Korean Music Charts - October 2007

Back when I started this blog, I included the Music Industry Association of Korea's month music sales chart as part of my regular comments, but after a few months I stopped. It was just too depressing. Sales were miserable and the quality of music in the charts was even more miserable. I did not want to spend all my time complaining and being negative, so I decided not to write about it.

But I found myself curious about how the music biz has been doing this year, so I checked out the latest MIAK charts.

The most immediate thing I noticed is that only one album released in 2007 has sold over 100,000 albums. Pretty shocking, really, considering just a few years ago top stars would move 1 or 2 million. But these days, SG Wannabe can become the biggest selling artist of the year with just 190,000 albums sold.

The second thing I noticed was the dominance of ballads in October. The top five albums are all ballad oriented!

It also looks like that brute-force marketing is less and less useful. Super Junior's latest has already fallen to 11th, after being released on Sept. 20. Wondergirls have dropped all the way to 17th, and have sold just 18,000 copies of their first album since it was released on Sept. 13. TELL ME might be catchy and might even be a hit at the karaoke rooms, but Wondergirl fans are not buying CDs at all.

Other notes:

Lee Sang-eun's 13th album made its debut in 25th.

Hey, Shim Soo-bong has a new album! It's her 11th, and it hit the stores on Oct. 25. Not so many Shim fans left apparently, as it opened in 34th. Not that time or that person anymore, I guess.

With foreign music selling so miserably, classical music is growing ever bigger, at least on a proportional basis.

Even Paul Potts (the musical equivalent of the Nixon-Kennedy debate) is selling in Korea. And Andrea Bocelli. I'm not sure whose success I find more distressing. Do yourself a favor -- check out their stories on Wikipedia or Youtube or wherever, cry, emote do whatever you feel compelled to do. Then head directly to a music store and completely IGNORE their CDs. Buy something by Jussi Bjorling instead. Your ears will thank you.

This Month	Artist	Album Name	Release Date	This Month's Sales	Total Sales
1.	Eru	Vol. 3 - Eru Returns	9.19	30,978	42,228
2.	Brown-Eyed Soul	Vol 2	10.31	30,095	30,095
3.	FT Island	FT Island	6.08	28,746	76,097
4.	See Ya	Vol. 2	5.25	27,807	81,393
5.	SG Wannabe	Vol. 4	4.06	19,050	190,125
6.	Jo PD	Vol. 6	10.22	17,364	17,364
7.	Cho Shin-seong	Vol. 1	10.25	15,405	15,405
8.	Lee Soo-young	Vol. 8 - Set It Down	9.12	15,027	51,035
9.	Lee Seung-chul	Vol. 9 - The Secret of Color 2	10.18	14,604	14,604
10.	Taewangsasingi OST	Taewangsasingi OST	10.17	13,841	13,841

(source: MIAK)

And here is the foreign sales chart:

This Month	Artist	Album Name	Release Date	This Month's Sales	Total Sales
1.	Once OST	Once OST	8.14	12,160	13,138
2.	BoA	Complete Clips 2004-2006	3.21	12,000	13,258
3.	Richard Yongjae O'Neill	Winter Journey	9.11	9,968	9,968
4.	Luciano Pavarotti	Pavarotti Forever	9.20	3,730	5,606
5.	Orchestra de Nodame	Orchestra de Nodame Live	8.23	3,552	12,074
6.	Richard Yongjae O'Neill	Lachrymae	2006.9.07	3,222	30,703
7.	BoA	Love Letter	10.04	3,189	3,189
8.	Andrea Bocelli	Best of Andrea Bocelli	10.25	3,063	3,063
9.	Ennio Morricone	Gold Edition	10.02	2,445	2,445
10.	Paul Potts	One Chance	8.02	2,113	2,113

(source: MIAK)