A year ago, Starship clearly planned KiiiKiii’s launch strategically, positioning them as rivals to SM’s new girl group in Hearts2Hearts. They got a lot of publicity through media play, were branded as IVE’s successor, and even released their first music on the same day as their rival group. H2H dropped The Chase while KiiiKiii released their prerelease, I Do Me. With all the attention they were getting early on, I Do Me performed pretty well, and a lot of fans were hyping KiiiKiii as a group.
A month later, they released their debut EP and sold 201k albums in the first week. That is a very impressive milestone for any rookie group and is comparable to Big4 debuts. However, their promoted track BTG did not perform nearly as well as the prerelease, and their following comeback with Dancing Alone was also not received well.
Fast forward to now. KiiiKiii released their second EP a week ago, and interestingly, the TT is performing much better than their previous releases. What is shocking though, is that according to Hanteo, they only sold 41k albums in the first week. That is a MAJOR drop from 201k to 41k from their rookie year to their sophomore year. A decline this steep is almost unheard of. Typically, rookie groups see an increase in sales from their first year to their second, even for nugu groups.
So the question is, where did all their “fans” go? I understand that debut-era fans are often less committed since there is limited information about the group early on, but a drop off to this extent is extreme. Other 5th gen groups have been trending upward. Rescene recently hit a career high 104k in sales, and SAY MY NAME reached a very impressive 160k. Even Hearts2Hearts, who already started with massive sales at 408k, still saw a minimal increase with the FOCUS EP at 425k.
So what happened with KiiiKiii? Is it a lack of group charm? Is the music simply not appealing enough to kpop fans? Or did the udon noodles controversy have a significant negative impact domestically? Searches like “KiiiKiii Haum” and “KiiiKiii udon noodles” still rank highly when you look them up, and it is almost impossible to avoid comments about the controversy under any KiiiKiii-related video.
I’m genuinely confused as to why so many fans left them this quickly.
submitted by /u/exemplaryantino3497
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