Hadn't noticed yet that illit managed to debut their whole EP on Melon Daily. Seems that 15k is their listening base. Way more than I thought, but I guess coming from a survival program still has its perks. Looking at how they're trending on youtube I now would not be surprised to see Magnetic reach the top10 in 2/3 weeks time.
Posts by TPHF
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KMCA has announced that they will postpone the Circle Chart Music Awards indefinitely. According to them the current award show environment in Korea is unsustainable and want to focus on improving it by possibly introducing rules for the whole industry.
Auto-translated parts of the article are under the spoiler:
Can also find the full KMCA statement here: http://www.k-mca.or.kr/board/b…p?bo_table=media&idx=1011
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Benson Boone's Beautiful Things is close to entering Melon daily top100 (it's at 110 now). Been awhile since a western artist that isn't Charlie Puth charted that high. Also charting at 11 on the SK Youtube weekly chart. One of those rare times that international popularity does translate a bit to Korea.
Had no expectations for illit but they're doing pretty good. Magnetic has about half the likes that Easy had after 5 hours and almost the same as Super Lady. Hard to say what that means for the debut uls probably somewhere between 70-100k uls. Should at least debut on Melon daily top 100.
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Just need to look at the annual business reports of each kpop company to see that Japan is still the most important and reliable revenue source for kpop artists. The US market in numbers might be considered the biggest market for kpop now but there are still major limitations for it there that Japan does not have. Kpop artists for example in the US trail behind in premium streams and most companies except hybe still rely on third parties for concerts from who they only receive a set amount of money. In Japan those limitations are not there, and it also has become the biggest export market for kpop albums. There was also a report recently that showed that kpop basically has surpressed western music from the charts in Japan and is the trendy genre right now. A graph from that report I've included below in the spoiler.
But the growth of the Japanese and Chinese music market kinda hides the fact that kpop is stagnating or even shrinking in other Asian countries where local artists are gaining more attention now (Kpop there kinda has the position now that western music has in Japan). Combine that with China always being an unreliable market, Japan and the US will determine the success of kpop for the foreseeable future.
Display Morenone of that report actually puts into context the market by market breakdown.
All we know is US + Canada is 40%
All of Europe is 28%
Asia is 3rd with no actual hard percentage given
They don't even give up actual market share per countries anymore, just level of growth now.
Shit is approaching blackbox levels of obfuscation
they do give those in their premium report but you have to be willing to pay a lot of money for it, like 3k+ dollars.
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It's interesting to see how similar the uls are for the top 4 songs today compared to the same time a week ago. The top 3 songs basically switched positions and took over their uls. Also close now to reaching 400k uls again. Feels like an eternity since we had that.
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The revenue an artist makes for their label might be the most relevenant stat in kpop, at least for the industry.
For fans though I'd say it always changes depending on the context of the discussion. Whatever measurement of success they can use most effectively and easily to win a specific argument will be the most important one; so basically it can be anything.
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Plot Twist is staying pretty strong. Close to overtaking BYG and I would not be surprised if it outlasts Fate as well.
Not much else going on tho it's worth a mention that Day 6 now has two old songs charting inside Melon daily top 20. Also noticed that hype boy has been climbing up the charts again for the last two weeks.
But this seems to be the calm before the storm that will take place in April. Nothing official yet but both Ive and NewJeans seem to be gearing up for comebacks very soon. And I saw some people having higher expectations for the upcoming babymoster comeback, but seeing that yg decided to do a random midnight kst release on a Monday, I don't see them doing much better.
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Day6's album having a pretty great debut on Melon. 20k uls for the tt and 2 bsides entered the top100 as well. They've had a couple of songs do well recently so maybe the tt can have a shot at the top10, perhaps even more over time.
Spring songs gaining a lot since last week as well. Spring Day for example went from charting at 80 on the daily chart to 54 now. Might enter the 40s again which would be the first time for it since June 2022
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For those interested, Circle also just released a video looking back at the performance of male artists during the 2nd half of 2023.
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Below are all of the twice songs charting on Melon daily top1000 right now. As you see several of them gained quite a bit of positions. They'll probably rise more over the next few days with more people checking out the youtube vid.
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double post.
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They keep playing NewJeans songs at a nike store close to where I live. It's at a very random area in Europe but I guess somebody who works there loves them lol. Besides that the only kpop song I've recently heard around here a few times is Seven.
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Plave's TT has actually gained quite a bit of uls. All of their b-sides haven't lost any uls since release either. If their fanbase can keep the uls stable throughout the year as LYW stans have done in the last few years then they might have a shot at MMA artist of the year. Also interesting to see that they basically have the highest ratio of female listeners from any bg that charts on Melon. For the first two days it was above 80%
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Smart is following almost the same path as Fate, even the ULs are really similar. This week it will be around the top 11-20 and next week it should make it into the top 10 easily. Fate is also probably going to go above 300k, if Smart continues like that it might do it too eventually. Or we're in a super competitive moment with several huge hits or the ceiling is a bit higher than it seemed, or maybe IU + other succesful songs really brought back some listeners.
Also, almost all these songs are risers. And I'm not talking about songs like Easy that had just a decent start but then rose to what we expected, but almost all the hits nowadays are coming from out of the top 100.
Bibi debuted at #90, TWS far from the top 100, Fate and Smart weren't titles or prereleases they're just the songs that clicked more with the public and they'll end up as the biggest songs of their comebacks... Rhapsody of sadness also came from out of the top 100.
