With many parts of the global music industry shifting from physical sales to digital downloads and streaming, K-pop is a notable exception. “CD sales are falling steadily globally, but K-pop CD sales continue to rise,” says pop music critic Jung Min Jae.
Even as K-pop album sales fell for the first time in a decade, down 19.5% in 2024 from 2023, 20 albums will still нιт the 1 million mark in 2024. Over the past five years, physical K-pop album sales have hovered around 50 million.
K-pop’s ability to maintain global physical album sales is due to its fandom culture combined with its accompanying incentives. The most common purpose for buying a physical album is to collect and support the artist directly, rather than to use it to listen to music.
Each album offers unique merchandising and photobook concepts. Often, multiple versions of the same album are released along with a random collection of photo cards.
In addition, entry to a fansign is often based on a lottery system entered by purchasing physical albums, with one album equaling one ticket.
Under the influence of various marketing tactics, countless loyal Kpop fans spend money to buy dozens, sometimes hundreds of copies of their favorite group's album. Meanwhile, the album costs between 25 and 50 USD on average.
While entertainment companies targets the love of fans towards artist to boost physical album sales, Jin does the opposite! He even discourages his fans from spending too much money to buy all the album versions.
Specifically, when introducing his solo album with 3 different versions, Jin expressed his concern for ARMYs' "wallets" when he said: "If you like all 3, you can get all 3. But we're not that rich, are we? So yes, anything you like".
He was completely straightforward and surprised fans with this statement. ARMYs joked that Jin really "understands his au∂ιєnce".
Meanwhile, Jin is also about to continue to release his 2nd solo album in his career, so his "pleading" was mentioned again. This time, fans think that his reminder at that time was clearly a suggestion for fans to gradually save money for his or BTS's upcoming tour.
Fans left many comments below the video that is going viral again on SNS:
- Merch sales reflecting in his paycheck and probably saw us whining in the timeline how we all haven't saved up for the tour
- Lmao don't expose me like that
- Babe even if we can afford the Album the shipping is wat having us on Chokehold
- Jinnie you don't need to call me out like that
- He knows his au∂ιєnce
- Sir I'll be rich if he give me his bank details
- Jin de-influencing his own album lol. that’s king behavior.
- He knows we broke and he wants us to save money for the tours
- Thank you for reminding me. We've many events to prepare for, j-hope concert, Jin concert, FESTA and even BTS 7 concert then
The fact that fans buy a large number of albums to support idols in general or Jin in particular shows their pαѕѕionate love and appreciation for the music that artists create as well as their proud achievements. However, this also leads to unpredictable consequences including industrial waste if there is no reasonable storage plan.
