SM Entertainment Accused Of Taking Away Red Velvet Irene’s Music Show Win

Fans feel as though the company has sabotaged Irene’s sales in favor of another artist.
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Koreaboo

Red Velvet Irene’s solo debut has been a commercial hit since its release last month, but one accolade “Like a Flower” has missed out on so far is a music show win — and fans say SM Entertainment is to blame.

irene like a flower teaser
| SM Entertainment

From the moment Irene’s debut mini album, Like a Flower, was released, it’s been racking up album sales achievements. In its first day alone, the record sold over 250,000 copies, achieving the seventh highest first-day sales for a female K-Pop soloist on the Hanteo chart. With just one day of tracking, Irene also recorded the highest first-week sales for an SM Entertainment female soloist.

irene like a flower melon
| Melon

Naturally, with such accomplishments in hand, fans had high expectations for Irene to become the first Red Velvet member to achieve a win on a music show. In particular, ReVeluvs worldwide went full force with their efforts on KBS’s Music Bank. After an intense period of voting, fans even managed to break the app All Chart’s record for the highest vote total of all time at 983,504, giving her the number one spot in the pre-vote.

irene like a flower inkigayo
| SBS

However, despite fans’ tireless efforts, when Music Bank aired on November 6, Irene was not nominated at all. Although she received the maximum score of 2,000 for the pre-vote, her final total was 5,768, putting her in third place on Music Bank’s ‘K-Chart.’

The reason? A discrepancy in her album sales, which fans are calling “sabotage.”

The root of the issue lies in the difference between the Hanteo chart and the chart Music Bank uses for its tally: Circle. In a nutshell, Hanteo counts retail sales, tracking albums purchased by customers both offline and online. Circle Chart, on the other hand, records the number of albums shipped to retailers, before they’re even sold to individual customers.

irene like a flower x
| @RVsmtown/X

As such, Circle Chart figures are usually higher than Hanteo, as they include stock that has been distributed to stores but not yet sold. However, in a shocking turn of events, Circle reported that Irene had only sold 164,802 copies across all versions by the end of the music show tracking week on Sunday — a striking difference from Hanteo’s figure of 288,911.

This meant that more than 120,000 sold albums were missing from Irene’s sales figures. In contrast, the two groups nominated for the win (WayV and TWS) had approximately 8,000 and 31,000 more sales on Circle than on Hanteo respectively. In the end, this meant that Irene was allocated just 914 points awarded for physical album sales on Music Bank.

music bank irene scores
| KBS World/YouTube

Had her Circle sales figure matched her Hanteo sales, Irene would have scored around 1,600 points in the physical sales category: enough to push her final points to over 6,400. This would have placed her above the eventual winner, WayV, whose total was 6,354 points, giving her the win.

music bank wayv tws scores
| KBS World/YouTube

Naturally, the gap between what could have been and what happened left fans furious at SM Entertainment. Across social media, ReVeluvs accused the company of failing to support Irene’s solo debut properly, or even intentionally sabotaging it.

Questions arose about why her Circle chart sale were so low, with theories ranging from delayed album shipments to errors in reporting figures. Many pointed out the stark contrast between Irene’s case and that of WayV, whose sales were accurately reflected on Circle despite both artists being under SM Entertainment with albums distributed by Kakao Entertainment.

Irene’s visible dedication to her debut only added to the heartbreak. The star had been working on the album for several months, including in the midst of the group’s Asia fan concert tour. In a recent vlog with fellow member Seulgi, fans also noticed dark bruises on Irene’s legs, making the agency’s lack of support even harder to accept.

Now, fans are calling for SM Entertainment to explain and apologize for what happened.

Irene’s China fanbase (IreneBar), whose members contributed hundreds of thousands of sales for Like a Flower, have also lodged threats against SM Entertainment. “If the company fails to provide a satisfactory response,” they announced on X, “we will request a full refund for all unreleased albums and will completely boycott all albums, activities, and merchandise purchases, except for Irene’s individual activities, in the future.”

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