Why is Baekhyun the only upwardly-successful soloist in Exo?

    Baekhyun sales:

    First solo album:610K

    Second album (Delight): 1M

    Third album(Bambi): 1M


    Kai sales:

    First solo album: 360K with even more promo than Baekhyun latest album

    Second album: 260K


    Suho sales:

    First solo album: 290K

    Second album post discharge from military: 140K first week, even though his first album has 160K first day


    DO:

    First album: 360K

    Kai, Suho or DO is nowhere less popular than Baekhyun, especially Kai is very hyped internationally, Suho is the visual and leader, DO is very well liked, yet Baekhyun sells like 3 times more than others, and even when Suho/Kai’s sales decreased, Baekhyun’s increased even when he’s not promoting. Can SM do something so others can sell as well as Baekhyun?

    Including D.O. here is a little earlier since he is yet to release a follow-up to his solo debut. And Suho has just released his album, Baek didn't sold 1M in a week and Kai's have been out for less than six months.


    As to popularity, Baekhyun has one of the largest solo fanbases both in Korea and internationally (I don't know if he is objectively the most popular EXO member despite Chanyeol and Sehun pulling the largest IG followers). His music is more mainstream while the other three have chosen more personal musical routes.


    And SM won't move a finger for any EXO member these days, except Baekhyun, the guy is in the military and yet they made him launch a toy line, so it's easy to see who SM's darling is. Kai's Peaches promotions in musical shows were blink and you miss it, D.O. didn't promote and Suho is starting now.

    Physicals aren't the only indicator of success you know.. Out of all of them, Chen has the most success digitally. His solo debut did well digitally and he has some ost hits too. Baekhyun hasn't done quite as well digitally unfortunately (he has some ost success, but out of his solo songs, Candy did the best and it really didn't do that great tbh). Actually I think D.O. had that semi hit with That's Okay, so even D.O. has had some success with his solo stuff.

    Baekhyun/Chanyeol/Sehun have always had by far the biggest three core fandoms. Their fanbars are literally the biggest of any kpop k-idols in China and by a lot. So new kpop fans in China are often exposed to those three and they gain C-fans really quickly compared to not only EXO members but any other k-idols (and tbh Sehun's fanbar is much, much bigger than even Chanyeol and Baekhyun's.)


    D.O. probably had a good chance at 500k but his biggest chinese fanbase got shut down by the government right when pre-orders started, so I could see him improving next time. His Korean fanbase is significantly bigger than any of the members except SeBaekChan, so the fact he sold 380k without his biggest fanbase is really impressive. China recently made regulations mid-last year against fanbases bulk-buying so that definitely affected Kai as his fanbase put out a statement saying for Peaches that they couldn't order as much as they wanted (and they were responsible for over a third of his debut's sales). Although supposedly as time goes fanbars are getting better and better at circumventing these regulations, so we'll see how Kai does next time.


    Suho got a little lucky in 2020 because many EXO-Ls had been saving for an Obsession repackage that never came and good chunk of them dropped their money on his album instead. A lot of EXO-Ls were pleasantly surprised by how his sales were so much more than Chen's at the time seeing that their popularity is (or was) about the same before Chen got married.


    What will really be interesting is how Baekhyunbar/EXObar will do with ordering albums with these new regulations in place for Baekhyun, as Bambi had about 700k sales just from Chinese fans (540k from Baekhyunbar and then 61k from EXObar, and then another 90k for a video call event that was with just Chinese fans).


    If Chanyeol and Sehun ever get solo albums their sales will probably be insane too as their sub-unit album sold 540k copies but that was with Chanyeol and Sehun's respective fanbases in China openly feuding and hating each other; so both didn't order that much (compared to their respective fanbase size). If either of them had been with any other EXO member the album probably would have sold even better because of that. Both of them (along with Baekhyunbar) are super competitive too so they will definitely be gunning for Baek's record.

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