REFLECTION ABOUT GOT7’S COMEBACK
Hello baby birds! I know it has been a long time since I last posted and I’m so sorry about it, I’ve been extremely busy with college and life in general and couldn’t find time to post anything here. But… good news: I’m finally free and I plan on finishing my ‘Memory Lane’ series, but first I need to address some things regarding this comeback that I’m not so happy about.
1. GOT7’s ‘Eclipse’ MV views in the first 24h. It’s no secret that we only got 6’5M views for Eclipse in the first 24h after its release (less than the views for ‘Miracle’ and ‘Focus On Me’ – JUS2 subunit). Now, I don’t really know who we should blame for this: YouTube or ourselves? While streaming the MV I noticed that the views were frozen for approximately 1h whole hour, and the worst part of all is that we never got those views back. I was so mad at YouTube for doing us dirty when we were putting all of our best efforts there for the boys (we had a great start, 500.000 views in just 1h after the release); But another thing I also noticed was that our streaming party didn’t really work, it was like ahgases were not working together to reach our 15M goal. It almost felt like we weren’t there, and that makes me sad because we almost got the same result as we did with ‘Look’ (6M views). I really had big hopes of breaking Lullaby’s record (10M in the first 24h), but it seems like we are going backwards instead of forward. This made me feel like the fandom decreased instead of growing - something that is not true because our fandom got bigger after the world tour. Now, like I said before, I don’t know if we should blame YouTube for this or ourselves. I honestly think it’s a combination of both, YouTube really did us dirty but we should have tried harder for our boys. (Funny thing: our views in the first 24h were really low but we managed to reach 30M views in just 5 days, beating our own record…).
2. Melon issue. This is something I talked about in my ‘Lullaby Comeback Reflection’ post, and I still think the same thing. I don’t know why Melon hates us, but they do. On the first day (20/05), we debuted at number 52, and just went downhill from there reaching the 71st place. Then, on the second day (21/05), it seemed like we went up for a bit and managed to reach the 45th position, then we dropped to 55 and from there we charted 100 and eventually disappeared from the chart. On the third day (22/05), we appeared again at number 90 only to drop to the 91st place, and then go up to 75. Finally, on the fourth day (23/05), we charted the 82nd place and after that we disappeared from the chart. As you can see our results are not good enough, ‘Eclipse’ charted really low compared to other songs. On top of that, we only charted for four days before completely disappearing from the Melon chart. I’m positive this is Melon’s doing, they did us dirty in our last comeback too and I wouldn’t be surprised if they are supressing our listeners and sabotaging our streaming party. I’m so sorry for the boys because they worked really hard for this, but their efforts are still not recognised in Korean charts (specially Melon).
3. Timing. This is a really important point. We have to be honest and admit that GOT7’s comeback came in the worst time ever. First of all, it was scheduled shortly after Bambam’s ‘Black Feather Tour’ in Thailand, Jackson’s birthday fan meeting in China and JUS2 debut and tour. Many ahgases spent a lot of money buying the new subunit albums and tickets for all the shows. Also, we have the world tour just around the corner, so it makes sense that many ahgases prefer saving their money to buy tickets for the tour instead of buying the new albums. On top of that, we can’t forget that the majority of the fandom are teenagers and young adults that have final exams around this time of the year (myself included, the day of the comeback I had my first final exam in college). This obviously made the fandom focus on other things that were by far more important to us than the comeback (sad but true).
4. Sales – Album stock. This is closely related to the last point. Because of the timing the comeback was scheduled, our sales weren’t good either. On the first day, we sold 62,002 copies (our best result ever), but throughout the week we only managed to sell 214.125 copies (not good enough to win on music shows). Now, this has to do with the lack of stock: for some reason there weren’t enough albums and a lot of ahgases had to wait until Wednesday to be able to purchase them (that’s a whole day lost there, thanks for nothing JYP…). I don’t understand why this happened, especially if we take into account that GOT7 is the best album-seller under JYP Entertainment (‘Eyes On You’ sold 223.844 copies in the first week, the best-selling album under the company). They should have been more prepared and have stock ready knowing that even though GOT7 are not digital monsters, the rock with album sales.
