Seoul Music Awards is one of the major and annual music awards of Korean artists. Usually like other awards, fans will be extremely eager to vote or wait for the idol to receive the award. But for this year's SMA, it seems that fans of BTS and Stray Kids are ignoring it.
In a number of recent announcements by the fan clubs of the two groups, they both posted information about not participating in this award's vote. Both fandoms also gave reasons to believe that this award has an incorrect result.
Here's what fans of the two groups have to say about the 2023 SMA these days:
The end of the year is the occasion when great awards for Korean artists are held. Fans are also excitedly waiting for the awards to be given to which artists.
The awards are also said to honor artists and fans when demonstrating their popularity and success. Seoul Music Awards is also one of them. In particular, this award attracts a lot of attention for the award categories that are scored based on the number of fan votes.
On December 6, mobile voting began for the '32nd Seoul Music Awards' in categories such as Rookie of the Year, Favorite Award, K-Wave Grand Prize and K-Wave's Grand Prize. for Trot, Ballad, R&B Hip Hop and OST. Specifically, the Popularity Award (domestic voting results) and K-Wave Special Award (foreign voting results) are only counted through fan votes.
Candidates will be selected from artists who released physical albums and digital albums from January to December 2022 based on the Hanteo Chart. For the official mobile voting for the Seoul Music Awards, 50% is applied after the first round of voting is completed, and after resetting during the intermission period, 50% of the second round of voting results are added up as the total.
The first round of voting will be held from 12:00 PM KST on December 6 to 11:59 PM KST on December 25 on the official voting app of the ‘Seoul Music Awards.’ The second voting period is from 12:00 PM KST on December 27 to 11:59 PM on January 15, 2023.
Lim Young Woong is in first place in the Main Prize category, LE SSERAFIM is in first place for the Rookie Award, and BTS is number 1 in the K-Wave Special Award.
But contrary to the expected reactions and rivalry, there are some idol fandoms that have attracted attention after announcing their boycott of the vote of the '32nd Seoul Music Awards'. Typically fans of BTS and Stray Kids.
Stray Kids' overseas fandom association said through social media, "After lengthy discussions, we collectively agreed that we will not push the Seoul Music Awards Poll," claiming that there is evidence that votes were not properly reflected.
In addition, some BTS fandoms also declared to boycott the poll, saying, "there was no feedback or apology for the damage suffered by the fandom every year."
Korean fans also elaborated that many fans in Korea are also not participating in the voting this year for various reasons. They explained:
- "We're not participating in the voting because it was free before but now you have to download a weird app,"
- "This is because it's widely known that the Seoul Music Award is basically SM Music Awards,"
- "I really worked hard last year but I'm not even going to do the free voting either,"
- "The reason we don't vote is that it's going to be all SM artists winning anyway. lol."
- "Stray Kids fans are sitting out because last year they spent a lot of money on buying hearts to submit for extra votes (this sounds shady but it’s literally how this voting game works- all fandoms do it- so don’t start) only to later learn that before fan voting ending the ‘winners’ were already recording their acceptance speeches meaning they spent all that money and time for nothing and believe this show to be rigged. BTS fans sitting out because of previous years damage"
- "Th reason for the boycott is due to the fact that last year all of the award videos were recorder prior to December 25th while the voting was very well ongoing and did not end until Jan 7th. That means that regardless of who the actual winners were the award was already decided and given weeks in advance. The winners for last year that were in the lead for all categories were completely discarded."
- so cute to see the fandoms of the 2 biggest kpop groups coming together
Meanwhile, the '32nd Seoul Music Awards' ceremony will be held on January 19, 2023, at KSPO DOME, Olympic Park, Songpa-gu, Seoul.
