The Western music industry is afraid of BTS and ARMY
The tag line here prompts me to “tell my story” but this isn’t really my story to tell. Or my story at all, for that matter. But I, too, am a part of it.
See, the thing is — I don’t have a CD/DVD player. My laptop doesn’t have a slot for it, the actual CD player I own is roughly two decades old. But in the last 6 months alone I’ve purchased 3 physical albums. They look stunning on my shelf, along with multiple books, some even the same book multiple times because I so happened to stumble upon them each time and the message in my head flashed neon “must buy”.
Don’t get me started on DVDs. This will never end.
So why is it that the topic of fans purchasing music — physical or digital — has yet again made its way to the forefront?
Fangirls, the dismissal and the rest
I can do a little bit of research on all the paraphernalia regarding football teams but I won’t . For me, it was normal. You like something to the point where you want to exchange your hard earned money for it. I’m sure if you’re reading this, there’s gotta be something in your house that falls into that category.
But when you are an artist and your fans consist — according to the world — predominantly of young females, then your fans are placed in the rabid fangirl category that will purchase anything that has her “faves” face on it. Any success in sales is automatically either dismissed or credited to them due to this reason. Thus, making practices such as buying music a cult-like behavior that fangirls engage in out of sheer adoration.
I’m not gonna bore you with numbers and statistics to back up the fact that BTS fans are not just young females who are just as valid in their content consumption as an adult male that walks around with a dude’s name on the back of his shirt — but I am going to share that, given the sold out stadium tours world wide, sold out cars, flip phones, expensive jewelry and tea, their insane social media reach and the vastly growing list of celebrities of all age, ethnicity and sexual orientation, it is beyond time to retire the notion.
More fans = more consumption.
The way we consume music has changed in the age of streaming but albums remain a token of that. It’s the same way vinyl exploded a few years ago — when the population of people who actually owned a record player were far lower. Yet, people were into them, still are, so much so that they would suddenly purchase record players again.
I asked around in case anyone in my family had one stored somewhere and I got the same puzzled looks, why would you want that?
Why not?
Why would anyone not be allowed to enjoy and consume content in whichever way they saw fit?
One Hit Wonder, Not
Back in 2019 BTS announced a short vacation period and the western industry didn’t waste a minute to publish article after article after article about the group going on a hiatus that would eventually lead to a disbandment and thus it was time — and finally an opening to launch the western BTS and revive the “boy band” brand that had since died out.
Obviously the opposite happened with BTS dropping their most successful album yet, Map of the Soul: 7. And, with a recent collaboration featuring Megan Thee Stallion, BTS broke yet another Spotify record despite the group’s consistently high streaming filtering rate.
There’s always a backhanded comment on social media about ARMY and how they are massive and this and that and the other.. while in reality — those numbers don’t even begin to scratch the surface. But the main takeaway is that the number of fans has been steadily growing over the last 8 years of their career. They didn’t just happen to explode overnight. Yet despite doing impressive numbers, their most recent songs show nearly 50% filtering rate by Spotify.
Albums are underrated.
Now, as I mentioned before, I don’t own a CD player of any kind. So technically purchasing an album goes beyond me just wanting to enjoy a track list. Back in the days, as soon as an album was released you had to purchase it to actually listen to it or rely on radio play. And then YouTube came along. And then streaming services came along. So the notion of purchasing physical albums no longer exists; sales have gone down as a result.
But, albums are more than just their track list. It evolved from a hard plastic case that contained at most a single leaflet, to an entire box of stuff. From photoshoot pictures, to photocards, to messages etc. It’s — ironically — the whole package, and it is a token of your favorite songs.
Who wouldn’t want to own that?
The question shouldn’t really be, why are BTS fans still purchasing albums — the question should be, why aren’t more people supporting their favorite artists in the most tangible way possible?
Naturally, when a group of people spread out around the globe decide they want to support their favorite artist by purchasing music — while also streaming and breaking YouTube records again and again— this behavior is met with apprehension to say the least.
More fans = more consumption = more sales.
Chart manipulation
BTS fans have been accused of this one too many times and if — according to music and entertainment magazines in the US that waste their interview time with such things — troll accounts under chart data Tweets are to be believed, it’s all bot behavior and paid streams etc. Because that’s what the industry is resulting to; troll accounts that get off on the rage and they just copy paste the same 5 worded tweets over and over again, in order to justify starting this conversation but not really willing to go deeper and actually get to the heart of the problem and admit that chart manipulation has been happening for decades and the system is flawed.
See the thing is, no music and entertainment magazine that wants to have an artist back on their publication would bring attention to such behavior while interviewing them. Assuming of course that an interview like this would receive severe backlash from fans, other artists and the general public. But it’s no hidden fact that the western music industry hates BTS, they’ve been very loud about this fact way too many times while also trying to make money off of them and the power their fanbase holds. It’s the perfect recipe; any outrage is credited to rabid fangirls that cannot take criticism because “they’re young and naïve” while also having huge engagement numbers that profit them. And if said article comes with — ironically — a bundle of more than half a dozen magazines, that’s extra $$$.
The message here is, purchasing multiple copies of the same thing is chart manipulation but please do buy this lovely bundle that has your faves on it.
This behavior is like clockwork. BTS will release a song, it will smash their previously established records and soon after journalists will start talking about charts and how they are no longer reflecting what is actually popular etc. But no one is ever willing to talk about what has actually been normalized in the industry.
We’ve seen it all, really. Artists promoting their newly released music by asking fans to drop their cashapp names, albums included in merchandise and ticket sales.. and that has been a widely accepted practice in order to get that #1 but apparently the line is drawn when the fans simply want to purchase music on their own.
Radio play is nonexistent for BTS and we all know why.
In order for the industry to call them out on it, they need to first acknowledge the flaws in it and call out all “manipulative” behavior. It’s their rules we’re playing by, after all. One thing is clear and don’t get it twisted; no matter how many rules they change and how many clauses they try to enforce, ARMY will come on top. And that scares an entire industry.
