Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
The six charts that count for Gaon (Melon, Naver, Bugs, Genie, Soribada, Mnet) have announced changes to the real-time charts designed to combat sajaegi.
BIG Change for Music Charts starts July 11
Melon, Genie, Mnet, Bugs, Naver, and Soribada will all "freeze" realtime charts at 1am KST and "unfreeze" at 7am – No changes will be recorded during time
This is basically to combat zombie streamershttps://t.co/LALAqulPd4 pic.twitter.com/1WYxjagmuN
— mes #TeamPinky (@OH_mes) July 9, 2018
Bit more on the realtime chart changes.
For Melon, chart will update @ 1am using 12-12:59 data
The next update is at 7am, using 6-6:59 dataAlso unavailable during 1-7 am is the 5 minute chart
All data from 1-7 will still be recorded. Daily/Weekly/Monthly no change pic.twitter.com/6urLz8y4h2
— mes #TeamPinky (@OH_mes) July 9, 2018
It's pretty safe to assume that this will be put into place for each of the 6 music streaming sites (minus the 5 minute chart part since I think only Melon uses that)https://t.co/sviiEdOBxj
— mes #TeamPinky (@OH_mes) July 9, 2018
This move effectively prevents fandoms from streaming during “zombie hours” to get their faves to chart late at night, which should prevent companies from being able to media play with that stuff. However, they seem to believe (or are pretending to) this will stop fandoms and sajaegi, but I’m extremely skeptical about that. Since all the data still counts, people still have incentive to stream during the hours the chart doesn’t update.
The only option to truly disincentivize people from “zombie streaming” is to ditch the real-time charts altogether, and one could extend that to also ditching at least the daily charts if not the weekly charts as well. That may be enough to get many people to not bother with streaming projects because the validation of their work wouldn’t be seen for a while.
Of course, that’s assuming these services actually care about accurately reflecting what the public listens to. More likely is that they just want to appear as if they care until the sajaegi mess dies down, and they don’t really care enough to take difference-making measures because the fight over recognition by the charts inevitably drives their business.
