Semi whining v SM the War and hybe / gfriend numbers stuff (1 Viewer)

[RandAlThor]

Just dipping my toes back into hybe/bts world after spending most of the last 10 years avoiding it. Makes me feel icky .
All the more so since i have been leaning that way in the war.

They just flat refuse to admit that the gfriend deal was a dick move.

I am a pretty big SNSD fan and i freely admit they f over Jessica for envy and greed. ppl f up.

The claim is gfriend had bad sales. well that is not true except for teh poorly named Walpurgis Night (lots o neg buzz around that title) which had numbers well off the one before.
Earlier in the year Labyrinth had 90k which with reporting and all is the same a the 96 for time for the moon night.

here is the wiki page

GFriend discography - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

you know who has had worse sales yet their companies have not dropped em?
Apink
Apink had one album that did 90 k and one 80K so similar but worse sales than gfriend.

Apink discography - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Which of those artists are still working and who got fired pre contract extension.

Any way gfriend got F'ed and there is no justifiable reason for it to have gone down like it did.

gonna tag abe he might have more fun info..

@Abeamus

 

[LoveYooShaSha]

Just dipping my toes back into hybe/bts world after spending most of the last 10 years avoiding it. Makes me feel icky .
All the more so since i have been leaning that way in the war.

They just flat refuse to admit that the gfriend deal was a dick move.

I am a pretty big SNSD fan and i freely admit they f over Jessica for envy and greed. ppl f up.

The claim is gfriend had bad sales. well that is not true except for teh poorly named Walpurgis Night (lots o neg buzz around that title) which had numbers well off the rest
Earlier in the year Labyrinth had 90k which with reporting and all is the same a the 96 for time for the moon night.

here is the wiki page

GFriend discography - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

you know who has had worse sales yet their companies have not dropped em?
Apink
Apink had one album that did 90 k and one 80K so similar but worse sales than gfriend.

Apink discography - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Which of those artists are still working and who got fired pre contract extension.

Any way gfriend got F'ed and there is no justifiable reason for it to have gone down like it did.

gonna tag abe he might have more fun info..

@Abeamus

In retrospect in 2023, seems like entire reason they bought soumu was to build le sserafim n tanked/dropped gfriend because they dint want a competing sunbae gg/yeojachingu dint come up to hybe expectations of a 3rd gen gg sales wise(sequence might be iffy/back to front). There were announcement of global audition before gfriend ended, i think. So plans were already in place, if my memory serves.

I still believe if gfriend continued in soumu, they might hit rv sales wise or else rise up to 150,000/200,000 unit cd sales like RV did with queendom.

Unlike rv/gidle/everglow/april n other ggs during 2020 gfriend was solid without major incident other than sowon n gfriend ending with a whimper, without an ifficial goodbye, was disappointing.

I think viviz, yuju n yerin solos show tat fans still care about gfriend members.hopefully newer fans as well.

 

[RandAlThor]

In retrospect in 2023, seems like entire reason they bought soumu was to build le sserafim n tanked/dropped gfriend because they dint want a competing sunbae gg/yeojachingu dint come up to hybe expectations of a 3rd gen gg sales wise(sequence might be iffy/back to front). There were announcement of global audition before gfriend ended, i think. So plans were already in place, if my memory serves.

I still believe if gfriend continued in soumu, they might hit rv sales wise or else rise up to 150,000/200,000 unit cd sales like RV did with queendom.

Unlike rv/gidle/everglow/april n other ggs during 2020 gfriend was solid without major incident other than sowon n gfriend ending with a whimper, without an ifficial goodbye, was disappointing.

I think viviz, yuju n yerin solos show tat fans still care about gfriend members.hopefully newer fans as well.

Its not a good look for source or hybe.

Heck they could have just not renewed them( also dumb) but to killl the act pre end of contract . Then take em to court over the name and songs is an extra level of heartless. Worse than the Jessica move at least she had some warning that things were weird

 

[Moguri]

@ApinksBadPanda

 

[Abeamus]

I think a lot of the issue is that Gfriend is a group that because their fanbase is more so Korean has allowed for i-fans to run way more rampant about them than other groups to the point where people believe the misinformation and just see Gfriend as a group that was somewhat popular once and declined.

Even Mago for Gfriend debuted at 11th on Melons Realtime Chart which is higher than some of todays popular groups debut and then their album sales were if anything just stagnant since they were always around the same level except for Sunny Summer and Walpurgis Night that kind of stick out as weak which I do think with Sunny Summer it was because it was only like 3 months after Time For The Moon Night and Walpurgis Night was just a weird album format using some already released songs which worth noting Gfriend only did 1 repackage and that also had meh sales.

This being for a group whose last real hit song was in 2018 and to put it into perspective how unrealistic it was for them to just explode even Oh My Girl who only broke out in 2020 peaked at 111k album sales with Dun Dun Dance because the new toy syndrome is real and old groups just don't explode the same way a new group can as you will lose potential fans over the years from people who will check out a couple comebacks then not like all of them and just never come back.

Gfriends brand is still clearly a strong brand too as I mean it got Viviz on Queendom without even anyone having known what Viviz was going to be as well as all the members are like everywhere just because they were in Gfriend and then Viviz going from 50k sales to 80k in just 3 releases which to me proves that Gfriend were stagnant and going on Queendom could have given them the shot of exposure they needed to grow their fanbase a bit more to fall in line with the other old popular groups.

 

[StirFriedPanda]

@ApinksBadPanda

I'll provide my expert legal opinion after work!

 

[Abeamus]

Since I realise I didn't talk about Hybe almost at all I'll just say this is a that debuted a member who got accused of bullying which they followed by threatening to sue anyone saying so only to put her on hiatus and then removed her from the group and even got Gfriend and other Hybe artists banned from MBC stuff over Hybe wanting to avoid ISAC in TXTs debut year.

