SQ 1: Chart & Popularity

What is the genuine ranking chart?

A star is born every time but sources to ramp up its popularity and keep it long lasting is originated from fans. Fans normally get satisfied with the fact that their star is still in the mainstream with huge popularity so that they do not stop loving the star but try to do more for them. In other words, stars are their spoke person being a representative to claim what fans want from the world by its performance, dance, and singing songs. Fans also get vicarious satisfaction through what stars do, thus, fans do anything if they can keep the stars still in the air.

Fans and stars are so intimate. They need each other.

That became the point that some snobbish vicious enterprises start to make a paid ranking service, which is not for a contribution to a genuine star ranking, but for their profits because they know that fans are willingly ready to pay for their stars.   

ATTRIBUTES OF A POPULARITY INDICATOR AND ITS LIMIT

BILLBOARD

Naturally, not all ranking services are like that. There are still authoritative ranking services such as Billboard from the U.S. Now I mentioned Billboard, let us talk more about it. In Billboard, there are loads of charts that have each different rules for determining rankings. For example, for Billboard Social 50, these followings below are the key activities that fans must do to raise their stars to the upper side in the chart. Here is how. Twitter; how many followers, how many mentions, how many RTs(retweet), Youtube; how many subscriptions, view the clip to the end, how many like, how many shares, Facebook; how many like the page, how many like the posting, how many comments, how many shares and Instagram has quite the same rules, moreover, a number of searches in Wikipedia are a plus.

Can you see it? A totally new era already has come, and it is wholly different from the old school simply calculating the number of album sales and the number of airplay on the radio to get ranked in the chart.

Billboard chart is still the No.1 ranking chart for pop music.

However, there is also a limit to the Billboard chart. As Billboard chart only reflects the popularity of stars in mainland of the U.S. and the power of mainstreams in the Music industry of the U.S. is invincible, it seems literally impossible to even just enter into the chart. Additionally, it is hard to ignore that the criterion of a chart aggregation for stars forms mainly based on American services: so, it is simply biased. As a number of airplay, a number of music downloads in both internet & on-demand, a number of views on Youtube, and so forth are main factors of the chart aggregation for building a Billboard chart, we can say that music consumption in the U.S. is still extremely important to get ranked in.

YOUTUBE

In the era of 2010s, Youtube has become a new yardstick of popularity. Especially, for a newly released music video of a new song, a number of views they made in a few days becomes an indicator of their true popularity in real time, and unlike with other ranking services, youtube views are accumulated overtimes, which shows how powerful the star's popularity is in a long term view.

Youtube's pop star ranking by cumulative views.

Though it is a new criterion in a new era, Youtube also has a blind spot in its service when it comes to accuracy. First, a country with a 1.4B population which is over 1/5 of all population on Earth, China, has no official Youtube connection on internet, thus, no matter how powerful Youtube is, it does not mirror the response of Chine on any star on Youtube, thus, it is hard to say it is a genuinely objective index for the popularity of stars globally. Moreover, it is also hard to say that it is free from an influence of a huge fandom because a number of views, subscribers, and likes are key basic factors deciding the rankings on Youtube on which big fandoms can easily do something for their stars.

STAR VOTING & AWARDS

Recently, a star's popularity ranking service springs up everywhere that fans directly can vote for their own stars, and most of all, 'Choiaedol', a Korean star ranking service, is the most successful one among those. In order to vote for their star, fans need 'a heart' which is virtual point being used in the service to vote for stars. To get Hearts, fans need to do various activities in SNS such as uploading articles and images about stars, getting a link on their own SNS, and so on. Above all, the easiest way to get Hearts is to buy Hearts.

Star ranking service by Heart voting

By the way, a problem arises in this system recently. Choiaedol is in association with 'Gaon Chart' awarding Popularity Award in Gaon Chart Music Award to a star who is given the most Hearts from Choiaedol's star ranking, but, all of sudden, without any notification, Gaon Chart has abolished Popularity Award from this year with a reason for them to look for a meaningful way of awarding Popularity Award. Because of this, all the endeavors of loads of fans both spending huge times on the activities to get Hearts and buying Hearts to get their star awarded for the whole year has become useless overnight, thus, the fans have heavily complained about their decision. This showed immature management of the star ranking service clearly revealed its limit.

Not only Choiaedol and Gaon Chart but also other Kpop star related services such as Melon, Genie; a music streaming service have same problems as though adopting a paid voting service to get more voting authorities on stars. It shows the star ranking services in the current markets are cleverly using fans' sincere heart to stars, and marks they are losing star ranking's clarity and objectivity.

Fans left a lot of complaints on the sudden notice of Popularity Award Termination.

Furthermore, in Seoul Music Awards, even a paid voting service is added as well as fans needed to watch specific ads in the service, but the problem was some of those were adult ads while the most of audiences were in their 10s. This shortage of ethicality and a sense of responsibility regarding the service led to a boycott of using it.

WEEKLY KPOP CHART

A weekly KPOP chart in every broadcasting stations is not that different from above as well. They also follow the way that other ranking chart services do. Normally, before they make a ranking chart of a week, they reflect these factors to the chart such as 50% for an amount of music streaming usage, 10% for the album sales, 10% for a number of video clip views, 15% for social activities, and text message voting, number of airplay for the rest, and then, a new weekly ranking chart is being created mirroring above.

A ranking chart being created weekly does not mean it is clearly objective.

Votings being operated in a broadcasting station basically requires fairness, fans are free from a paid service so that relatively there is no big competition between fandoms based on each of their financial power. However, intensively streaming music, heavily buying up albums, and increasing the number of music video views done by fandoms have resulted in a harmful effect that influences the clarity of the star rankings.

A GENUINE STAR POPULARITY INDEX MIRRORING THE PUBLIC?

Well, can we still say that the ranking chart being created weekly, monthly, and yearly reflect all interest of the public? A huge fandom exercising its enormous power is also one of the ways to express its passion to their stars, thus, no one can say that it is wrong, but having a huge fandom does not mean that the star is loved by everyone.

Still wondering what is the clear way to wholly mirror the interest of the public and to make a yardstick that everyone admits. This fundamental worry has been our mission to fulfill for a long time. Therefore, next time, we are going to explain the genuine star popularity index reflecting the interest of the public that we have been working on.

<Images References>

Main and fans Image: https://unsplash.com

Billboard image: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJttFQlz6Mc

Youtube ranking Image: https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/07/12/the-top-10-most-played-music-videos-on-youtube-infographic/#5db585be2e75

Chioaedol & Gaon Chart Image: http://star.ohmynews.com/NWS_Web/OhmyStar/at_pg.aspx?CNTN_CD=A0002493553

Ingigayo Image: https://twitter.com/sonagi_archive/status/990147375837556738