Recently, a post on the online community Pann Nate with more than 90 thousand views pointed out the abnormality in the album sales of Kpop girl group ILLIT (Yunah, Minju, Moka, Wonhee, Iroha).
Previously, in October 2024, Circle Chart's monthly album sales chart reported that ILLIT's second mini album "I'll Like You" sold a total of 504,363 copies in the month of its release.
On November 27, 2024, management company Belift Lab (under HYBE Group) also reported that the mini album "I'll Like You" sold 582,333 copies (including the regular version and Weverse version), based on the Circle Chart as of October 2024.
According to the company, the album took just 10 days to reach “half a million copies” since its release on October 21, 2024.
But according to Circle Chart’s recently released annual album sales chart, “I’ll Like You” sold a total of 412,040 copies in 2024, down more than 92,000 copies from the sales shown in October 2024.
Audiences suspect that HYBE used the "pre-purchase" method to manipulate the group's album sales, a sales method that many consider a form of "fraud".
Using the "pre-buy" method, companies provide a certain number of albums to distributors with the condition that they can "return" the inventory if the albums are not sold out.
This method allows distributors to import more albums than they need, thereby increasing the number of albums sold in the first week, even if those albums are not actually sold to customers.
In the K-pop industry, first-week album sales are always a notable achievement, an important factor in evaluating the success of a music product and the popularity of an artist. Therefore, groups seem to be in a "race" to achieve the best first-week album sales.
Korean audiences expressed disappointment because many HYBE Group groups were suspected of manipulating album sales.
