100 Million Shades of Shade
How Fandom Built—and Simultaneously Toppled—an Industry

In the fall of 2023, K‑POP achieved the most dazzling numbers in its history. Domestic album sales surpassed 100 million units by October, and by November the top 400 albums had sold a combined 116 million units—an increase of 144 percent compared with the same period the previous year’s 80 million. The industry cheered, and the quarterly reports of the major agencies hit all‑time highs.

Yet, in the exact same quarter and industry, SEUNGHAN of the rookie group RIIZE halted his activities due to just a few pre-debut photos. Some fans sent 1,000 funeral wreaths to the agency’s headquarters. While one side counted 100 million sheets, the other side counted wreaths. These two scenes are not coincidental, separate incidents occurring in the same season—they are the front and back of the same coin, born from the same driving force.

Reading the figure “100 million” literally as “the number of people who love music increased by 100 million” is a misinterpretation. At the same time, digital music downloads actually declined. In November 2023, downloads fell by 20 percent compared with the previous year and by nearly 45 percent compared with pre‑pandemic 2019. It isn’t that people are listening to more music; rather, core fanbases are accumulating more physical records.

The reason is that the albums contain non-musical items—random photo cards and entry tickets for fan-sign events and video calls. The more albums fans buy, the higher their chances of winning. In a global survey, 36.5 percent of fans reported feeling pressured to make multiple purchases to collect photo cards. Albums have ceased to function as musical media and instead become lotteries.

This is where the uncomfortable truth begins. The intense loyalty that produced 100 million album sales and the fury that generated 1,000 floral wreaths do not stem from separate groups—they operate under the same mechanism. For years, the industry has trained fandoms with the message: “Your purchases and actions directly determine your idol’s success or failure.” Charts, award shows, and quarterly financial results were all deliberately designed to hinge on fans’ “firepower”—yet when that firepower shifted toward punishing private lives, the industry was caught off guard.

The essence of the Seung-han incident is not smoking or dating photos. Rather, it lies in the fact that fans effectively exercised a veto power over an artist’s career trajectory—and that the company, bowing to that veto, dismissed the rookie under the guise of “protection.” Having built an industry where consumers behave like shareholders, we cannot draw a line only when those same consumers assert authority over personnel decisions. There is no safety pin on firepower.

The multiple-purchase model leaves traces beyond sales charts. The amount of plastic used by domestic entertainment companies for albums surged from 55.8 tons in 2017 to over 800 tons in 2022; CD packaging alone was estimated to have generated at least 1,395 tons of waste that year. The milestone of over 100 million copies sold in 2023 only steepened this curve further. In one environmental campaign, discarded albums—over 8,000 copies—collected from fans were returned to the headquarters of a major entertainment company.

In the same fourth quarter, internal HYBE documents were leaked, revealing that executives had disparaged both their own and rival artists, prompting the CEO to issue a public apology. The crackdown on privacy violations, the environmental debt, and internal cynicism—three distinct incidents converging in one season—signal that the industry's moral immune system has failed to keep pace with its rapid growth.

Of course, counterarguments are possible: a passionate fandom is not a liability deserving criticism but rather K-POP’s rarest asset in the global market—and without such intensity, Korean music would never have reached anywhere in the world. This argument holds merit. Raw power itself is not a sin.

Yet the question posed by Q4 2023 is not about the existence of fandom power—but about the design of that power. As long as the industry converts fans’ love into album sales figures and lottery application tickets, that love can just as easily be converted into wreaths and vetoes. One hundred million copies sold is not a trophy—it’s a receipt. And printed on the back of that receipt is a photograph of the wreaths lined up in front of the company’s headquarters that autumn. K-POP’s next challenge is not to sell more, but to find a way to translate loyalty—not into punishment, but into another unit altogether.