Author | Two Three Three Editors | Fan Zhihui
In the era when everyone listens to songs on mobile apps, I am afraid that people born after 1995 and 00 have rarely seen music on tapes and CDs. The form of albums has been replaced by playlists, and records The era of breaking thousands of orders at every turn is gone forever. According to public information, the last physical album in the mainland entertainment market with a sales volume of over 1 million came from Li Yuchun's "Queens and Dreams" released in 2006, 14 years ago.
And on February 21st, since the release of BTS’s new album "MAPOFTHESOUL:7", in addition to topping the Billboard 200 album chart for the fourth time, the single "On" also appeared on the Hot100 singles chart. No. 4, this is also the best result of the K-pop group.
On the other hand, as of February 24, in just four days, its physical album sales have exceeded 3 million, breaking the historical sales record of Hanteo, a Korean album sales statistics website.
So, under the background that global music streaming is still strong, why can BTS still sell so many physical albums?
BTS has returned strongly, and the "mid-losing" power broke 100 million
At 5 pm on January 17, BTS launched the comeback's prelude "Black Swan" on multiple music streaming platforms such as Melon and Spotify. Just 5 minutes after it went live, the sound source curve of Melon, a local streaming media platform in South Korea, showed that the value of "Black Swan" was as high as 17.6, which broke the highest limit of 7 in the table.
in the Korean fan circle, this kind of simultaneous audition downloads exceeding a certain percentage of the total number of people, causing the data to exceed the maximum limit of the table is called broken table. On the same day, "Black Swan" also reached the top of the iTunes US area.
On February 21, BTS officially released the fourth Korean official album "MAP OF THE SOUL: 7". The album contains a total of 20 songs, including "Intro: Persona" which has been released in the album "MAP OF THE SOUL: PERSONA". "5 popular songs and 15 new songs. In addition, the title song "ON" also launched a collaboration version with the world-class singer-songwriter Sia, and the tenth song of the album "Louder than bombs" also included the participation of Troye Sivan.
According to the statistics of the blogger "Attack on Fat Bomb", the title song "ON" has reached the top in 80 areas of iTunes within three days of the launch of the album. At the same time, the BTS and Sia version "ON (Feat. Sia)" has also topped the iTunes song charts in 25 regions, and its official MV has also been viewed on Youtube for more than 75 million times. In addition to the outstanding results of digital albums, BTS’s physical album sales have also become the first album in Hanteo’s history to sell more than 3 million thanks to the strong purchasing power of fans from all over the world.
As early as January, domestic fans who received news of the return have already begun to prepare for fundraising. Since it was impossible to predict the specific price of the album at first, the station also adopted the method of letting fans pay a deposit of 40-50 yuan in advance, and waited until the specific price of the album was announced before making up the final payment. In order to stimulate sales, the major fan stations of
have also launched the option of "Special Album", which is about to make a special package of peripheral products bundled with the album. These peripheral products include stickers, keychains, cards, backpacks, blankets, photo frames, etc. The more albums a fan buys alone, the more types and quantities of peripherals will be given away. The naked album refers to only albums and no surroundings made by fan stations. The physical album of
"MAP OF THE SOUL: 7" also continues the usual gameplay of the Korean idol industry. The record company will divide the album into four different versions. The inner pages of the four versions are different. The photo cards and posters included in the album are random.
According to the first sound of music, among the 3 million physical sales of "MAP OF THE SOUL: 7", the number of purchases in mainland China is 770,000, exceeding 4% of the total sales.One part.
is calculated based on the pre-sale price of 122 RMB (US$17.46) per album, and the sales of physical albums in mainland China are close to 94 million yuan. At present, on NetEase Cloud Music, as of 21:00 on March 3, the sales volume of this digital album has exceeded 410,000. At a price of 25 yuan each, its sales exceeded 10.25 million yuan.
In other words, BTS's album sales in the mainland have exceeded 100 million. So, where did these purchased physical and digital albums go?
Non-shipped entities and low-priced resale digital specials
Obviously, BTS's super-high physical sales cannot be separated from the professional organization and careful preparation of fans. In addition to using premium "special albums" to increase selling points,
also divides album sales into two types: shipped back and not shipped back in order to better sell albums for idols. And because the postage is omitted, the cost is greatly reduced, and the extra funds can buy more albums. This also means that fans who choose to purchase "not shipped back" albums will not receive the actual item.
