Melon Explains Why BTS Won Best Album of the Year

The heated argument about the 2016 Melon Music Awards giving BTS the award for Best Album of the Year has finally been settled by the organization.

On November 19th, the 2016 Melon Music Awards was a time of excitement and joy as fans watched their favorite idols score awards to take home. However, a controversy arose among some Kpop fans when BTS won “Album of the Year.” According to EXO fans, EXO was winning in the categories as laid out by Melon, leading them to be shocked when BTS won instead. The incident caused a lot of issues in the Kpop community and made fans further investigate the matter on their own.

In the midst of this dispute, a fan took initiative to call Melon to hear their explanation on how the winner of Album of the Year is chosen. Although it was previously explained that points are based off of 70% streams/downloads and 30% votes, the more detailed information became clear after the fan’s investigation.

After a long conversation from one of their call center agents, it was revealed that how many times an artist takes first place during the one-year period is not the important factor. Instead, they take into consideration various, additional elements such as streaming data from realtime, weekly, and monthly periods, all of which they refer to as “internal data”  which cannot be released to the public.

Check out the full translation for more details, courtesy of peachisoda.

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Call Center Agent:  I think it’s a misunderstanding because although we explain the same thing over and over again, it looks like the fans don’t understand it well. Please allow me to explain again, internal data is the summing up of all artists’ data from 2015 November 19th until 2016 November 18th. Now, it doesn’t matter how many times the artist wins the 1st place during this one year period. The key points are- how many songs were sold and streamed/used. If you ask us “Why didn’t EXO win the award when they won the first place more than BTS?”, our answer is “the number of times the artist win on the chart is not the important factor. The artist gets a higher score if they stay longer on top 50 during the one year period and not how many times they win the 1st place.”. Even when we explain this to the fans, they still want to check the internal data without trying to understand our (Melon) position so that is why they say we keep changing our words.

Caller: So you mean internal data = external data?

Call Center Agent: Yes. The artist will get better scores if people listen and search them regularly throughout 1 year than voting and streaming their songs for a month or two before the actual award. Internal data is the total of real time, weekly, monthly data. The reason why we can’t reveal our internal data is because we need to keep the record of all singers, so we can’t reveal it.

Caller: So if the award is delivered to an artist based on accurate information, you will not make changes?

Call Center Agent: Yes. This happened to IU last year too but we give the award to the artist who scored the highest during the 1 year period.

Caller: You will not award again or reverse the winner? (asked again)

Call Center Agent: Yes, we won’t.

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What do you think about this matter? Now that the Melon company has clarified their points system, do you think fans ought to simply accept things and move on?

Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.

Sarah (sapphir3bluu) is a writer for WTK from Las Vegas and fond of cats, k-pop, and singing. She enjoys learning new languages and is manager of Super Junior fanbase, WorldwideELFs, but has also done subbing work for EXO. If you don’t find her being slowly consumed by BTS, GOT7, NCT, and ASTRO, she is aspiring to go to graduate school and work in the health care field.

Translation: peachisoda