This is fundamentally false. During the decade spanning since 2ne1 came into existence and then bp debuted, only 3 other top ggs started to adopt this “pre-release” strategy (rv’s automatic, mamamoo’s i miss you/paint me/dinga dinga, gidle’s i’m your fan/my bag), and even then, it was more a novelty soft launch on rv’s part and they never considered it again for any future releases. In more than 10 years, a whopping number of 2 top ggs sporadically and not always seriously adopting this strategy at random times does not spell a popular promotion tactic, at all.
Yg’s groups might have pioneered this practice, but they did not make it popular. People seem to confuse these two notions all the time when there’s a big difference between them. You look at ive, aespa, nmixx, itzy now, and it’s quite obvious they only picked up this strategy right after nj hit it out of the park not once but twice with their double/triple-feature combos. The timing is just too uncanny lol. Those ggs had had ample time with multiple cbs before nj’s debut to do it, but they didn’t. Yg’s groups and even some sm or jyp bgs might’ve adopted it earlier than nj, but they certainly aren’t what the top ggs looked at to decide to start trying it out for themselves. Whether one’s a fan of nj or not, it’s quite willfully ignorant to deny the impact nj has left in the industry in this regard at least.