"It's literally Sajaegi," A record company employee reveals the truth about the album sales number and pre-order culture

Recently, an online community post garnered much attention as the poster claimed to be an employee at a record company and revealed the truth about the album sales records.

The poster wrote, "I'm a record company employee and I'll summarize the current problems in the record market in detail...It's almost like Sajaegi." 

The netizen wrote:

"1. The entertainment company reaches out (to the record company) before a comeback article is released or they reach out to the ones they have relations with.

2. The record company asks if they can do a special pre-order sale event or a fan sign event etc.

Entertainment agency: How many copies can you buy?

Record company: What events are possible with x00,000 copies?

Entertainment agency: (Gives a ridiculous number for holding event)

Record company: Oh... can the number be hard to adjust?

Entertainment agency: Other companies all do that much so it's hard.

Record company: Then, can we add other things (like special gift events).

Entertainment agency: Umm....no!

Record company: (After several attempts at negotiation, the company is pressured into purchasing at a more favorable condition for the agency).

Entertainment agency: Please reflect the sales in the chart on the release date and let us know.

In this way, they purchase x00,000 copies, mark them as sold by scanning the barcodes, and then resell them from the record company to the fans. The albums already have chart rankings when the fans buy them.

Some may say that this is a specific company's issue, but no, 99.9% of companies and idol groups do this. Instead, idols with low popularity only ask for the amount sold through events.

So albums with events are essentially albums that have already been sold.

The problem here is that the quantities that have not yet been sold are included in the sales counts. Legally, this isn't a problem because the money has been paid by the record companies, similar to streaming music. It's not considered a false sale to fans.

The logic here is that 'album purchasing is not Sajaegi' is the same thing as saying 'the streaming is not Sajaegi' because whether the agency staff or hired help streamed the album, they still paid for the streaming.

Even if only ten companies do this, it's still tens of thousands, so it's getting worse.

An additional issue with this method is inventory management. Since tens of thousands of copies are left over, there are costs for disposal. Out of tens to hundreds of millions of albums, only 50-60% are actually sold, and the rest are discarded, which is also an environmental issue and costly.

I don't know how to end this, but I wish the pre-order culture would disappear."

Korean netizens responded, "What..." "Don't they show the sales number by the record company? Can that be manipulated too? That's not possible isn't it?" "Even if the first week's sales are abnormal, doesn't the sales number keep rising when they do events and fan sign events?" "Wow, I feel I've been deceived real bad," "This sounds like a lie," "Instead of writing on online communities like this, why won't you take it to media outlets so they can cover this story in a documentary or something," "This is basically Sajaegi," and "This can't be true can it?"