I'd tend to agree, I think when we say "all time" related to Streaming allkills it leaves out that streaming has only been widespread since around 2016-ish, so we're only really working off of 6-7 years of data.
Even less than that when you take into account the iChart has reformed multiple times like when Rough and Cheer Up got their PAKs there was 8 charts and since then I think at least 4 of them aren't on the iChart anymore and just looking at the data it's undeniable PAKs are easier as a result.
I'd love to know the download numbers too but I think the released number is capped at 2.5M, no?
I'd like the number of digital purchases as well, but as T-Ara stan I'm more than happy to leave them unknown so Roly Poly can still assert its legacy as the best selling gg single ever in Korea.
You actually can get downloads for songs still but Gaon only announces them for the songs that win their artist of the year award which even looking at that data shows downloads wouldn't work either as What Is Love? when it won got over 400k downloads in the 30 day frame.
You wanna know how much Scientist got? 30k downloads in the 30 day frame and even if you compare to Queendom by Red Velvet that only got 67k when it won so downloads have dropped off a cliff.
The most fair way I could think of that has large enough data for this kind of comparison is looking at the weeks it topped Melon since you can find data going back to Last Farewell on that and the only variable is songs that just hung around in the top 10 won't be there but there is data for that too I believe.
Also Gaon does actually have a certificate above 2.5M downloads but the reason you never hear about it is because they decided 10M downloads was the next step and the very large majority of Kpop artists as a whole are never getting a song with 10M downloads.