Should digitals be disregarded while judging the success of an act's promotion?

In the old days, only album sales were considered for the success of a promotion.

However, around 2003, album sales began to decline significantly while digital music was introduced.

So, from 2007, music award began to award albums and digitals separately.

Digitals remained as a tool to judge an act's success until recently, when the revival of albums as a necessary goods for fandoms led to the explosion of album sales , starting with EXO, then BTS, and then spreading to Seventeen, NCT, BlackPink, txt and Lim Youngwoong.

Actually the transition could have been made in 2013 when EXO had its first million seller, the first in more than 10 years.

However, in K-O-R-E-A there was a master of digitals, who significantly skewed the entire balance of KPop. SIGNIFICANTLY.

IU is almost unique in the history of world that she became a match to SNSD, EXO and BTS solely with the account on digitals in K-O-R-E-A.

Thanks to her, all acts based from Korea had to watch their backs all the time, including BTS.

Without IU, the transition to albums would have been made much earlier. It can be safely said that IU's presence was decisive for making digitals remain as a standard for an act's success. Without her, digitals would have become irrelevant, which is why Kakao treats her much more equally than everyone else.

Now, some acts released albums recently and they were weaker in digitals while selling 200k, 300k and 400k copies of albums.

That led to some K-O-R-E-A-N-S think these acts did not succeed, even though their album sales were huge.

The game has changed, and digitals in K-O-R-E-A should not be a basis for judging a promotion's success in my opinion.

The number of album sales is how we judge fandoms, how strong , how successful they are. Digitals are listened by the general public who don't care enough to shell their cash.

I think that starting next year, digitals should not be used as a standard for judging an act's success. That will end the relevance of IU and other acts who are only strong on digitals and weaker on album sales, since the latter is more relevant as the world is concerned.

Quote from bbgc

Because people still buy gold jewellery, paper or digital currency should be disregarded while measuring a nation's wealth.

Only gold standard should be used.

Otherwise the country I love-hate will be the richest.

- Whyknock the economist

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actually, the gap between albums and digitals are not as wide as the gap between gold and digital currency.

It is more like fiat and digital currency.

Serious fans buy albums, and the quantity of album sold is a good measure of an act's actual popularity.

Quote from Kreatin

What? Quantity of albums has basically nothing to do with actual popularity.

It shows how much their fans are willing to shell out for their faves, so even though they seem less popular, their fans are like the power fans, like the Super PACs (in USA, an organization which can contributed an unlimited amount of money to the political candidate of its choice), or the super-delegates of the Democratic Party which frustrated Bernie Sanders every turn.

Until recently album sales were less important but now it has become very important again

Quote from bbgc

What is the current Gaon digital point score for 2022?

Last I checked, only WhyKnock 's fav had crossed a billion?

Did anyone else catch up to her?

LYW maybe.

In the past 4-5 years, only BTS has been able to top her - if they release an album/EP. If that holds she won't take 2022.

SOTY/AOTY/ArOTY etc.

But I think Ganadara should get the Best MV award.

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She won't promote this year , filming a series with Ryu Junyeol, etc and going to Cannes and attending her film promotions.

But it seems she is the last of the breed which emphasized digitals over albums, and although she will be grandmothered away, acts coming after her will once again have to emphasize digitals.

Quote from BlackpinkHouse

There are plenty of Kpop acts who can succeed physically and digitally. Blackpink, Red Velvet, Twice, Aespa, Ive, and potentially Lesserafim and Gidle.

This piece was written after the weaker digital showings of Lesserafim, Kepler and some other newer acts. Only Aespa and Ive (Gidle is at the borderline between 3rd and 4th gen) are doing well , digitally, in the 4th gen.