T-ara numbers

[koganbot]

T-ara's "Sexy Love" enters the Gaon chart at number 4 with 25,414,429 points. In comparison, when "Day By Day" entered in early July, it was number 3 with 41,580,037. That's a significant drop-off in points. Since the songs are different we can't assume their numbers would normally have been equivalent. And songs don't always start with a full week. To my ears, "Day By Day" holds together better as a track, while "Sexy Love" has an opening riff that's as catchy as anything short of "Rebel Rebel" and "96 Tears." I wouldn't say that my ears have ever correlated well with sales and streams in any genre, but nonetheless I think "Sexy Love" would be at least 10,000,000 higher if the world hadn't invented a scandal. (I don't know how the points are calculated, by the way.)

For comparison, "Lovey Dovey" opened at 1 with 37,706,842, "Cry Cry"'s first full week on the chart got them to number 1 with 52,480,756, and "Roly Poly" started at 3 with 47,462,531, jumping to 61,645,160 the following week. (To put this in perspective, though, Super Junior had two singles over the summer that sounded pretty good to me but opened relatively weak and fell fast, all without benefit of a scandal. And Kara's excellent "Pandora" opened last week with a fairly meh 28,246,457.)

We'll see what happens. I'd say the uproar caused "Day By Day" to be only the fifth biggest hit of the summer rather than the third, so not that serious an impact;* on that basis I was willing to believe that the Netizen spasm had been less influential than I'd feared. Now I'm veering half back to pessimism; T-ara have definitely taken a substantial hit. But they're still big. This is nothing like what was done to the Dixie Chicks, where "Landslide" was high on the country charts one week, then the next — boom! — the group's dead in that market.

*Of course, stuff like Eunjung losing endorsements and being kicked off an acting gig is another type of impact.

Comments

[askbask.livejournal.com]

Super Junior are not that big digitally, but sell tons of physical albums to their core fans regardless of song popularity. Kara is sort of in-between. BoA has lost some of her zealous young fan base over the years, and only sold 30k+ of her album in a month, but opened stronger digitally than even G-Dragon's latest. Big Bang are stronger than SuJu digitally but also strong in physical sales, while T-ara have been very big digitally which suggests a mainstream appeal that may or may not be affected differently by scandals like this.

(I think I've talked about this before, but the split between what sort of artists have strong physical sales (hardcore fans) and digital sales (mainstream appeal) is pretty clear. PSY has done crazy numbers with Gangnam Style but the physical album has only done 40k-ish.)

[koganbot]

Ah, I see that both Super Junior albs — Sexy, Free & Single and Spy, the second being a repackage of the first — are high on the album chart, 11 and 2 respectively, while T-ara's are down in the 70s. Thanks for pointing this out.

I still think that those two Super Junior tracks are doing a lot worse than "Mr. Simple," "Bonamana," and "Sorry Sorry" had, though I didn't have time to check those old ones to see if I'm right.

In any event, T-ara are clearly taking a hit from the uproar, but it's not certain how much, given the variation you'd get anyway from release to release and from rising and fading popularity. But "Lovey-Dovey" is the number 2 song of the year on Gaon's 2012 cumulative chart, edging out "Fantastic Baby," "Alone," and "Blue." So T-ara were in position as one of the top few commercial pop groups until this happened. And may still be. I don't know. My guess is that the mainstream that T-ara appeal to doesn't follow Netizen scandals closely, but the constant reiteration of the phrase "bullying scandal" will have an effect, will leave an air of something wrong and tainted about the group, something unpleasant you want to shy away from. And even while the Netizen attacks may be not much of a big deal to the average listener, that same average listener isn't going to hear the counterarguments either. So the taint will remain, I'm guessing. This is all speculation based on my sense of human psychology rather than any knowledge of the Korean market in particular.

[koganbot]

What also interests me is the status of (and reason for) singles that are by major artists but that aren't given live promotion, stuff such as T-ara's "Round And Round" in the spring, for example, and IU & Fiestar's "Sea Of Moonlight," and Brown Eyed Girls' "A Midsummer Night's Dream" over the summer, not to mention OST ballads. These tend not to jump to the top (or, as sometimes happens with the OST ballads, jump up but fall precipitously), but their low numbers aren't considered a problem, I gather. And I assume there are occasional surprise hits.

[askbask.livejournal.com]

I think rolling ahead with this release was the first wise move by CCM after this scandal. It may not do gangbuster numbers like their other 2012 singles but it probably normalizes relations with the whole media circuit pretty well, even if there are issues with Music Bank and live performances this round.

"Sorry Sorry" seemed to achieve mainstream penetration in a way Super Junior won't ever again. This is purely from my point of view but it feels like they're losing more and more touch with the general public, and aren't making much effort to stop that, what with all the similar-sounding songs and samey videos. A few of them have decent careers as MCs or hosts, but many are going to the army soon and that will make them even less visible. No sign of album sales being hit, though.

IU's "End of the Day" wasn't promoted but reached #15 on that half year thing so it happens.

(I'm moving to Korea for almost a year in a week, to study Korean at Yonsei (I've finished my master's thesis in something different and worked for a year to save up some money, this is mostly for the fun of it) so perhaps I'll get a better idea of the Korean mainstream)

[koganbot]

Wow! This is exciting. Your going to Korea, that is.

[koganbot]

I see that Mirage didn't go on sale until last Monday, so it won't show up on the album chart till next week.

(From what I can tell it only contains two new songs, which presumably you can download individually. At least "Sexy Love." Does it contain MV's as well? Would most of its sales be as a collector's item?)