BTS round up post: A bunch of articles and videos ahead!!!

[pinklunacy.livejournal.com]

» » BTS' COMEBACK SPECIAL VLIVE « «


(click on the picture to get to the video)

» » BANGTAN BOMB: 'ON' Kinetic Manifesto Film - BTS focus « «

» » BUNCH OF US INTERVIEWS « «

» » BUNCH OF CRITICS' REVIEWS FOR MAP OF THE SOUL: 7 « «

.@bts_bighit come of age and survey their already enormous legacy with emotional new album ‘Map Of The Soul: 7’. Read the ⭐⭐⭐⭐ NME review https://t.co/69Rk8Ksil5

— NME (@NME) February 21, 2020

"There’s never been a more surefire Billboard chart-topper in recent pop." #BTSComeback2020 #MAP_OF_THE_SOUL_7 https://t.co/eiIcXCey96

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) February 21, 2020

BTS weave myriad emotions into a gorgeous tapestry on their new album Map of the Soul: 7 https://t.co/4tZnxsWhNG

— The Independent (@Independent) February 22, 2020

» »  BUNCH OF BROKEN RECORDS IN KOREA AND WORLDWIDE « «

#BTS's "ON" Debuts At Top Of Major Realtime Charts + Breaks Record For Most Unique Listeners In 1st Hour On Melon #WeONWithBTS https://t.co/j97SjfLCtQ pic.twitter.com/cZhcfQEMyt

— Soompi (@soompi) February 21, 2020

#BTS Sets New Hanteo Records With Amazing First Day Sales For "Map Of The Soul: 7" https://t.co/qBW0MOTgwi pic.twitter.com/IBZW1JR9h2

— Soompi (@soompi) February 22, 2020

#BTS Breaks Record As "#MAP_OF_THE_SOUL_7" Sweeps iTunes Charts Across The Globe #BTSComeback2020 https://t.co/U3ALpzZW1M pic.twitter.com/ZYxaMUWzDu

— Soompi (@soompi) February 22, 2020

source: BTS VLIVE ‡ youtube @ BANGTANTV, @ TODAY, @ Variety, @ BTS Universe ‡ NME (twitter, article) ‡ LA TIMES (twitter, article) ‡ The Independent (twitter, article) ‡ soompi : twitter (1, 2, 3) and articles (1, 2, 3) ‡ naver (1, 2, 3, 4) ‡ hanteo news

I fell asleep during the vlive broadcast and have yet to watch the whole thing! Stay tuned for more reviews, interviews, etc. It's been reported that they've now topped itunes in 93 countries, thus breaking the record that they were tied with. Congrats! Stans are being a mess about the MV views tho. What a bunch of losers - claiming BTS's success is 100% ~organic~ when they're urging people to mass order the tracks on itunes and threatening us nice people who have better things to do with our lives than sTrEaM!!1!!1

Comments

[alterlife.livejournal.com]

The vlive was so chaotic lol. Congrats to the boys!

[jyusou.livejournal.com]

Lmao your last comment about fans being a mess, I felt that to my core. I’m so glad I don’t follow anyone like that at this point.

Gonna slowly work my way through all of this, thank you OP ☺️.

[pinklunacy.livejournal.com]

As usual, armys wanted to outdo themselves (by streaming like crazies ofc) by beating the record held by BWL for most viewed video in the first 24h but they couldn’t do it and now they’re being super whiny and aggressive about it, accusing other fans to refuse streaming it because its not really the ~official~ MV. Funny thing is that the MV was still watched around 50mil times and that one reason that could explain these « low » numbers is YouTube’ recent change of algorithm. So yeah, once again armys are being a pain in the ass for no reason 🙃

[camouflagecat.livejournal.com]

It's not the official MV? What does that mean?

[pinklunacy.livejournal.com]

It's all very confusing tbh. According to the comeback schedule (https://twitter.com/BigHitEnt/status/1214957638623973376) released by BH in January, the official MV for lead single is supposed to be released next Friday. So, many people thought this Kinetic Manifesto film was "just" an artistic bonus and that its views would not count for the charts, among other things. But BH themselves recently said this was the official MV for ON so idk.

[camouflagecat.livejournal.com]

I was really confused myself when I didn't see "MV" anywhere in the yt video title so I thought this was like a prolonged teaser or something and then it was a full song.

