Appreciation How SuperM got their #1 (1 Viewer)

[PrideInBaek]

A little over two months ago, the world didn’t even know about K-pop group SuperM. Yet this week the seven-piece band turned heads when it landed a No. 1 debut on the Billboard 200 with its first-ever LP, The 1st Mini Album, driven almost entirely by album sales.
It’s a stunning achievement for the project, which was only just announced in August as a partnership between Korean label giant SM Entertainment and Capitol Music Group (and distributed by Caroline). And it’s no fluke. In the first major attempt to push a K-pop act foremost in the U.S. market, the labels pulled out all the winning marketing stops from both sides of the Pacific, creating an East-meets-West promotional super-campaign befitting these so-called “Avengers of K-pop,” which brings together members of established acts SHINee, EXO, NCT 127 and WayV.
Since collectible physical packages of albums have proven so popular among K-pop fans in Korea, SM and Capitol offered eight different CD variations -- one cover for each of the seven members, along with a group edition. Plus, more than 60 merchandise/album bundles were available to purchase through their official web stores.
SuperM’s upcoming 10-date North American arena tour, launching Nov. 11, also includes a concert ticket/album sale redemption offer, where a CD copy of the album was bundled into the purchase price of the ticket. Customers could choose to redeem the album and have it mailed to them, but only those redeemed albums could count towards the charts. But given the fervency of K-pop fans, it’s safe to assume these albums were redeemed at above-average rates.
When the album was released on Oct. 4, SuperM celebrated by hosting a week-long, wildly popular pop-up shop in Los Angeles during street week, right next to the Hollywood Walk of Fame, where fans could purchase the CD. The same week, SuperM held hyper-efficient album signings at record stores in the Los Angeles area, where only one band member signed each customer’s CD to avoid bottlenecking -- instead of having the entire group sign a disc.
Meanwhile, SuperM’s super fans proved incredibly savvy at boosting their band up the charts. While Nielsen Music and Billboard's charts only reflect U.S. purchases, chatter on social media was pervasive with ways they might help game the system from all around the world. Ultimately, Nielsen Music and Billboard have systems in place against fans or labels rigging chart performance, but the scheming alone shows remarkable dedication to supporting the group. Online retailers, including SM Entertainment’s own SuperM storefront, tapped into this by mentioning in item descriptions that sales would be counted for the Billboard charts -- a fair practice that targets fans commitment to the cause, so long as only U.S. sales are reported for the Billboard charts, data that is scrutinized by Nielsen Music and Billboard.
“SuperM fans bought the mini album in numbers because it was their way of expressing their fandom and support of the band,” says MIDiA Research managing director Mark Mulligan. “Both K-pop and Japanese idol artists have been doing this kind of thing for years in their domestic markets, to such an extent that physical revenues are growing strongly in South Korea, driven by young K-pop fans.”
The combination of these promotional strategies worked. The 1st Mini Album, which is composed of only five original tracks (plus instrumental versions of two of those songs), started with 168,000 units earned in the week ending Oct. 10 in the U.S., of which an astonishing 98% or 164,000 were in album sales, according to Nielsen Music. (The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units. Units are comprised of traditional album sales, track equivalent albums and streaming equivalent albums.)
In doing so, SM Entertainment and Capitol Records have achieved success through physical format in a music landscape where streaming is hailed the golden ticket to charts success.
“Just when everyone tells you young people don’t listen to albums and they certainly don’t buy albums, a clever marketing team who knows how to appeal to a core fan base proves them wrong,” comments Russ Crupnick, managing partner at industry analysis firm MusicWatch.

 

[RandAlThor]

So it seems they worked the system, but still got the real numbers as verified by Nielsen and billboard. Why do you care?
isnt that what every group does? bts fans worked the fan voting deal to make it appear there was overwhelming interest. Then after a few wins they became a novelty act that had drawn attention. BP targeted cochella and it worked.

 

[VillageIdiot]

I'll never understand why SM fandoms just don't feel the need to stream outside of EXO-L.

They about to jop themselves out of the top 100

 

[RandAlThor]

I'll never understand why SM fandoms just don't feel the need to stream outside of EXO-L.

They about to jop themselves out of the top 100

rv does decent spotify numbers they just have far fewer fans than any of the other top gg except izone and gfriend / mmm depending on platform.

v live mmm and rv are about equal and have picked up say half a million this year while gfriend has stayed around 1.5. Bp and twice have 3-4x those 3

so considering they have a third to a quarter of the fans the YT numbers are about right especially when you factor in the built in lack of yt stream culture in sm fandoms.

 

[PrideInBaek]

So it seems they worked the system, but still got the real numbers as verified by Nielsen and billboard. Why do you care?
isnt that what every group does? bts fans worked the fan voting deal to make it appear there was overwhelming interest. Then after a few wins they became a novelty act that had drawn attention. BP targeted cochella and it worked.

Why do I care? I don't. The purpose of this thread was to clarify how SuperM got their no. 1. That's all.
I was one of the first one here to congratulate them. I am genuinely happy for them. And as I said in my previous thread, I don't care how they got it as long as my bias is happy.

 

[PrideInBaek]

They about to jop themselves out of the top 100

I laughed harder than I should have

 

[RandAlThor]

Why do I care? I don't. The purpose of this thread was to clarify how SuperM got their no. 1. That's all.
I was one of the first one here to congratulate them. I am genuinely happy for them. And as I said in my previous thread, I don't care how they got it as long as my bias is happy.

np i was just tired of so many gripeing about it.

