Chart Charting vs Sales, which is really girl group vs boy group stans (1 Viewer)

[centen]

Just scrolling through the Korean charting Twitter, and thought it's interesting that women dominate charting (9 of the 12 acts are women, and the remaining 3 are all BTS), but men dominate sales. It's crazy how Stray Kids is the 15th best selling act of 2026 without even releasing an album this year.

It's just an interesting thing to notice between which acts are putting out songs people want to listen to on repeat and whether that actually reflects in sales.

 

[Abeamus]

Boy groups are much more likely to pick up more dedicated fans so they tend to sell more when it comes to things that are more for those fans but boy groups also tend to be more unpopular with the casual audience so this leads to girl groups dominating digitally with only a handful of boy groups being spread throughout

 

[Selfmate]

hasn't that always been the case historically that BG sell more than GG

it used to be that GG who sold 100K albums were seen as successful (from my understanding the 100K was some sort of baseline for GG)
these days top GG regularly sell 1m albums or more as plenty of GG sell 100K albums now (obviously it's still very much the minority since most GG do not even get close to 100K)

however I do think that times are changing and GG are selling more as a % relative to the total albums sold
(I'll clarify what I mean)

I guess if one looks at the total albums sold say 15 years ago/10 years ago/5 years ago that the relative % of albums sold in narrowing when comparing BG to GG and that's what I meant when I said GG are selling more relative to the total

and obviously like previously GG are outcharting BG generally speaking (K Charting)

NOW everything above only apply to the top groups - it would be interesting to see total Circle/Goan Points and album sales numbers of GG vs BG now compared to previously to see if OVERALL they are increasing or decreasing

 

[HugeBakkaeMotae]

Boy groups are much more likely to pick up more dedicated fans so they tend to sell more when it comes to things that are more for those fans but boy groups also tend to be more unpopular with the casual audience so this leads to girl groups dominating digitally with only a handful of boy groups being spread throughout

I don't think it's about who has the more dedicated fanbase but rather the difference in how men and women display their dedication. I don't think it's unfair to say that most BG fans are women and even though GGs have many female fans as well (because K-Pop in general is more popular among girls and women) they also have the majority of the male fanbase behind them.

Even though we all hate AI I just did a quick google search to back up my claim and I think the AI response said what I was going to say better than me;

 

[Abeamus]

I don't think it's about who has the more dedicated fanbase but rather the difference in how men and women display their dedication. I don't think it's unfair to say that most BG fans are women and even though GGs have many female fans as well (because K-Pop in general is more popular among girls and women) they also have the majority of the male fanbase behind them.

Even though we all hate AI I just did a quick google search to back up my claim and I think the AI response said what I was going to say better than me;

Your point is based on the assumption that my casual vs dedicated description was talking about boys vs girls and not just how deep into Kpop they are since the ones who make up the charts which girl groups usually do better over boy groups likely aren't buying the groups albums nor traveling to their concerts unless they are in the near area. These are all done by people who are usually deep into Kpop and at that point they are part of the dedicated fanbase regardless of whether that's for a boy group or a girl group and that usually dictates more areas of success since a lot of the time you can just throw more money at it where as streaming for the charts it's harder to just do that with the mix of the casual audience being able to overwhelm almost any fanbase.

 

[RandAlThor]

This is the top 20 Albums last year

Only the top top gg compete IVE, Aespa, I-dle its impressive both Ive and Aespa do it with 2 albums.

Digitally in Korea male soloist do very well aside for ofc the girls.

OFC globa chart has KDH crushing every one and girls with few males not kdh related

Sony and netflix totally dropped the ball not having a KDH physical album with photo cards ready to go.

 

[Selfmate]

Sony and netflix totally dropped the ball not having a KDH physical album with photo cards ready to go.

I think they weren't expecting the movie and the corresponding songs to have such a big reaction and thus they weren't ready for all the fanfare that followed

 

[RandAlThor]

I think they weren't expecting the movie and the corresponding songs to have such a big reaction and thus they weren't ready for all the fanfare that followed

ie they did not understand kpop at all.

 

[Selfmate]

ie they did not understand kpop at all.

they probably didn't (or the execs didn't lol)

I think it's better to underestimate hype and undersell than oversell since if you undersell something you can always go back and reprint albums and so forth...