Irene of red velvet‘s solo debut has been a commercial success since its release last month, but one accolade that “Like a Flower” has missed so far is a music show win — and fans say SM Entertainment it’s his fault.
Since Irene’s debut mini album, Like a flowerwas released, racked up success in album sales. In its first day alone, the record sold over 250,000 copies, achieving the seventh-highest first-day sales for a K-Pop soloist on the global charts. Hanteo graphic. With just one day of monitoring, Irene also recorded the highest recordweek sales for a female soloist from SM Entertainment.
Naturally, with such results in hand, fans had high expectations for Irene to become the first member of Red Velvet to score a win in a music show. In particular, ReVeluvs all over the world have put in their best efforts KBS‘S Music Bank. After an intense voting period, fans even managed to crack the app The whole graphfor the highest all-time vote total of 983,504, giving her first place in the pre-vote.
However, despite the tireless efforts of fans, when Music Bank aired on November 6, Irene was not mentioned at all. Although he received the maximum score of 2,000 for pre-voting, his final total was 5,768, placing him third overall. Music Bankis “K-Chart”.
The reason? A discrepancy in the sales of his albums, which fans call “sabotage”.
Irene breaks records left and right in her solo debut and you choose to sabotage her, you incompetent bastard @SMTOWNGLOBAL
— nicole 💐 (@baechustokki) December 6, 2024
The root of the problem lies in the difference between the Hanteo chart and the graph Music Bank use for its counting: Circle. Simply put, Hanteo counts retail sales, tracking albums purchased by customers both offline and online. Circle Chart, on the other hand, records the number of albums shipped to retailers, before they are even sold to individual customers.
Therefore, the Circle Chart data is generally higher than that of Hanteo, since it includes shares that have been distributed to stores but not yet sold. However, in a shocking turn of events, Circle reported that Irene had sold just 164,802 copies across all releases by the end of the music show’s tracking week on Sunday – a startling difference from Hanteo’s figure of 288,911.
Week 48 of the Circular Albums Chart:
4. Like a flower – 159,165 [NEW]
25. Like a flower (SMC) – 5,637 [NEW]#RedVelvet @RVsmtown #IRENE pic.twitter.com/7OWhhn5cQ5— Red Velvet Charts (@ChartsRV) December 5, 2024
This meant that more than 120,000 album sales were missing from Irene’s sales figures. In contrast, the two groups nominated for victory (WayV AND TWS) recorded approximately 8,000 and 31,000 more sales on Circle compared to Hanteo, respectively. Ultimately, this means that Irene was only awarded 914 points for physical album sales Music Bank.
If the Circle’s sales had equaled the Hanteo’s sales, Irene would have scored around 1,600 points in the physical sales category: enough to push her final points to over 6,400. This would have placed her above the eventual winner, WayV, whose total was 6,354 points, giving her the win.
Naturally, the gap between what could have been and what happened has left fans furious with SM Entertainment. On social media, ReVeluvs accused the company of failing to properly support Irene’s solo debut, or even intentionally sabotaging it.
Irene, her team and her fans are working hard to give their best, only for Pink Company to sabotage their artist, lmao, why does this always happen? So professional @SMTOWNGLOBAL @RVsmtown
#Irene deserves better treatment
— Hyun Solo⋆ 🍓 silhouette (@justirenerg) December 5, 2024
Questions arose about why its Circle chart sales were so low, with theories ranging from delayed album shipments to errors in reported data. Many pointed out the stark contrast between Irene’s case and that of WayV, whose sales were accurately reflected on Circle despite both artists being under SM Entertainment with albums distributed by Kakao Entertainment.
we really need an explanation from SM as to why they were able to ship Wayv’s albums correctly but not Irene’s
— 🌺 (@fanniirene) December 5, 2024
Irene’s visible dedication to her debut only added to the heartbreak. The star had been working on the album for several months, even in the midst of the group’s Asian fan tour. In a recent vlog with another member SeulgiFans also noticed dark bruises on Irene’s legs, making the agency’s lack of support even harder to accept.
Irene worked SO HARD, bruised and exhausted, just to make everything perfect, but @SMTOWNGLOBAL and Kakao can’t even work with her and treat her properly with the same energy?? @SMTOWNGLOBAL @RVsmtown reply and treat Irene better! https://t.co/Ia0jXXLjEa pic.twitter.com/UiIBJJEu88
— •᎑• | 𝑳𝒊𝒌𝒆 𝑨 𝑭𝒍𝒐𝒘𝒆𝒓 🌷 (@notrenesbathtub) December 6, 2024
Now, fans are calling on SM Entertainment to explain and apologize for what happened.
Baetokkis, we all know Irene deserves the best, so help us demand better treatment from SM.
Aside from the mass email event, we also flood Kwangya 119!
KWANGYA 911🔗: https://t.co/kWKbO845KE
Email template: https://t.co/5HQwztYa4A #Irene #IRENE #Irene… pic.twitter.com/zz44oGUOAy
— Irene Announcements 🌷 (@IreneadsPH) December 5, 2024
Irene’s Chinese fanbase (Irene Bar), whose members have contributed hundreds of thousands of sales Like a flowerthey also threatened SM Entertainment. “If the company fails to provide a satisfactory response”, they announced X“We will request a full refund for all unreleased albums and will completely boycott all albums, activities and merchandise purchases, with the exception of Irene’s individual activities, in the future.“
If the company does not provide a satisfactory response, we will request a full refund for all unreleased albums and will completely boycott all albums, activities and purchases of goods except for Irene’s personal activities from now on.@RVsmtown @SMTOWNGLOBAL https://t.co/ILJ7Vp2u1c
— IreneBar (@IreneBar_) December 6, 2024