What about this tells you that Hybe makes smart decisions? Both of these to me just make me think Hybe is overconfident and the handling of Gfriends disbandment even reinforces that since they just left Source with no artist for a year which to me is working backwards.

Hybe hasn't exactly done anything to show they're a particularly smart company but they have an army of company stans who are willing to support them so they don't really need to be and even the places you could see obvious improvement get turned a blind eye too just because they aren't SM, JYP or YG.

 

[RandAlThor]

Since I realise I didn't talk about Hybe almost at all I'll just say this is a that debuted a member who got accused of bullying which they followed by threatening to sue anyone saying so only to put her on hiatus and then removed her from the group and even got Gfriend and other Hybe artists banned from MBC stuff over Hybe wanting to avoid ISAC in TXTs debut year.

What about this tells you that Hybe makes smart decisions? Both of these to me just make me think Hybe is overconfident and the handling of Gfriends disbandment even reinforces that since they just left Source with no artist for a year which to me is working backwards.

Hybe hasn't exactly done anything to show they're a particularly smart company but they have an army of company stans who are willing to support them so they don't really need to be and even the places you could see obvious improvement get turned a blind eye too just because they aren't SM, JYP or YG.

What i love is even if you gave the gfriend down numbers rhetoric a nod.
Source exists because of gfriend just as Hybe exists because of bts.
lets say Musk decides to buy Hybe (man is crazy and its petty cash) BTS are off peak number 5-20 % he disbands the group overnight and goes to court for name and songs(which admitidly may be harder since they did write em but hey so did billy joel write piano man)... all hell would be out for noon.

My take is BHS sucks with gg especially, unlike say LSM or JYP who have always connected and found a way.
back in the day they had, well a disaster with a member of the group blackmailing ppl.

To get gg to work in HYBE he bought source and vaporized gfriend for whatever reason, bought Pledis and let fromis go on the path they were on.
Head hunted Sakura and Chaewon, added Yunjin Khaza garam and eunchae.
obviously did fantastic back ground checks.... Then killed garam ( which i still think was wrong girl was 12 defending a friend )
Bought MHJ from SM and she did NJ from teh ground up.

buying MHJ is prob the smartest move they have done looking at nj.

 

[Abeamus]

What i love is even if you gave the gfriend down numbers rhetoric a nod.
Source exists because of gfriend just as Hybe exists because of bts.
lets say Musk decides to buy Hybe (man is crazy and its petty cash) BTS are off peak number 5-20 % he disbands the group overnight and goes to court for name and songs(which admitidly may be harder since they did write em but hey so did billy joel write piano man)... all hell would be out for noon.

My take is BHS sucks with gg especially, unlike say LSM or JYP who have always connected and found a way.
back in the day they had, well a disaster with a member of the group blackmailing ppl.

To get gg to work in HYBE he bought source and vaporized gfriend for whatever reason, bought Pledis and let fromis go on the path they were on.
Head hunted Sakura and Chaewon, added Yunjin Khaza garam and eunchae.
obviously did fantastic back ground checks.... Then killed garam ( which i still think was wrong girl was 12 defending a friend )
Bought MHJ from SM and she did NJ from teh ground up.

buying MHJ is prob the smartest move they have done looking at nj.

Min Heejin has definitely been their smartest investment so far as you can't argue with NewJeans success but even that they did not seem to check her work at all and people spent NewJeans debut talking about Cookie because of suspicions about Min Heejin.

Even if we go with Gfriends sales aren't the same the real question should be if it's affected their demand and that's no and this era really shows that since they still have no trouble getting gigs while not being trendy instead of kinda fading away and just doing concerts like most others end up so it's not exactly made a difference.

 

[RandAlThor]

Min Heejin has definitely been their smartest investment so far as you can't argue with NewJeans success but even that they did not seem to check her work at all and people spent NewJeans debut talking about Cookie because of suspicions about Min Heejin.

Even if we go with Gfriends sales aren't the same the real question should be if it's affected their demand and that's no and this era really shows that since they still have no trouble getting gigs while not being trendy instead of kinda fading away and just doing concerts like most others end up so it's not exactly made a difference.

I am not overly fond of underage girls saying i know what ya like boy either...

The bold is especially the issue with SM, their catalogue artist still sell out tours and are in demand.

Its crazy they did not want to keep gfriend around for just how popular they are as guests ect.

some shinee soloist have sold out tokyo dome.

 

[Abeamus]

I am not overly fond of underage girls saying i know what ya like boy either...

The bold is especially the issue with SM, their catalogue artist still sell out tours and are in demand.

Its crazy they did not want to keep gfriend around for just how popular they are as guests ect.

some shinee soloist have sold out tokyo dome.

Clearly there is unfortunately a market for it though when NewJeans is more successful than Le Serafim and Le Sserafim has the Iz*One members so this problem is going to get worse before it gets better.

It's also just really bizarre thinking like would people arguing about disbanding Gfriend have the same tune if Hybe does it to SNSD? Because that would be a really bad look for the company long term because if you'll disband SNSD who is going to feel safe under Hybe long term if legendary status just doesn't mean anything?

You have to give something to groups who have status even if it’s just something like YG and JYP and just simply agreeing you can't come to terms and at the end of contract we'll amicably part ways but Hybe not only did not do that but they terminated the contract early and applied for the trademark.

It's even causing a headache for Hybe already because now they're trying to get SM and people don't trust them so it's a more difficult process that won't get easier if they get SM as people will be skeptical of them and if people notice key people in SM no longer working with their faves that's going to wave huge red flags.