All these songs are becoming the biggest hits of the last months, with some few exceptions like To X or LWA, and they're even outcharting the supposed biggest comebacks we had in mind and even outcharting the own group's supposed main songs.
I say all this because I wonder if companies are taking this into account. It looks like Hybe did since LSFM's album is probably the best way to promote in this situation, waiting to see what song performs better and try to push it a bit. G-Idle will do it too now releasing a video for Fate but it looks like it was more accidental.
The prereleases/several titles strategy that seemed the best way to do it last year doesn't seem that good anymore since no one is getting good debut numbers, so if people don't like the songs that much these will probably have a bit disappointing performance anyway (Super Lady, Off the road, Shopper... and maybe Cool with you was already in this situation too even though it was a bit before), and you could have tried to push other songs of the album with more potential.
Yeah it feels like these songs either gain momentum on youtube (especially shorts) or tiktok first and then overtime that translates to the traditional korean music services. Basically songs on an album need to be given the time to let somebody make it go viral through a challenge, edit or something else. Also have to rely on the algorithms to do their magic. To me, it's all a result of Melon doing so many chart changes and losing the fight with youtube and tiktok that they no longer hold the position as the main music service that determines what becomes popular in Korea. Youtube and tiktok are becoming that now, but as they work so differently, the charting of songs is also changing.
But companies need be more proative to be able to jump on viral success to make sure it becomes a really big hit. The traditional kpop comeback schedule of doing music show performances and variety show appearances only during the first few weeks is losing even more value now and isn't suitable for how songs chart these days. Gidle for example should start doing full out promo now for Fate, but instead they've already finished doing that for their TT. A bit of a waste of time and resources.
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Plot Twist is catching up quite a bit on BYG today. Might still have a chance to reach 1 then. Can also see Fate getting close to it.
Btw it's interesting to see how similar the lenghts of the songs in the Melon top 10 are. Korean listeners really have embraced short songs now. It's becoming almost a prerequisite for success
Song lenghts Melon daily top 10:
1. BYG - 2:27
2. Plot Twist - 2:33
3. Easy - 2:45
4. Fate - 2:42
5. Love Wins All - 4:32
6. To. X - 2:51
7. Rhapsody of Sadness - 3:56
8. Holssi - 3:11
9. Love 119 - 2:54
10. Perfect Night - 2:40
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When was the last time IU had a comeback that seemed to lack much impact. Wonder how much less it would have been as well without special appearances in MVs and features.
I'm a bit surprised that Shh... is doing the worst and is already close to dropping out of Melon top 100. I guess I expected too much from the added feat of a newjeans member. Perhaps the fact that it's a collab is what puts off IU stans from listening to it as much as they are to for example I stan U; a song that IU stans can identify more with.
But It's really hard to judge in the current situation how artists are charting, though I also can't deny I was expecting much more from IU. Love Wins All for example is already losing so many uls on a week to week basis that it might not be able to surpass To. X and Rhapsody of Sadness' cumulative uls on Melon this year. I for sure was expecting it to at least end up at 2 on the year end chart but that seems unlikely now. Bibi is also catching up on LWA's cumulative uls with 100k uls every day.
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I had to check it out.. surely it must be satire to some extent? I can maybe understand why it's popular but this is just painfully bad.
The group members are originally comedians so there definitely is a satire element to the song that targets the K-hiphop culture. However if this song becomes really popular the satire element becomes blurred. The song also attracts a lot of young men in their 10s and 20s on Melon and I'm not sure they all have a good understanding of what the k-hiphop culture that it tries to satirize even entails.
Considering how some songs recently got the 19+ label for quite insigificant things, the fact that this song has yet to receive it while its full of offensive and derogatory language shows that Melon just doesn't have a good system in place for it. It seems to depend a lot on reports from users themselves.
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There's a song charting in the top 10 of youtube and rising on Melon daily that has one of the highest percentage of male listeners(70%) that I've seen lately. The song is called AK47 and is by the group Men's Tear. The group is highlighy controversial and everything about this song is iffy as well (they even made a remix of the song using eminem, 2pac and lil wayne's vocals). Surprised that this song hasn't received the 19+ label yet on Melon. It definitely needs it. This is one of the rare times I really wish that a song won't rise much higher...
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I really appreciate that he does this kind of things, he shows us several times a lot of relevant data and he tries to analyze a lot of things, but honestly with the amount of data he has on his hand I always feel he could do way better analysis. I don't want to sound too rude but sometimes it seems like he checks some numbers and focus the analysis on that forgetting completely about the context like if he's a random AKP user or a Twitter kpop stan.
The fact that the Circle music awards have things such as just counting the first 30 days of charting in some of the awards, even nowadays when the system has changed completely, also shows some flaws.
Not gonna blame him after all i guess he's just doing this mainly for fun, but if we had access to all the data he has I'm pretty sure we could do something better.
I think at most it shows how the kpop industry reflects on the recent charting of popular groups. I also somehow doubt that companies themselves take in consideration the broader context, and only judge the success of their own artists on these kind of comparisons. South Korea id so focused on tech and data, but kpop companies still don't seem to place a lot of importance on the latter. They just try to see what sticks or follow the general trend.
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Don't know if you watched the whole video but Taeyeon ranked at 7. Disclaimer should be made that it's based on the first 30 days after release, while Taeyeon's song reached its peak after that. Steve Choi also said he expected more from Taeyeon which seems a bit unfair to me. It's not 2019 anymore.
