Netizens Call For Investigations To Be Launched Against All HYBE Groups After Explosive Chart Manipulation Accusation
During the first day of court between HYBE and ADOR‘s Min Hee Jin, she made a shocking accusation. Min Hee Jin claims that she had refused HYBE’s suggestion to bulk buy NewJeans’ albums, sparking conflict between them. She named a new method chart manipulation that HYBE had been using to bypass the illegal nature of pure sajaegi. Calling it “advance buying,” it was alleged that HYBE would buy up albums in bulk from retailers to help boost the first-week sales numbers. They would later refund these to the retailers but strike deals for fan signs with the retailers, leading the stock to be used up. This is because fan signs are a method to sell many albums, but they usually only come in later during the promotional cycle, rendering it useless to boost first-week sales numbers. First-week sales numbers are important in the artists’ image as a popular group.
Regarding the new information, netizens have been calling for investigations to be launched against HYBE and all the groups against them. Partially, this is as Min Hee Jin suggested that HYBE would have also issued similar suggestions to other groups, seeing as they had wanted her to conduct it for NewJeans as well.
- Sigh LOL. Of course they would.
- This company is full of sh*t about everything, from streams to albums.
- No, but how is “advance buying” not illegal.
- If they made deals with refunds as a clause, then it’s sajaegi for sure.
- Are there groups with million album sales during first-week at HYBE even? They’re really doing everything, huh. But advance buying is also sajaegi, so stop playing around with words LOL. So you’re saying that because they’ll eventually sell it, even a year later, it’s ok to include it in first-week sales? LOL.
- They shouldn’t have touched ADOR, all their missteps are all getting revealed. Ugh, bound for ruin.
- Finally LOL. Please investigate them. You said you’re a conglomerate LOL.
- Just how much more of HYBE’s crimes will get revealed?
Others argue that even though they tried to make it sound better by using “advance buying,” it still counts as sajaegi. The term sajaegi was originally used to refer to chart manipulation using multiple methods. It was argued that as the albums were refunded, it could not be considered pure sajaegi.
- For album sajaegi, they only count the receipts, so it doesn’t matter if people refund it later or not. Just match up the numbers on the books and it’ll count.
- I think other companies should be investigated too. It’s not just HYBE, but everyone is so suspicious.
- Wow…
- I thought things were really weird.
- Reveal it all LOL.
- Advance buying is also sajaegi. LOL. It’s just that HYBE’s methods are worse, but it’s still sajaegi LOL.
- They tried to make it sound better by using “advance buying” but it’s a fact that it is still unjust.
What do you think?