[dior-chic.livejournal.com]

I do think this interesting as with Twice’s Feel Special, I think they hit 11 million on the first day for the MV? And fans were freaking out. They were bringing up the algorithm too and if fans brought up BTS or BP, they said they’ll have to deal with it as well.

It is interesting to see there is some truth to that, though 50 mil is still a lot! Sounds BTS stans are going through what Twice stans went through too. Meanwhile here us normal fans are like ‘this cb is still doing great, calm down lol’
Also Twice is a little different - while Mina was in the MV, fans knew she wouldn’t be fully participating so I think that impacted the comeback. I’m curious with this year, as Mina will be much more involved

[katheli.livejournal.com]

Twice did Feel Special without ads this time I think, which made the drop bigger. Considering BTS never did ads in the first 24h, the drop shouldn't have been so big. Groups that were still using ads could increase their views, those views just don't count for official charts/records etc anymore. We don't know how the algorithm was changed though, so BP will be interesting to see.
then again, like I said down below, armys were really confused about the whole "MV or not" thing, so this was never gonna break records.

[ohmylol.livejournal.com]

Ok maybe it's because I'm old and honestly all of this about views and things is annoying but in what world 50m in the first day isn't amazing? And why people focus so much on views and charts? Now everything is a competition and it's Soo annoying , I get people wanting their fave group to do well but BTS is doing more than well lmao, they are huge , so why the Obsession?

[lostintheechoes.livejournal.com]

i fell asleep during the vlive comeback show too. need to catch up on things. i agree there are some in the fandom that i just don't get. my life doesn't revolve around BTS like yours does, so deal with it. i'm gonna do my own thing.

[tiffturn01.livejournal.com]

Thank you for compiling this. I couldn't keep up with the interviews, so thanks for putting them in one place.

[jackieee94.livejournal.com]

Bookmarking this post. Thank you OP!!

[negativesunset.livejournal.com]

the vlive was cute and the interviews still feels a bit awkward to me but much more watchable than before~

the whole thing with the mv is actually really funny cause i use both twitter and ig to talk to some friends, and i saw on twitter a lot of posts saying that the video was an official MV so people should stream, then i opened instagram and saw people saying it's not the official MV so there's no need to stream so hard lol it's probably because they called it a 'kinetic manifesto film' which i actually like even though it's just a pretentious name for a dance mv

[katheli.livejournal.com]

idk what people were expecting with the MV when it says Kinetic Manifesto Film. One of my friends was like, so when's the MV coming out? cause she thought this was another fancy art film like Black Swan lol

[broadcities.livejournal.com]

i'm really looking forward to watch their vlive comeback special, those are always the best!

as for the american interviews i've seen so far, i like that the questions are a bit more diverse than before, instead of only asking their fave american food or who they want to collab with. lol @ the lady from the today show asking them to come back and perform over the summer and namjoon was just like :/// we'll see

the spotify interview was just a big spotify ad??

also namjoon is doing so well managing these interviews and translating but why they still don't have a transator like bong joonho did is still beyond me

[pinklunacy.livejournal.com]

Access Hollywood finally gave them a translator!!! Namjoon still answered most of the questions tho ;(

[broadcities.livejournal.com]

hey it's a start! maybe if they get a fixed translator namjoon won't feel too pressured to do most of the work during english-speaking interviews

though i might take back my comment that the questions they get are more diverse this time around - it's all 'why is this album called 7' and 'why are you so positive'.. still pretty basic. some of the questions feel very america-centered. but maybe i'm being too critical, because at least it got us that cute 'breakkie' moment and yoongi thinking that the ny subways are clean lol

[violoncelliste.livejournal.com]

fans being angry about not enough views is so funny, bts really is past the stage of needing youtube views recognition. even ts fans stopped caring about views from what i've seen. also i've never streamed a thing in my life, if listen to a song on loop it's because it's a bop, not cause i need to prove a point lmao

thank god i don't use twitter because it looks like the worst of the worst of kpop fandom

[pinklunacy.livejournal.com]

I've been a BTS fan since 2014 and for the longest time, the fandom didn't bother me. Unfortunately, when tumblr fell apart I progressively turned to twitter for quicker updates and boy, was that a mistake. The toxicity is everywhere over there and people generally seem to have lost all sense of human respect and empathy.

