The legitimacy of BTS’s success (and why it’s so hard to swallow?)
“하지만 방탄소년단이 진격한다면 어떨까?”
But what will happen if BangtanSonyeondan advances?
(cred: Doolset Lyrics)
And advance they did. Higher and higher, during an eight years career, achieving multiple accolades deemed as coveted markings of success for any musician. Slowly, but surely, they rose.
This is not a rare opening for an article about BTS, though it varies from many others in the way that the mentioning of their success is not followed by a loud and resonant: ‘but.’ It’s not about the word ‘but,’ per se, but the intention of only stating their success in order to follow it by a clause questioning the validity of it.
After the release of BTS’ “Dynamite,” last year, and their first number one on the Billboard Top 100, they followed with releases such as “Butter” which also achieved the marking of number one in the chart, and not only so, stayed at the top for seven weeks until being replaced at number one with “Permission to Dance,” which in turn was later replaced by an again rising “Butter.”
It’s unsurprising that as such, many people turned their eyes and attention to them in order to understand how they managed to reach such lengths in a very short span of time. The statement “BTS is successful, ‘but’[…]” might seem innocuous at first, a simple attempt at making sense of how they achieved such great success, an explanation.
But it has been long since it was only about learning why people love them and rather became about how the people who love them are cheating their way up to the top. “BTS is successful, but are they really?” is what has been made out of them, of us. As the spectacle of unmasking dirty tactics of fans of a group they believe that in any other context would ever achieve anything near, has taken precedence over treating the subjects of those articles and researches with ethics and humanity. It’s less about understanding and more about making poor attempts at exposing. But exposing what?
Since BTS’ first number one there had been many accusations of legitimacy. Claims of chart manipulation with no evidence whatsoever have been very convenient for people who had never before questioned the charts and only started doing so out of a rejection of BTS and everything they stand for. Because it’s hard to swallow success when it doesn’t come packaged in an industry-picked white celebrity who only speaks English and has very convenient industry contacts, but rather in a South Korean boy-band, backed by nothing other than a very loyal fanbase.
Because it’s not about BTS or ARMY, it’s about where they dared to enter and how they didn’t rely on insiders in order to do it. It’s about how they succeeded in a system specifically designed to benefit US industry-backed artists and people like them out.
BTS charts under the same rules as everyone else. Any rule changes in charting affecting BTS would affect everyone else and only make industry manipulation more visible. The ‘but’ is about scrutinizing BTS to distract from inside corruption.
Never did Billboard ask a Western artist about what they “think” about bundles or how they “feel” they benefit from playlisting and radio. Instead, aspects of charting criteria, which had been proven to be manipulated, are selectively picked and held against BTS as more accurate tellings of success, or rather, why they lack it. Radio play is held sacred as a pure measure of popularity when in fact, it’s overflowing in payola deals. Streaming numbers are worshiped as a true marking of popularity when in reality, corruption runs free in paid playlisting and algorithm push.
Artists have been proved to commit fraud by having their companies paying streaming farms in the US to inflate their streams when in reality they struggle to fill a small room while touring. But the interrogation isn’t geared towards them, or more fittingly their companies, because it’s not about the truth. BTS being accused is not about the truth, if it were about legitimacy there would be at the very least acknowledgment of their performance on charts reflecting proportionally the tour attendees of their Love Yourself World Tour, before the pandemic.
If it were about the truth BTS wouldn’t be accused with no evidence other than the sacred entity of Twitter accounts claiming chart manipulation because of fans “mass-buying” rather than the general public making them rise through casual support, but it might be too much to expect that a huge music publication with one of the industry’s biggest institutions backing it would source information directly from their charts rather than picking it from replies on fan accounts via Twitter.
Furthermore, the idea of “general-public support” being a more accurate claim of success than a loyal fanbase seems at best faulty, considering how the general public can have their support manipulated through means of exposure, such as the aforementioned tactics of playlisting and radio play while the fan, who is actively choosing to listen to that music, is much more of a willing consumer and by that logic, more organic.
And perhaps, it might be too much to expect that said publication would admit that success achieved through fan support is something other than “fans exploiting loopholes” because admitting that fans are knowledgeable about and follow their arbitrary sets of rules that privilege certain kinds of musicians signed under certain labels, would have been too transparent. Again, it’s not about the truth.
Questioning BTS’ legitimacy proved to be a very cowardly tactic for the industry to avoid looking at itself and for the media to keep its quasi-religious support of it. But as BTS grows and grows, only time will tell how long the industry can stand in the face of an act that challenges its flawed system, especially with the way they are legitimately and organically succeeding in showing what real success looks like.
And what will happen when BTS advances?
