Music Bank criticized for its chart ranking system and "unfairness"

KBS’s “Music Bank” has been suffering due to the massive amounts of criticisms the music show is receiving.

The community board for Music Bank’s official site is being flooded with criticisms regarding its ‘unfair’ calculation of the first place winners, as well as cutting songs too short and allowing lip synching for certain singers.

Firstly, there are suspicions that Music Bank’s music ranking chart is causing some agencies to buy their singers’ albums in bulk. The show currently adds up the rankings in 4 areas: song ranking, album ranking, broadcasting points, and preference. If an agency buys up several thousands of albums in a day, its singer can rise to the number 1 selling song.

On one music site, a rookie actually placed 1st on the ‘most popular selling songs’ list, receiving many criticisms from the public. Some have been pointing fingers at the agency for buying up their singer’s albums to enter Music Bank’s chart.

Korea’s music market has died down, making it impossible to predict the popularity of a group of songs. In the past, it was possible for an album to sell a million copies. However, these days, even the top idol groups can barely sell 10,000 copies of their albums, making it easy for agencies to manipulate the song rankings by buying up albums.

One viewer wrote on the community board, “Isn’t Music Bank encouraging buying up albums and just looking on while agencies manipulate the song rankings?“.


There are also criticisms regarding the production team favoring certain singers. Big Bang’s fans have long been criticizing the music show’s ‘unfairness’ towards the group. During this week’s program, when Big Bang’s 1st place was for certain, ‘locked in’, the production team took out the 1st place award ceremony due to its 600th episode celebration.

Also, the program allows unpopular groups or even rookies to perform 2~3 songs but when Big Bang was having a comeback in 2 years and 3 months, they only got to perform one song.

Fans also criticized the poor treatment the original idol group g.o.d got from “Music Bank”. They appeared on April 23rd’s program and their performance seemed to end hurriedly to allow TVXQ to perform right after them.

Some angry viewers even commented, “Maybe it’s better just to end ‘Music Bank’.”

Credits: Nate
Translation by ramham424 @akp