Visualising the Decline in Gaon Points

AKP member idontsleep recently generated a file containing Gaon Digital Chart data from 2010 to present, taken directly from the official Gaon web site.

I was able to import the data into Excel, and the first thing I wanted to examine was the purported decline in Gaon points over the past few years (note: Gaon only started providing points in 2018).

Thus, for each week, I simply took the sum of Gaon points for each song in the top 100, and charted the results, as shown below:

GaonPointsDecline.png

As we can see, the decline is real, and it is significant.

The first thing I'll point out is that points tend to decline at the end of each year, due to the holidays of course.

However, we must note that total weekly points fell dramatically around the start of 2020 and never really recovered. I assume that this must be because of the COVID-19 pandemic. With people working from home and not going to school (and thus not commuting), it makes sense that music listening decreased.

What I'm more curious about is the noticeable fall in digital points starting in the middle of 2021, a decline that continues to this day. What do you think is causing this? The COVID-19 situation should be improving, which means that music consumption should be rising as people return to work and school.

Are people simply moving to different music platforms, ones that aren't part of Gaon data? I've read that YouTube Music (which isn't included in Gaon data) is gaining market share, so could that explain things? Are there any other possible explanations?

Quote from TheBotter

So from what I understand Gaon points were confirmed to be the total earnings of the song from the compliant platforms for streaming and downloads right?

Yeah I've read that before, but has there actually been confirmation from Gaon?

Quote from TheBotter

A lot attribute lower points to less people downloading songs, but were that the case we would see a rise in frequency and accreditation of streaming cert's(we don't)

That's an interesting point. To see for myself, I graphed the number of Gaon download and streaming certifications awarded per date, and it looks like you're right. I don't see a strong trend of increasing streaming certifications.

GaonCertsByDate.png

Quote from TheBotter

Maybe Youtube and Apple which, afaik, are not welcomed into Gaon's calculations yet?

That's the case as far as I know, though I haven't heard of Apple Music gaining significant market share in South Korea, only YouTube.

Quote from bartkun

do GAON count Spotify, and Youtube Music?

From what I've read, Gaon does not count them. If Spotify and Youtube are eventually included, I wonder if we'll see digital points rise.

Quote from selfmate

interesting

like you said there may be different sources of how listeners get their music whether from spotify (Korea), YT or whatever that might not be counted for goan...

furthermore especially for idol music isn't there a shift away from korean listeners to more of an international audience which (to my knowledge) isn't reflected in goan

Right, international listeners should not be reflected in Gaon from what I know.

But even if the South Korean public is moving away from idol music, they should still be listening to other types of music right? And these other types of music should still influence Gaon points I would imagine.

Quote from MassiveKpopFan

YT music doesn't aggregate data into formats like Melon or even Spotify, so I can see why it would be a challenge to incorporate it into Gaon.

Got it. Now I do wonder if there's been any pressure on YouTube to provide such aggregated data.

Quote from MassiveKpopFan

Gaon has been counting Spotify for weeks now. They don't use YT Music.

Ah good to know. Now from what I've read, Spotify is still a small player in the South Korean music market, but if it manages to grow to become a dominant service, I'm curious to see if that will be reflected in increased Gaon points.

And on a related note, were you able to successfully import idontsleep's data into Excel?

Quote from atropos

The good thing is now longevity is more so u can get there staying more time on the chart.

What do you think is causing this? It seems like Melon's chart reform back in July 2020 resulted in an increase in longevity, but at a more macro level, I'd also propose that the general transition from downloads to streaming is an even bigger factor.

Quote from BlackpinkHouse

I said this in the other thread, where some folks mentioned how Billboard Hot 100 points are also down.

Maybe this is the beginning of a secular shift away from modern pop music, regardless of genre. Maybe COVID has made people a bit nostalgic for a time when real music was made by real people playing real instruments with real passion.

Instead of folks just streaming the top 40 or top 100 or whatever, maybe their playlists are now composed of classic rock, 80s pop, 90s RnB. If Gaon and Billboard had a top 100000 instead of only a top 100 or 200, maybe we'd see that music consumption hasnt fallen off a cliff. Instead, it has merely been redistributed more evenly and away from current hits.

This is an intriguing hypothesis, and one that I don't think I've seen proposed before, but it does make some intuitive sense. I don't know how we'd even test this, since we only have access to data for the top 100-200 songs. I guess we'd need a measure of overall streaming/download activity over time to see if total music consumption has risen or fallen.