Posts by FoReveries

Lol. You can't win with those netizens and hardcore K-pop stans.

If idols are open about their friendships and social interactions with other idols of the opposite gender, those 'fans' will complain about why those idols are so blatant and shameless about it, like with this afterparty.

If idols on the other hand keep their relationships and blossoming friendships a secret, then as soon as a whiff of it gets out, 'fans' will complain about why their idols were so sneaky about it and how it's a betrayal.

The only way that's apparently acceptable is if idols keep celibate and away from relationships, until they're in their 30s and those 'fans' that kept complaining about their idols' social and dating life don't care anymore and have had their own relationships and a bunch of kids themselves.

Something that popped up in my youtube references list.

For those who hadn't seen it yet and are curious, enjoy

Quote from butterbutterfly

I don't think he's the sole producer of every single song but I'm sure he's the main one for IVE. He has credits in tons of hits for other big groups as well, but has been involved more actively in kpop production and very highly requested since 2020-ish. His name is in almost every gg hit of the last 3 years. Crazy stuff.

Wow. That's very impressive.

Quote from TheBotter

Do you think that makes any logical sense? Or do you think it's more likely SM books appropriately sized venues as a reflection of the real world demand for the group? The suggestion of mis management is one thing, but the idea of a public traded company purposefully sabotaging their own in's for no explainable reason is a stretch too far for me.

How long have you been into K-pop? Practically every fandom - except for company stans - has complained about their bias' company mismanagement or sabotaging or not fully, properly supporting or promoting their groups in 1 aspect or the other.

Companies aren't all-knowing demigods, nor are the decisions they made or the course they set out always the best one for their groups.

Quote from TheBotter

But Twice fandom clearly grew massively in that time. Certain groups went from paying conference rooms and bingo halls to playing...well conference rooms and bingo halls.

In that time Twice went from playing the Forum, to a soccer stadium to selling out Met Life and SoFi...it makes sense. They went from selling like 70% tickets in a small Mexican arena to selling out two massive stadiums in Mexico in a couple of days...the growth is very evident and probable.

If you sell 1.6m sales and match that with 1.3m concert ticket sales....it adds up. The touring increased like 3-4 fold for Twice in the same span their albums went up....this isn't the case for most other groups.

Concert tour attendance is for sure a metric for fanbase size. But it isn't the only metric for fanbase size. Not all groups are given equal opportunity when it comes to concert tours, and I've mentioned before how I found SM severely lacking in several aspects - and not just for Red Velvet, but their other groups too. But for Red Velvet too, among them SM's international promotion and degree of investment in the group.

Either SM are lacking in their effectiveness or network for international promotion, or lacking in their willingness to invest properly in their groups in regards to this.

Same for album stocking: practically all SM fandoms have complained ever since 2nd gen about SM's haphazard, structural understocking of their groups' albums, with albums frequently going out of stock (and staying like that) right from the first week onwards.

Which is why it came as a surprise when SM finally seemed to abandon their extremely conservative, Scrooge-like understocking and finally did what other companies had been doing for years, which was restocking of older albums. But it was no surprise at all that restocks sold well after years of understocking and out-of-stock drought.

Quote from butterbutterfly

if I'm not mistaken all their titles and almost all their b-sides have been produced by Ryan S. Jhun. I dislike the guy (for reasons) but there's no denying he definitely knows how to make catchy songs.

Damn. If it was all 1 guy, then he's severely underrated as a hit producing talent Seems to me like he's the Starship version of a Teddy or BEP.

lol

I'll be honest, the Starship songwriters and producers behind IVE are killing it, especially compared with their colleagues behind other K-pop groups incl. Big 4.

The ability to produce hit after hit, without a 2-3 hiatus between each release, is a great talent.

I applaud Starship that they're able to outdo the Big 4 with it seeing how they're a much smaller company.

Quote from keyboardwarrior7

I feel like Japan has seen a decrease in album sales as well. Nogizaka46 is probably the biggest GG in Japan right now, and their sales have seen some decline since 2020. They still sell incredibly, but they are selling half of what they did then. King and Prince (biggest Japanese BG) sold a million+ in 2022 and 2023 for two of their singles, but I think that was an outlier since their next singles sold between 300k-500k.

A decrease in album sales seems to me a natural, logical thing. Although I understood that the Japanese market is somewhat unique regarding to digitals - but even then the million+ sales mostly for Japanese feels more like a 'we'll support our group' thing.

That's why the continuing album sales increases in K-pop feels like such a unique, against-all-odds kinda thing, since it's I think the only music genre that still sees an increase in album sales and not a decrease, and album sales is such a typical K-pop thing too

Quote from Dreamer95

Bragging rights, validation, claim for the top. I mean this entire things, at least among ggs, started cause blinks were pissed BP couldn't outsell Twice.

Aside from your accusing Blinks again - which seems like a you thing - it wasn't just ggs that were affected by the sales spike.

Check up all the bg sales over the past years, they were affected just as much with insane increases, if not more so.

Quote from killthisfenty

Beside the major jump between B1&2 to ready to be no matter how popular they’re Twice never unrealistic jump. The few time they doubled their sales it was a jump of 250k-300 sales.

Twice never relied on China that’s why 4th gen started to catch them but even if eventually China bars drop them it wouldn’t be a significant decline .

