Suspects of "sajaegi" have been leveled at SM Entertainment's rookie boy group RIIZE, one of two K-Pop acts that made their debut in 2023 and sold one million copies of their first album together with ZEROBASEONE.
Prior to this, in September 2023, RIIZE's first single album, "Get A Guitar," achieved sales of about 1,016,8xx copies in its first week of release, earning the title of "Million-Selling" album.
As per the September 2023 Circle list monthly album sales list, 'Get A Guitar' had sold 1,039,600 copies by the end of that month.
Nonetheless, as per the monthly Circle Chart for December, which furthermore displays the yearlong sales of each album, internet users have seen that the sales of RIIZE's 'Get A Guitar' have actually declined since September. 'Get A Guitar' had sold 1,038,084 copies overall as of the December count.
The fact that RIIZE had hosted more than 60 events since their debut that required album purchases in order to receive exclusive rights or benefits—like in-person fan calls and signs—and lucky draw events didn't make sense to online users.
Fans had to buy RIIZE's debut single album, "Get A Guitar," in order to attend any of these events, including ones that were announced after the artist had finished promoting "Get A Guitar" and released new songs like "Talk Saxy" and "Love 119."
Despite this, the activities were having the opposite effect of increasing RIIZE's annual album sales record—rather than decreasing them.
K-Pop musicians and their record labels, working with record distributors, frequently "place orders of albums in advance" with specific occasions in mind. This practice is neither uncommon nor unlawful. The albums themselves may not be physically distributed until a later time, but this allows record distributors and sellers to order more inventory than they would normally anticipate selling, to advertise in advance fan signings or lucky draw events, and to have fans buy in bulk during the first week (or first few weeks) of an album's release.
When K-Pop musicians do this, though, they usually make sure to "fill the quota" before concluding the album's promotion. They accomplish this by planning the required number of special events and making sure that the CDs that are ordered and sold "in advance" fairly represent the real sales figures.
However, in the instance of RIIZE, online users observed multiple issues: First, the boy band "failed to fill the quota" that they had hoped to reach, which caused the Circle Chart to record a decline in overall album sales; Second, the group started promoting new songs and held events in line with those promotions, but with the old album "Get A Guitar"; and Third, the group boasted that they were "Million-Sellers," despite the fact that it is hard to prove that they would have sold a million copies of their debut album in first-week sales
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