The Hanteo Chart, which shows physical album sales for various artists, is arguably the most important chart for Korean artists. This platform collects data from over a thousand retail outlets globally that sell an artist’s album and uses this data to compile a chart that shows the sales performance of the said album. This is why fans and artists are always keen on the recorded sales data from this platform whenever there is a new release.
Jimin released his solo debut album ‘FACE‘ on March 24, and being a member of what can be termed as the most popular and influential boy group in the world currently, as well as considering his widespread global popularity, all eyes were on this chart to see how his first solo album performs. Fans had been giving their all to support the album all through the pre-sale period that lasted about a month, making sure to get a copy of this much-awaited album.
All was going well upon the release of the album until something unexpected happened, which has caused significant dissatisfaction from fans.
The Hanteo chart updated sales smoothly for a while from 1PM KST when the album was officially released and up until just over 5 hours from the time of release, when the sales figure surged past a million copies, making Jimin highest selling soloist and the first and only artist to sell over 1Million copies, on the first day on Hanteo history.
Then suddenly, the sales number stopped showing any movement, and the chart appeared to have been frozen in the app version. This situation went on for over 3 hours, during which time it could be seen that the sales were being deleted and added every now and then. On the contrary, the web version that shows the hourly sales increase showed clearly that Jimin had now accumulated almost double the sales figure being shown on the app. What was even more strange is that this issue seemed to be affecting only Jimin’s sales numbers but not other artists on the same chart.
Understandably, the platform started to receive a large volume of queries regarding their chart. They issued a statement refuting any anomalies on the charts and went as far as hiding the real-time sales data on the website, which angered the fans even more.
However, many of the fans who had been keeping a close eye on the sales data progress on the chart had already taken image and video proof that showed clearly that there was a glitch in the system, showing the sales being deleted and added and deleted again, and also the significant discrepancy in figures between the website and the app.
When the backlash heightened, Hanteo released another statement saying they would survey the sales, only to bring back the real-time sales data with over 700k sales deleted from what had been showing previously!
The angry fans have now taken to Twitter to vent their outrage over the openly unjust system, and HANTEO CORRUPT has started to trend Worldwide on Twitter. They are calling out the unfair practice by the platform and calling on HYBE and media outlets to look into the matter and reveal the real sales for Jimin’s album on it’s first day.
Fans are convinced that Hanteo is intentionally manipulating the sales data to sabotage Jimin’s solo debut, and they have resolved not to let it slide especially since most of them feel disrespected over their hard earned money that they saved up to be able to buy Jimin’s album.
Order Jimin’s VOGUE Korea Magazine here.