Where are the albums that have not been mailed to the fans? A veteran fan of
revealed to Music Xiansheng that under normal circumstances, the fan station will choose the album that has not been shipped back for offline support, such as in cafes, universities and other places. But the specific method and information transparency depend on the reputation of the fan station.
At the moment when the fan economy is booming, it is nothing new for fans to buy multiple albums in order to sell idols. Many albums shipped back, because they far exceed personal needs, will also be sold on the secondary market at low prices to recover costs.
takes "MAP OF THE SOUL: 7" as an example, the official price of its physical album is 122 yuan, plus the cost of shipping is about 150 yuan. But after many fans took out the photo cards and posters from the album, the selling price on Xianyu was 30-50 yuan, which was reduced to one-third of the original price. Even the brand new unopened version only costs less than 90 yuan. The same is true for the
digital album. According to the current rules of the domestic music platform, as long as you purchase more than one digital album, you can give away or resell the excess. After buying a large number of digital albums, fans of
will generally support their idols in the form of gifts. In the super talk of "digital album" on Weibo, some fans chose to give it to everyone directly, while more people started the mode of "change album by album" in this super talk, using their extra albums to In exchange for surplus albums in the hands of others, circulate in the market in another way.
Some big digital album buyers will resell them on Xianyu at a very low price in order to "recover blood." According to Music Xiansheng, when I searched Xianyu for "Shuzhuan", I saw the digital albums of many artists such as Cai Xukun, Wang Jiaer, Moyu, Jolin, Jin Xuanya, Li Yuchun, etc., sold at low prices, ranging from 0.5 yuan to 18 yuan. , Many people leave a message for consultation. Such discounted transactions as
also appeared in the voting for a music entertainment festival. Because the rules at the time were that a certain platform member could vote 2,700 votes, and there was no limit to the upper limit of a single user's purchase. Therefore, in order to vote for idols, fans will buy a large number of annual membership members, and after the event ends, they will transfer the members at a low price on Xianyu. The
mode of operation is also applied to fashion magazines. In the pre-sale of some popular artists’ physical magazines, because a large number of fans asked not to ship them in order to reduce shipping costs, the magazines simply offered the option of not shipping them. Later, fashion magazines simply invented an electronic magazine based on celebrity audio and video + graphics to facilitate fans' impulse, and the platform would receive fan bonuses. Although
is seen by onlookers, fans are always "cut off", but in this series of links, all parties have actually gained benefits. Fans have satisfied the purpose of selling idols. Buyers on the secondary market can also purchase physical products or music services at low prices. Even if they are not resold, the extra albums can also be used for promotion, online or offline. Passerby Amway's own idol. Fans of
know well that they buy a large number of albums just to "make performance" for their idols and buy "face up". These sales of are essentially to use real money to reflect the influence of idols, and to lay the foundation for the subsequent commercial cooperation of starsbasis. As a result, some upstream companies simply put "sales" on the surface in order to maximize their profits. In other words, what fans buy is not the use value of (digital/physical) albums and magazines, but the "sales number" of the sales platform, but under the adjustment of the third-party platform, the core value of the item changes from the "sales number" It has become a physical record or music service again, reaching a certain ecological balance.
However, this fragile balance is easily broken. Behind this "distorted" supply chain,
is not only the economic pursuit of merchants and the display of fans, but also many hidden dangers in the industry. In September last year, Music Foreword once published an article entitled "Meng Meiqi data station thunder, who else was injured besides fans?" "The article mentioned that fans purchased a large number of illegal music coins from third-party platforms in order to sell idol’s digital albums, which caused QQ Music to cause a large area of bad debts.
The essence of the incident was that fans blindly pursued "maximization of sales" and made the choice of buying illegal digital currencies in order to save costs, which led to a large amount of profit from third-party cyber-production. In this case, both the platform and the fans have been hurt to varying degrees. The behavior of
fans to "generate power for love" is reasonable, but with the development of the Internet, such behavior as selling sales has intensified, but when the original rules of the market are broken, there will be links in the supply chain that break the fairness of transactions. Eventually backlash all parties.
Conclusion
At the moment when the fan economy is sought after by all parties, we have witnessed the action of fans in "competing for idols", and we are also aware of the irrationality in the process of chasing stars.
When albums, magazines and other entities have become numbers, they are hoarded at home or in virtual accounts. The alliance between consumerism and fan culture makes this vanity fair even more grandiose, but there is actually no problem.
But don't forget that the fan economy is no different from other products. If you just blindly harvest fans, you will eventually catch up.
Typesetting | An Lin
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