The Metrics Stans
Yesterday I noticed various posts on X (née Twitter) bragging about K-Pop artists’ “total sales” in Japan (variously in either yen or won), according to Oricon. This struck me as odd because 1) it’s an odd metric to compile and 2) Oricon already released their big batch of metrics for 2024 and I didn’t remember seeing this one on there.
So, I went looking for the source.
Nothing in the news; nothing on Oricon’s website… eventually my search led me to a post on the Qoo, a Korean-language forum somewhat similar to Reddit, and a fan compiled chart with the title TOTAL SALES RANKING UP TO AND INCLUDING 2024 OF ALL GENERATIONS OF K-POP ARTISTS FROM JAPAN’S ORICON
Buried in the comments was this exchange, let me give you the gist:
#114 What is the source of this data?
#117 ^#114 It’s from the Oricon annual reports what’s your problem?
The layers here are extremely revealing of the State of Global K-Pop Fandom.
You have some K-Netizen dork (likely a BTS fan) go through and meticulously compile the annual bulk sales data from Oricon for “all generations” of K-Pop artists and then put it in a chart on the Qoo.
This chart is then pushed to global social media network X by Korean stan accounts where it’s picked up by English stan fanbase accounts who strip it even further of context and then finally to the #content mill accounts where it’s received as “fact” by thousands and thousands of K-Pop stans.
Stans never questioned the meaning of the numbers, where they came from, or how they were compiled. Most of what I saw was some variation of: “Where is that Japanese person from Japan now!?” referring to an (in)famous post from an account that appears to be a Japanese person living in Japan attempting to explain to global fans (mainly of Twice and BTS) that Stray Kids are very popular with Japanese K-Pop fans right now.
Ah you sweet summer child…
It went about as well as the time I innocently tweeted from Seoul in 2019 that Winner appeared to be far more popular than BTS, judging by the fact that I heard their songs everywhere—specifically, I heard their songs well outside the tourist areas.
What this incident confirms to me is that global K-Pop fans exist in a context-free vacuum, completely disconnected not only from what’s happening with Korean and Japanese K-Pop fans but also from the broader Korean and Japanese music markets in general. And I’m guessing the big K-Pop Companies are more than happy to keep it that way.
The State of Global K-Pop Fandom today is a free-floating miasma of received wisdom and lists of big numbers that confirm exactly what the stans want to hear—that they are the best for stanning The Best Group. Who cares what the reality is? Reality is for the old hags like me.
Let’s look at that list again—what you see is a mix of the vanguard 2nd Generation K-Pop acts like KARA, Girls Generation, and BigBang, who were broadly popular across the teenage market; early adopters TVXQ and BoA who preceded them and were marketed and received as part of the domestic Japanese market; and the 3rd into 4th and 5th Generation boy group Kings of Bulk Sales (“Everything is AKB48”). Plus, the Hag King himself—Jang Geun Suk clocking in at #39 despite not having been active in like a decade.
[March 30, 2011 edition of anan; I’m pretty sure I have this in a box somewhere.]
I’ll ask again, what does a lump total sales number actually mean?
TVXQ aka 東方神起 (#2 on the fan-compiled list) are currently in the middle of a sold out arena tour in Japan for their 20th anniversary. I counted about 20 performances scheduled just in Japan at venues ranging from about 20k to 35k. All sold out.
Stray Kids (#7 on the fan-compiled list) ranked number one on the most recent Nlab survey of popular active K-Pop Boy Groups, which is likely what the helpful Japanese fan living in Japan was trying to tell global fans.
But a bigger survey of overall stans ranked in Snow Man, Sixtones, Naniwa Danshi, Seventeen, and then Number_i as the top five most popular boy groups overall.
[The left column is popularity and the right is the “viral” rise column.]
Looking at overall sales for 2024, the highest ranking K-Pop group was Seventeen with Stray Kids right behind them at numbers 4 and 5.
That’s still behind the three very popular domestic groups—Snow Man, Mrs. Green Apple, and SixTones.
If you look at the top streaming songs of the year, there’s not a single K-Pop song to be found. Mrs. Green Apple gets in three tunes and SOTY goes to “Bling-Bang-Bang-Born.”
What this says to me is that Mrs. Green Apple is probably the most broadly popular group in Japan right now; Stray Kids are likely the most popular among the specific subset of Japanese K-Pop fans, (many of whom are likely teenagers); TVXQ have a large and stable fandom of adults; and the two most popular boy groups in Japan right now are SixTones and Snow Man.
So, I’ll ask again, what does total sales actually mean? Parsing the data, what that Big Number at the top of the chart looks like to me is a bubble of popularity. Just like poor old Jang Geun-Suk down at #39.
The future is wide open so who knows if that particular bubble will re-inflate or not but I’m not holding my breath. All I’ll say is K-Pop Metrics Stans live in their own little universe with only the thinnest ties to reality.
In the meantime, watch THE BALLERS! SixTones new album just dropped.