We’re about 2 years into 5th gen, and the new boy groups have found their footing and built large fandoms. Here’s a look at the numbers for these groups to see what the shape of the boy group space will be like for this cohort. I took album sales numbers from the Circle Chart. One key distinction for 5th gen boy groups is that they’ve been able to chart songs better than 4th gen boy groups, so I looked at the Melon Weekly chart top 100 for that.
From those numbers, there’s a clear top 5 groups that are distinctly bigger than the rest: two SM groups (Riize and NCT Wish), two HYBE groups (BoyNextDoor and TWS), and Zerobaseone from Boys Planet/under WakeOne. All of these except for TWS have albums that sold 1 million+ copies, and all of them except for ZB1 have songs that charted on the top 100 of the melon weekly chart that were released this year (though ZB1 did chart with their debut song). I left out Plave because I think they’re in a different category, but if you included them they would also be at the top.
Riize
Most recent album sales: Odyssey, 1.9 M, May 2025
Highest charting song released this year: ‘Fly Up’, #24, week of May 19
NCT Wish
Most recent album sales: Poppop, 1.2 M, April 2025
Highest charting song released this year: ‘Poppop’, #93, week of April 21
BoyNextDoor
Most recent album sales: No Genre, 1.3 M, May 2025
Highest charting song released this year: ‘If I Say, I Love You’, #7, week of Feb 10
TWS
Most recent album sales: Try With Us, 0.6 M, April 2025
Highest charting song released this year: ‘Countdown’, #77, week of May 12
Zerobaseone
Most recent album sales: Blue Paradise, 1.3 M, Feb 2025
Highest charting song released this year: N/A
Notes on other groups:
- Evnne, Xikers, and N.SSign would be the clear next tier, they have consistently sold ~200k copies for successive albums.
- KickFlip (under JYP) and Close Your Eyes (from the survival show Project 7) both just debuted this year and sold ~300k copies of their debut album, setting themselves up to potentially grow into the top tier. Stray Kids took a while to become as big as they are today, so that could be the case for KickFlip as well.
- Upcoming groups that will likely be big include planned new boy groups from BigHit (HYBE), SM, and YG, as well as the resulting group from Boys Planet 2. HYBE and SM launching new boy groups could potentially make them very dominant over this space. Will MNET/WakeOne be able to do as well with BP2 as BP1, and launch a successful new group to keep them going once ZB1’s contract runs out?
- Speaking of that, whatever follow up groups emerge ZB1 and Evnne will also likely be big.
Finally, I wanted to end with a note that this post is numbers-focused because I find it interesting how different tiers of groups develop. However, numbers are not the be-all and end-all, and there are lots of great groups not mentioned here who are successful at their own level.
Any thoughts — are there groups within these tiers that I’ve missed? What are the prospects for 5th gen boy groups continuing to chart songs? Which group do you think has the best chance to join the top tier?
submitted by /u/shorterpulse
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