink group wouldn't perform as well. The situation would be similar to kpop groups' performance on Spotify, except the favor would be for ggs


    And I can tell you it's much more impressive for a kpop group to do well on Spotify than on Melon. On Melon they compete only against korean artists, on Spotify they compete against worldwide artists and the biggest global stars

  • You can't do this, you're like discrediting 4th gen groups and their fans' hard works and underestimating them. No matter how irrelevant you think their Spotify achievement is, it's still an achievement. Of course having 100m / 200m streams are nothing compare to BTS and Blackpink and Western artists. No one is claiming those 4th gen hit songs as huge global hit, of course it's not a huge worldwide global hit, but it's an international hit within the k-pop community. Actually not only in k-pop community, but k-pop is huge in Asia, and , if you look at some hit songs from some big Asian countries like Indonesia, Philippines, Japan, and India, 100 - 200m streams for a song is already considered as a hit there, it means some of these 4th gen groups' songs can be considered as a hit too within Asia. Spotify achievement like having 100 - 200m streams is really hard to achieve, there are hundreds of groups out there, but only few of them do well on Spotify. No doubt these days it's really hard to chart on Spotify Global Top 200 which require 700 - 800k streams a day than having 10m+ million views a day, that's why when a group enter Spotify chart people will celebrate it as if it's such an amazing achievement, and it really is. I don't know whether you OP is a fan of group that didn't do well in Spotify or maybe the opposite, maybe your fav is the best charting k-pop group on Spotify so that it makes you think having 100 - 200m streams are nothing compare to your fav or whatever, no matter how hard you try to discredit these 4th gen groups' Spotify achievement. It's still an achievement and it matters. It something that the idols and we, the fans are proud of because we worked hard for that. The fact that you make this post shows that you are salty. Some 4th Gen songs like Wannabe, God's Menu, Fever, Polaroid Love, 0X1=LOVESONG, Next Level, Savage, Loco, Eleven and many more are definitely Hit K-Pop Songs on Spotify within the K-Pop Community.

  • ? Melon is a KOREAN chart based on KOREAN artists' performance. If koreans were streaming western artists on them then groups like aespa, itzy and any other nonbts-blackpink group wouldn't perform as well. The situation would be similar to kpop groups' performance on Spotify, except the favor would be for ggs


    And I can tell you it's much more impressive for a kpop group to do well on Spotify than on Melon. On Melon they compete only against korean artists, on Spotify they compete against worldwide artists and the biggest global stars

    That 's why no bg is charting on melon :cryingr: Spotify isn't a competition, it's a stream service and kpop groups spotify numbers are far from being impressive except for bts and bp, you guys are delusional. Just accept kpop groups are nugu internationally.


    And you have no idea what are you saying, melon is a korean plataform but western artists can chart there as well if korean users like the song

  • It's 2022 and we're taking kpop numbers seriously when it's the result of fans spending hours mass streaming their fav music. You know what's impressive? A non mainstream artist with relative big numbers without any help of a dedicated fandom or playlisting.

  • That 's why no bg is charting on melon :cryingr: Spotify isn't a competition, it's a stream service and kpop groups spotify numbers are far from being impressive except for bts and bp, you guys are delusional. Just accept kpop groups are nugu internationally.


    And you have no idea what are you saying, melon is a korean plataform but western artists can chart there as well if korean users like the song

    Those numbers are very impressive for the kpop community? Here we are talking about kpop groups, read the previous posts I ain't gonna repeat the same thing to every single one of you like a broken record


    Western artists can chart on melon e but never do because koreans don't listen to them on said platforms? What's not clicking?


    And I don't see any gg except itzy charting on Spotify too so gg stans should be the last to laugh

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