The major jump between B1&2 and Ready To Be as well as the streaming stats for both those albums should already disprove the theory that some people keep claiming that there's a 1:1 relationship between title track streams totals increase/decrease and album sales.

Even more so if you compare streaming stats of all the groups before and after the start of the sales spikes from 2020 onwards.

One is and always has been more song (+promotion) dependent, and the other more fanbase dependent.

For the sales spikes that started in 2020, those affected practically all groups. In the discussions about it, two main probable causes came up: cbar sales and Covid.

We'll see I guess.

Quote from keyboardwarrior7

I mean, I knew this was coming. I have been saying we would see a decline since the middle of the year when people kept going on underperforming world tours.

Anybody who looked at the numbers KPOP has been pulling since 2019 and believed them to be authentic were severely naive. Sorry to say. The numbers have BEEN over-inflated, and there was only so long fandoms would be able to keep up. It just did not make sense the growth of most of these groups numbers. I understand the growth during COVID. People were at home with more dispensable income and literally no tours. It makes sense they would invest their money in another metric like albums. Now, every groups wants to go on a "world" tour, and globally, we are in a recession. The math just was not going to math.

I don't even get buying 1 album, let alone multiple ones of the same album. What are people even gonna do with it, do they listen to the music on some ancient CD player? They collect photocards?

COVID made sense as a reason for increased sales, since people'd have more spare money to spend on other things that they couldn't spend on outdoor activities. But even those times when people said that buying (extra) albums were a means to support a group, I wondered that there sure must be better ways to support a group and spend money on them than album buying.

But the trend of K-pop album sales growth while everywhere else in the world album sales decrease, sure is an interesting one, and typical to K-pop (although maybe J-pop has it too? No idea )

Quote from hypernova

It’s amazing! I love the message of this song. Let me know what you think when you get around to listening

It sounded great, I like it

I had to check up the lyrics at some lyrics explanation pages though for any double meanings, they sure are intriguing and obfuscated. It's a subtle commentary on what it means being in the spotlight?

YG ways of promotion, while sometimes effective, make no sense to me a lot of times

Sistar19 were so good. I'm glad they're having a comeback, after all this time, I hadn't expected this

Huh, weird. I was surprised and happy for RV when I saw that their sales surpassed 1M album sales mark. Although I found the entire album sales explosion since 2020 weird. I was glad that RV profited from it too.

But now that sales explosion trend is over? Or just for RV and Aespa?

Quote from Dreamer95

Once need this after last 2 comebacks bombed on kcharts

Quote from vzal

Damn. RV flopping on charts and back to selling like nugus + aespa mediocre charting ww and sales down by almost a million... Oh I love TWICEKarma

Quote from randkpopstan

I'm rejoicing in this W for onces like you can't imagine, already preparing a thread about it

I don't know the details but kpop sales were basically unjustifiable in recent years and red velvet was one of the most insane cases. They sold 1M of albums while selling only 10K on japan and barely nothing on the US market, so only 1%-2% of their sales came from kpop two biggest markets, so 98% of their sales were korea + international + cbars and probably most of it were just china. So the math was not mathing anywhere on those numbers, this was inevitable.

What the... what is this, why are Once openly and unashamedly rejoicing in a thread about RV and Aespa when their sales are down, as if that's good news for TWICE fans??

That's straight up hater and anti behavior.

Lots of photocards, lots of fansign events. This feels like a copy of Japanese/AKB48 style of promotion, but then taken to that extreme

While YG seemed to have made it their rule to distance themselves from the usual means of promotion in SK, with Babymonster they seemed to have brought it to the next level

I'm curious to see how YG will promote them.

Quote from YamaChwan

Disney and Pixar movies definitely have a very common structure to them lol. Without knowing anything about the movie, you can go into them knowing roughly what to expect, even if the stories are totally different.

I know what you mean, and I agree with you about monopolies as a whole; I only took issue with people saying the girl groups sound similar or overlap when they don't. They couldn't be more different.

Hybe lets their sublabels run their groups how their CEOs/Directors see fit. Disney and Pixar allow no such freedom ever. It has to be done the Disney/Pixar way or no way at all.

Disney and Pixar movies have a lot in common because they've interchanged their teams and people right after the takeover and ever since, in order to elevate Disney movies (which flopped badly back then) to a higher quality.

A better example is comparing Disney movies with Marvel movies and Star Wars movies. Yes, they are different but they also have commonality, in that a certain vision, themes, philosophy are spread from the top in order to structure the entire enterprise. Which is why certain types of movies would never be made by Disney.

In short, both you and Catzi have a point. But monopolies as a rule, much like one party states however benign, are never a good thing.

Competition between different viewpoints, different ways of doing things, different philosophies and visions, breed creativity and is ultimately better for consumers and common people.

Quote from Chocolate-cheeks

Seeing as HYBE groups have pretty distinct discographies so far, I don't care.

I've noticed that big3 groups in particular have pretty interchangeable songs

for example

red velvet could have released drama and aespa could have released chill kill and no one would have batted an eye

I think it's more the case that Red Velvet (and I think also other SM groups like NCT and Aespa?) are less restricted to just 1 or 2 style/concept genres than most other groups, so people will be less surprised if they have songs that are different from previous ones.