5. Music shows. We don’t have to be geniuses to know that with our bad charting and lower sales, we have very few options of winning with ‘Eclipse’, even if we do well with MV views. In music programs, they give more importance to digital sales than physical album sales, and since we are not even charting anymore (in most charts), I am going to be honest here and say that I don’t think we are going to win anything (‘You Are’ 2.0). My thoughts are based -specially- after today’s Show Champion: we were nominated but didn’t win. Usually the time to bring trophies home is during the first week after the comeback was released (or the second week of promotions), after the first week winning is really hard. But based on our horrible start and everything that happened last week, I don’t think we are going to get any trophy with this comeback (just my opinion, I could still be wrong).
EDIT: I WAS WRONG, WE WON ON MCOUNTDOWN (30/05), MUSIC BANK (31/05) AND INKIGAYO (02/06)!!!!! 💚💚
6. JYP Division 2 - Promotions. This is something that has to do with this comeback, but also something that I have been accumulating for months now. The way Division 2 handles and promotes GOT7 is pure shit, it’s like they are not even focusing on them. First, they barely put them on variety shows, and the only one they went to -Idol Room- was lacking promotion music wise; and the promotion period is just two weeks (meaning that this upcoming week is the last one we will be seeing them on music shows). They spent the first 30 minutes of the program talking and messing around with Doni and Coni, and then introduced ‘Eclipse’. For a non GOT7 fan, an outsider, this could get boring pretty fast. Secondly, the album stock situation: because of that mistake we lost sales, sales that were crucial for music shows. Thirdly, the time they decided to release the comeback was extremely bad calculated, they should have known this could happen. Also, their decision of debuting a new subunit and sending Bambam on tour was something benefitial at the moment but with not so good long term consequences, as everything now seems rushed and poorly done. I understand that it’s really hard to schedule comebacks, specially if we take into account the company as a whole: Itzy’s debut - JUS2 debut / Jinyoung drama - StrayKids comeback - Twice comeback - Itzy comeback - GOT7 world tour - Twice world tour - StrayKids world tour... but even though everything is packed, I still think that things could have been done differently. There’s something wrong with the management team in Division 2 that is affecting GOT7 negatively, and that also makes me fear for Itzy (as both groups are under this division).
7. JYP strict rules towards fans – Fansigns problems. This point has to do with issues that happened weeks prior to the comeback, but that is clearly affecting the promotions. In case you didn’t know, ‘fans’ followed GOT7 members everywhere (yes, even to their homes), the situation got so out of control that even the boys had to post in their personal Instagram accounts the official statement released by JYP Entertainment, and because of that JYP reinforced the rules that ahgases must follow when they are with the boys. But this rules have gone as far as to not even allowing the fans to touch or high five the members in fansigns (now, let’s remember that the fans that go to the fansigns have spent a ridiculously huge amount of money on albums just to get the chance of going), and not letting the members write the names of the fans in the albums (they just basically sign the album and that’s it). And not only that, recently ahgases that went to one of the fansigns last week took to Twitter to express their discontent with how they were treated by the staff. I’ll leave some of the messages that ahgases posted on Twitter:
I do agree that we must protect the boys, and I think those rules are great to be followed outside. But on a closed space with security to watch over everything that’s going on in the event, not allowing fans to even get a high five with the members is going a bit too far. Also, the staffs’ attitude needs to be checked: they are there working, not having fun with their friends. They should know their position in the fansigns, and not disturb the conversations going on between fans and the members of GOT7. I really hope JYP Entertainment thinks things over, because if not the consequences could be catastrophic. Take as an example the upcoming tour, no info about VIP tickets has been released yet. In fact, for the America leg of the tour there are no VIP tickets. That makes me wonder how things are going to be done in the tour.
8. Album and comeback thoughts (focused on just the boys and music). After so many negative comments, the only good thing about all of this is seeing the boys together and doing what they love. I can’t express with words how happy I am to see them together again after so much time. Also, the whole album is a bop. It’s the bop of the year (fight me on that): all the songs are amazing, the vocals, the raps, the lyrics, the music, the style, the concep... just everything is out of this world. I’m so glad that they get to perform on stage and carry out the message this album has. I couldn’t relate more with the meaning of this album, and I know we all ahgases feel the same way. Even though a lot of negative things have happened in the past few weeks, I’m still happy to see they are back and better than ever. As their fans, the only thing we can do is support them no matter what and be there for them just like they are here for us when we need them the most. Also, I can’t wait for the tour to start and I can’t wait to see them again this year. I’m so excited that just listening to the songs of the last tour makes me feel tingly on the inside!
Well baby birds, that’s it for today’s post. I’ll update my ‘Memory Lane’ series as soon as possible as some of you have been asking for the remaining members. I love you all!!! 💚🐥💚
