[violoncelliste.livejournal.com]

I was a fan between 2015 and 2016, so apparently at the time army became annoying, and i still think that hate was exaggerated. it was so easy to avoid them in online spaces, it still is in my opinion, except for twitter. I assume that that's the place that's the biggest problem. i know it's a good place for quick updates and some great jokes and sometimes i consider getting more involved (i have a twitter i just barely use it), but you're right about it. That kind of energy just isn't healthy and i love some groups, but they are not worth my mental health.

[infj23.livejournal.com]

I actually think Big Hit intentionally vaguely labeled the videos because they didn’t want the focus on breaking the MV views and other records. Even with the last album, I felt they wanted fans to move on from records and being promotional managers but fandom hasn’t caught the hint yet.

BTS doesn’t need promotion; they need willingness by the radio stations to play their songs. That’s out of fans’ control. Luckily, BH/BTS won’t have to worry about this silliness for a long time.

[violoncelliste.livejournal.com]

you are 100% right imo. the records were a fun thing for a sec, but no one cares or needs it anymore. hopefully, this situation will make the fandom reconsider their priorities.

[pinklunacy.livejournal.com]

I actually think Big Hit intentionally vaguely labeled the videos because they didn’t want the focus on breaking the MV views and other records.

Ia that BH/BTS probably don't care about breaking records left and right, because they've already achieved so much, but they do care about charting and billboard and the grammmys (Suga himself said recently that his goal remains to attend the grammys and win an award). And now, with youtube streams factoring into the billboard 200 charts, I'm pretty sure BH cares a little about views!!

[infj23.livejournal.com]

Oh, I definitely think they care about charting, Billboard, and Grammys but YT numbers are such a small part of the bigger picture. Buying albums, streaming, and radio play is where it counts. They got 2 of the 3 and now, it’s about the Western music industry taking them seriously enough to play them on the radio. The fandom needs to refocus from gaining numbers to credibility. YT clout isn’t going to get them there.

There’s a reason why BH PR’s team is keeping fans away from public interviews this album promotional cycle. The fans help in 2 of the 3 categories but not so much the third. They can influence some radio play, of course, but BH has to play the industry game (esp IHeatRadio) and score much more influential interviews and publicity to get that artist recognition (that YG keeps mentioning for a reason) and Grammy nomination.

The collaboration with other artists/art forms this promo cycle may seem hokey and pretentious but there was a strategic reason for it.

[katheli.livejournal.com]

they are never gonna get radio play without an English song/album though and I don't think they want to do that. So there's only so far they can go.

[infj23.livejournal.com]

I tend to agree but don’t think it’s impossible. If they had more time to build relationships and understanding about them as artists, there would be a better chance, but given the upcoming enlistments, I’m not sure what they envision the path to the Grammys being without an English song and radio play. The collaborations they’ve had with Western artists on their albums have been unremarkable.

[infj23.livejournal.com]

Thanks, OP! I’ve been busy and this is helpful!

[gdithero.livejournal.com]

Quick question to anyone who has the album: is there no photobook? I was planning on getting an album and peeked at one unboxing video and there were just individual sheets? is bighit copyrighting videos on YT with the actual photobook?

[pinklunacy.livejournal.com]

nah what you've seen on yt is probably the real thing. The 'photobook' consists in a bunch of unbound sheets and the photos are printed in a very thin, grainy ~ecofriendly~ paper. There's also a little lyric book (very plain, all text, no picture), a poster and random little gifts like stickers, a postcard etc. The packaging is very pretty but the content is underwhelming.

[gdithero.livejournal.com]

Bighit is testing me. The photobooks were so pretty and neat, why the sudden change? They aren't even stapled together. they looked like mini reversible posters :/

[kris-terror.livejournal.com]

They haven't said anything officially why, but I know this past year BigHit did this fan project where fans could write letters to BTS on a website and this giant printer was printing them all out in a huge space and like physically showing how much Army loves BTS? And a bunch of folks complained to the company that while it was a cool idea, it was also a massive waste of paper and there was a big stink made. So folks are thinking that maybe they did this to try and be more eco-friendly per Army's request.

.......but honestly I think they were just trying to save money lol.

[pwrpuffgrl.livejournal.com]

Their express NYC visit seemed so random, so many events and TV shows for 5 min interviews, now the comeback commitments in Korea... they must be so exhausted.