The music industry has always been a hotbed of controversy, especially regarding how artists are ranked and recognized for their work. Recently, the Billboard charts have come under fire from BTS fans, who are demanding more transparency in how the charts are calculated.
BTS has been breaking records and setting new achievements over the years, becoming a global sensation. After the group activities’ hiatus announcement, the members have been venturing out on their solo promotions and have been reaping great success.
One of the group’s latest achievements was set by Jimin after his solo track “Like Crazy” debuted at #1 on Billboard’s HOT100. Fans celebrated this significant milestone with the artist thanking them for this record. Unfortunately, this celebration was short-lived when the song took a plunge in the second week of its release.
Jimin’s track “Like Crazy” fell to rank #45, which is a whopping drop of 44 spots, the biggest drop for a #1 song in the HOT100’s chart history. This was due to Billboard changing its policy in tallying the points for the ranking. Fans quickly noticed that 100,000 sales seemed to have been unaccounted for and that Billboard changed some of its rules without announcing it.
Fans are criticizing that Billboard only changed its policy to be disadvantageous to K-pop artists who are able to rank high on Billboard thanks to their high sales and not the number of radio plays or streams.
Over the past few weeks, fans trended hashtags including #BillboardCorrupt, #BillboardRacist, and #BillboardXenophobic to express their anger against the music chart and demanded transparency.
BTS fans are not the only ones who took notice of this unfair change. On April 17, Post Malone‘s father also expressed his disappointment and showed support for Jimin.
After Post Malone’s father publicly expressed his admiration for Jimin from BTS, many of Jimin’s fans took to social media to express their gratitude for his support.