It seems to be hitting some groups harder than others.
Koreaboo
For the past couple of years, K-Pop album sales have reached record highs. During the COVID pandemic, it seems that a lot of people were introduced to the music genre and joined one or more fandoms, and with no concerts or other means of spending money to support their favorite artists, albums were pretty much the only thing one could buy.
Because of this, numerous artists had their best-selling albums to date, including many surpassing the one million sales mark for the first time. For a while, it seemed like the trend might continue as, for many artists, each group’s album sold more than the next. Nine of the top ten best-selling K-Pop albums in terms of first-week sales were released since 2022, and nearly all of those top ten have at least 2.5 million sales.
However, now that the pandemic is “over” and things are relatively back to normal, we seem to be seeing a pretty drastic decline in album sales for many artists, particularly girl groups.
For example, ITZY‘s past three albums — Checkmate, Cheshire, and Kill My Doubt all surpassed a million sales. However, their latest album, Born To Be, made just over 580,000 — almost a 50% decrease.
Aespa saw a similar decrease, though not quite as drastic, reaching a peak with My World and decreasing with each consecutive album.
The total sales for (G)I-DLE‘s latest album, I Sway, are still being counted since it was only released a couple of weeks ago, but it still sold considerably less than their previous album, 2, which sold less than the album before that, I Feel.
TWICE didn’t see as much of a drop between their last two albums, though With YOU-th still sold about 400,000 less than Ready To Be.
For girl groups from smaller labels, such as STAYC, the drop isn’t as high in terms of pure numbers, but that’s because their sales weren’t as high to begin with. STAYC reached a peak with their previous album, Teddy Bear, while their latest album Metamorphic made about 1/4 the number of sales.
Weeekly saw a similar decrease, though on a smaller scale.
The topic of girl group album sales declining was discussed recently on Reddit, where fans shared their opinions on the current state of K-Pop and the potential reasons why there has been such a huge shift.
What’s your opinion on the matter?
Share This Post