 

[yeji]

 

[Administrator2]

I have two words for you. Sixty Bundles.

 

[amourpinks]

Hmmm

 

[RandAlThor]

I have two words for you. Sixty Bundles.

dude supposedly that was a whopping 2% let it go.

 

[Evergreen]

dude supposedly that was a whopping 2% let it go.

2% is the digital sales if I am not wrong.

 

[RandAlThor]

2% is the digital sales if I am not wrong.

i read that somewhere today both bb and neilsen validated and they are super motivated to stopping chart manipulation.
If feels like sour grapes from all these folks and its not like it matters.... 150k is pretty horrid for a bg of any note third tier for sure. Why should it matter if they sold em in the us its still just 150k. 300,000,000/150,000 < 1 in 2k bought one. If that is all it takes to hit number one on the charts The us market has bigger issues.
150k mostly wins ya the week in korea most weeks and some times in Japan .
Each of those kids solos would do 150 at least the exo and taemin .

 

[blueberries]

It would help if both Billboard and Youtube had clearer and fairer system that prevented stuff like bundles counting as album sales and ads being tranferred to views. If people want to buy the album they will buy the album, if people want to watch the video they will watch the video. This is more of problem with the current system that makes numbers less trustworthy- we won't know how much pure sales SuperM got and how much of pure views mv's get and we won't.

 

[Evergreen]

i read that somewhere today both bb and neilsen validated and they are super motivated to stopping chart manipulation.
If feels like sour grapes from all these folks and its not like it matters.... 150k is pretty horrid for a bg of any note third tier for sure. Why should it matter if they sold em in the us its still just 150k. 300,000,000/150,000 < 1 in 2k bought one. If that is all it takes to hit number one on the charts The us market has bigger issues.
150k mostly wins ya the week in korea most weeks and some times in Japan .
Each of those kids solos would do 150 at least the exo and taemin .

For me SM outsmarted the system and commited a fraud in nature.

It would help if both Billboard and Youtube had clearer and fairer system that prevented stuff like bundles counting as album sales and ads being tranferred to views. If people want to buy the album they will buy the album, if people want to watch the video they will watch the video. This is more of problem with the current system that makes numbers less trustworthy- we won't know how much pure sales SuperM got and how much of pure views mv's get and we won't.

Billboard are going to reform their system anyways in 2020 because of bundles. SM and Capitol are not the only ones who get a controversial #1 on Bilboard 200, DJ Khaled too.

 

[blueberries]

For me SM outsmarted the system and commited a fraud in nature.



Billboard are going to reform their system anyways in 2020 because of bundles. SM and Capitol are not the only ones who get a controversial #1 on Bilboard 200, DJ Khaled too.

I hope youtube follows the suit cause they are discrediting themselves by allowing ads count towards views

 

[Abeamus]

I hope youtube follows the suit cause they are discrediting themselves by allowing ads count towards views

I don't think there's any way to get true stats when it comes to a kpop group though as even without the bundles and ads there are still those fans who will find ways to stream it for charts, buy like 20 albums despite only like 4 versions or stream the YouTube video all the way until the next comeback. The other thing to this is that companies encourage this with the do anything you can behaviour and added stuff to conditions like "we'll do this if you get us a win" which makes digitals and physicals boosted on top of albums already being stuffed with stuff realistically impossible to get in just the amount of versions and also tying stuff to how many views you get on YouTube.

 

[blueberries]

I don't think there's any way to get true stats when it comes to a kpop group though as even without the bundles and ads there are still those fans who will find ways to stream it for charts, buy like 20 albums despite only like 4 versions or stream the YouTube video all the way until the next comeback. The other thing to this is that companies encourage this with the do anything you can behaviour and added stuff to conditions like "we'll do this if you get us a win" which makes digitals and physicals boosted on top of albums already being stuffed with stuff realistically impossible to get in just the amount of versions and also tying stuff to how many views you get on YouTube.

It's probably impossible to get them only show 1 view/album per person, but at least the intention to buy the album or view the mv is there when album coming as freebie or view coming from ad doesn't have same intention and makes whole thing seem more disgenuine. But yes, kpop fandoms especially are notorious at cheating charts.

 

[RandAlThor]

It's probably impossible to get them only show 1 view/album per person, but at least the intention to buy the album or view the mv is there when album coming as freebie or view coming from ad doesn't have same intention and makes whole thing seem more disgenuine. But yes, kpop fandoms especially are notorious at cheating charts.

You tube is only hurting them selves as more advertisers figure this out views will be drastically devalued as 'hits'. Perversely buying video adds for views is actually not a horrid idea depending on how much they cost the agencies.

Those gaudy numbers for any group are a nice talking point. Its just they are meaning less.

3 billion times folks watched Psy. No way i believe that any of the current monster or quick stream numbers represent actual views or even folks listening to the video from another tab.

I actually respect the smaller /slower numbers, at least those are more representative of actual people enjoying the music.

 

[blueberries]

You tube is only hurting them selves as more advertisers figure this out views will be drastically devalued as 'hits'. Perversely buying video adds for hits is actually not a horrid idea depending on how much they cost the agencies.

Those gaudy numbers for any group are a nice talking point. Its just they are meaning less.

3 billion times folks watched Psy. No way i believe that any of the current monster or quick stream numbers represent actual views or even folks listening to the video from another tab.

I actually respect the smaller /slower numbers, at least those are more representative of actual people enjoying the music.

Financially it does make sense for youtube, buy ads on our platform so that your artist can appear popular in our platform. But yes it waters down value of views a lot.