Hi, everyone, as a kpop stan, I like to try to understand evolutions, if what’s said is true, etc… I use stats as a way to try to decipher things and go beyond what the first look. I know it doesn’t give you the truth just some infos and a partial look to the reality but I find it really interesting.
Around two years ago, I published a first post on this topic, but I wanted to see how the numbers have changed in those two years and to add the earliest group of 5th gen to the stats (groups from 2023/2024 or those that have at least 5 albums).
Before my conclusions a few disclaimers :
- I don’t know everything so some informations may be wrong,
- I don’t read korean so I had to rely on a few english sites or the english version of korean sites to get the numbers. I
- I only studied the 4/6 biggest groups per generation according to sales (It’s already more than 20 groups).
- I also haven’t add the 2026 sales in the yearly stats because the year is not over yet. Also I only studied sales of korean album based on the Hanteo and Circle Charts.
- I know that albums sales are affected by the number of albums version, PC collectors and the fanmeets raffle. It’s not a perfect success indicator but one that’s still interesting to study.
Here are my sources : koreansales, hanteo chart, kpopping and circle chart.
Those are the groups that I studied :
- 1st Gen : Seo Taiji and Boys, H.O.T, Sechs Kies, Shinhwa and g.o.d
- 2nd Gen : BigBang, Shinee, TVXQ and Super Junior
- 3rd Gen : BTS, Seventeen, Monsta X, EXO, GOT7 and NCT, NCT 127, NCT Dream
- 4th Gen : Stray Kids, Ateez, The Boyz, TXT, Enhypen and Treasure
- 5th Gen : Plave, Xikers, BoyNextDoor, Zerobaseone, Riize, TWS and NEXZ
If you are courageous or curious here is the links to the full stats : Link Stats
And here are some conclusion (the numbers may have change as I rectified some errors and change methods) :
- Top 3 biggest group according to sales number : Seventeen (42.9M), BTS (41.1M) an Stray Kids (33.8M)
- Biggest group in each generation : 1st Gen Seo Taiji and Boys (8M) and H.O.T (6.6M), 2nd Gen Super Junior (5.4M) and Shinee (3.5M), 3rd Gen Seventeen (42.9M) and BTS (41.1M), 4th Gen Stray Kids (33.8M) and TXT (21.1M), 5th Gen Zerobaseone (9.8M), BoyNextDoor (7M) and Riize (6.9M)
- Top 3 best selling album (in the first month) : Seventeenth Heaven (Seventeen 5.3M), 5 Star (SKZ 5.2M) Arirang (BTS 4.7M)
- Top 3 debut album sales (within the groups studied): Zerobaseone (1.8M), Riize (1.4M), Enhypen (318k)
- Quickest group to reach 1M album sales Zerobaseone and Riize (at debut), Enhypen (11 months), g.o.d (22 months)
- Quickest group to have their 1st music show win TXT and Zerobaseone (8 days), TWS (23 days), TVXQ (93 days)
- Slowest group to have their 1st music show win Shinhwa (1361 days / 3.6 years) Monsta X (915 days /2.5 years) H.O.T (771 days / 2.1 years) NEXZ (712 days / 1.9 years)
In general 3rd, 4th generation groups outsales 2nd generation groups (none of 2nd gen groups ever sold 500k album). 4th and even more 5th generation groups have a quicker growth in general than previous generations. 1st generation doesn’t work with this dynamics as some of the group sold multiples 1M albums. However as they were the 1st Kpop group they had very little competition.
3rd gen groups seems to have a post military enlistment pic of sales when the full group come back. Both BTS and Monsta X 1st post military album is their highest selling album.
4th gen groups have a really similar growth profile with two clear pick in sales : 2023 for Stray Kids, TXT and Treasure, and 2024 for Enhypen and Ateez.
5th gen have it’s own dynamic with some with high level of sales since debut but with slower growth (Zerobaseone) and other having a more classical growth even if they still have higher debut sales than previous generations (Plave, BoyNextDoor). Riize being a mix of both (same debut sales level as Zerobaseone and high growth like BoyNextDoor). It must said that both Zerobaseone and Riize had automatic pre-debut fandom (survival show and former NCT members respectively) that can explain the high level of sales on debut.
Being from a Big 4 Agency is not a assurance to a quick success : GOT7 and SKZ had a progressive growth with small sales in the beginning, new JYPE group NEXZ seems to follow the same dynamic. In the most generation there are successful groups are from smaller agencies : g.o.d (sidus H.Q), Seventeen (Pledis), Ateez (KQ), The Boyz (IST), Plave (VLAST).
I hope you’ll find all this as interesting as I did.
If you have any question, post it in the comments and I’ll try to answer as quickly as possible.
DoC ^.^
submitted by /u/Daughter_of_Calliope
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