LE SSERAFIM made a double that made the whole Kpop "fall off the horse", Stray Kids clung to the button even closer

LE SSERAFIM's new mini album "HO.T" has won its second consecutive week at No. 1 on the world album chart, in addition to winning a second week on the Billboard 200 chart at No. 100.

Since its inception, LE SSERAFIM has constantly conveyed the message of resilience and steel spirit of modern girls. However, in terms of sound, the group has a lot of transformations. Latin, hip-hop, afro bea.t,... HYBE's first gir.l group has tried on socks.

The group LE SSERAFIM attracted attention when leading Kpop on the Billboard chart

Meanwhile, Stray Kids' special album "(HOP)" remained at No. 3 for the 15th consecutive week on the world album chart. THE BOYZ's new album "Unexpected" debuted at No. 4 this week, while NMIXX's new mini album "Fe3O4: FORWARD" jumped to No. 6 for a second week on the chart.

Stray Kids is also holding an admirable ranking on this chart, a name that many other groups have to be wary of.

Jimin BTS's solo album "MUSE" reached No. 7 for the 36th week on the chart, with ENHYPEN's "ROMANCE : UNTOLD" holding on to No. 8 for the 37th week.

BTS' 2022 compilation album "Proof" remained at No. 9 for its 146th week on the chart, and Stray Kids' "ATE" climbed to No. 10 in its 36th week.

LE SSERAFIM's "Crazy" peaked at No. 14 for its 29th week on the chart, followed by NewJeans' "Get Up" at No. 15 for its 81st week.

ATEEZ's "GOLDEN HOUR : Part.2" peaked at No. 16 in its 19th week on the chart, with ITZY Yeji's debut solo album "AIR" at No. 18 (in the second week) and G-Dragon BIGBANG's solo album "Ãœbermensch" at No. 19 (in the fifth week).

Finally, ILLIT's "I'll Like You" closed out its 20th week on the chart at No. 22, while Seventeen's compilation album "17 IS RIGHT HERE" rose to No. 23 in its 40th week.

In early January 2025, ILLIT was suspected of manipulating album sales. Specifically, a post on the online community Pann Nate with more than 90 thousand reads pointed out an anomaly in the album sales of the K-pop gir.l group ILLIT (Yunah, Minju, Moka, Wonhee, Iroha).

Previously, in October 2024, Circle Chart's monthly album sales ranking reported that ILLIT's second mini album titled "I'll Like You" sold a total of 504,363 copies in the month of release.

On November 27, 2024, the management company Belift Lab (part of HYBE Group) also reported that the mini album "I'll Like You" sold 582,333 copies (including the regular version and the Weverse version), based on the Circle Chart chart as of October 2024.

According to the company, the album only took 10 days to reach the number of "half a million copies", from the release date of October 21, 2024. But according to the annual album sales chart that Circle Chart has just announced, "I'll Like You" sold a total of 412,040 copies in 2024, down more than 92,000 copies from sales shown in October 2024.

The audience suspected that HYBE had used the "buy first" method to manipulate the group's album sales, a sales method that many considered a form of "fraud".

By using the "buy first" method, companies offer a certain number of albums to distributors on the condition that they can "return" if the inventory album is not sold out.

This method allows distributors to import more albums than they need, thereby increasing the number of albums sold in the first week, even if these albums have not actually been sold to customers.

In the K-pop industry, first-week album sales are always a notable achievement, an important factor in evaluating the success of a music product and the popularity of an artist. Therefore, groups seem to have a "race" to achieve the best first-week album sales.

LE SSERAFIM made BLACKPINK "invisible" in Japan, even BTS succumbed Hoàng Phúc07:03:57 10/06/2024Recently, the Billboard Japan Artist 100 ranked the 10 most powerful K-pop artists in Japan in 2024. Immediately after the announcement, this ranking caused a lot of debate in the Kpop follower community.