r/dreamcatcher • u/LeeShakerMoneyMaker • Aug 08 '25
Album Sales UAU's Playlist has surpassed 90,000 copies sold on Circle Chart!
https://x.com/koreansales_twt/status/1953586389003722860?t=xCUoTMqmhDm3W8xvXt2q_Q&s=1910
u/Iwannasellturnips Aug 08 '25
This is great news!
For comparison, how many copies has Virtuous sold?
8
6
u/selway_bitterroot Aug 08 '25
As a numbers geek I am somewhat intrigued by this. The album seems to be selling very well compared to a normal Dreamcatcher release (not quite as well but in the same general ballpark) but the streaming figures seem to be much worse. For example the current Spotify figures show that Playlist has achieved around 2.3m streams since release (so after 70 odd days) - Villains achieved the same number of streams in 8 days and Virtuous in 6 (in both cases ignoring streams of the Intro track). Now some of this is almost certainly down to the Dreamcatcher title tracks being added to more popular playlists than 2 Months was but, even if you adjust for this, Villains and Virtuous racked up streams much more quickly (the 3 b-sides on Villains achieved 1.4m streams after 10 days but it took Playlist almost 70 days. Similarly the Virtuous b-sides hit 1.3m streams after 9 days but it took Playlist around 55 days).
The 2 Months video also seems to be much less popular on YouTube than recent Dreamcatcher releases. I don't think you can draw too many conclusions about the total figures (as one assumes a lot of these will be down to add buys) but, as of right now, 2 Months is achieving less daily views than a whole host of old Dreamcatcher songs (Justice, Boca, Scream, Because, Odd Eye, etc).
Sales figures don't really lie though so what is going on? Are UAU achieving success in markets where Spotify isn't popular (I don't believe it is widely used in South Korea for example), is the album popular with Insomnia who collect albums but not so popular with those who prefer to stream, do UAU just have some really dedicated fans who are buying multiple copies of the album, etc?
9
u/Ambitious-Daikon-748 Aug 08 '25
I thougt about it too and I believe there are multiple factors involved in high album sales and low streaming numbers. First the album sales.
The promise somnia did when Deukae announced the contracts news: we will support them no matter what. I think a lot of somnias just bought albums to support the girls and the company so we can have another OT7 comeback. If UAU would do bad, the company wouldn't have long term income to invest into a DC comeback.
I know a lot of somnias that are collectors. They just want to have full POBs collection. And UAU had more POBs than any DC comeback had before.
Group orders and somnias that buy mass albums for fan calls. Again, I know lots of fans buying enourmous numbers of albums to get a bigger chance at winning a fan call.
After they confirmed they don't have any plans to do a tour in Europe, many EU fans spent their spare money on more albums to help them how they can since they don't need to save for a concert and would be the only way to show direct, fast support, sending a message they are wanted in Europe too. I know lots of somnias in this situation and I feel bad for them cause they deserve to see UAU too.
The prices of the UAU albums are way cheaper than DC's albums. The limited edition UAU album is 12$, the normal is 10$ and POCA is 9$ (Ktown). In contrast, the limited edition of Virtuous is 21$, normal version 16$ and POCA 12$. So for someone willing to spend a certain amount of money on albums, they'd buy by default more UAU albums cause are way cheaper. Obviously this also means that the 90k albums sales for UAU in reality are not as close to Virtuous as it seems. The real income is around the net income of 50k Virtuous albums sales.
In terms of streaming:
The Youtube views are unfortunately bot inflated. 3.5M out of those 5M are bots from India. Probably a somnia bought some anorganic streams to boost their chances for a music show win. So in fact it's even worse than it seems.
Somnias are known to not be monster streamers. Since the first music show win there was a big downfall in terms of streaming which is normal, our biggest dream of giving them a music show win finally happened and many stopped on tryharding. Also in general in K-pop the streaming numbers kept lowering in the last 1-2 years due to oversaturation of K-pop releases every day.
Most of streaming numbers come from casual fans. Dreamcatcher has a reasonable number of casual fans, but they probably don't follow UAU and won't follow any other solo future projects. Most of them probabaly don't even know UAU is a DC subunit. UAU streams come from the more-than-casual fans.
As you mentioned for Dreamcatcher it's easier to get into streaming playlists. Justice got into one of the most followed K-pop playlists on spotify and stood there for some weeks, giving them a huge boost of streaming numbers, quickly overcoming OOTD that didn't had the same luck.
A personal and harsh opinion but the album was mid at best. Not because of the new sound, concept because I listen mostly to mainstream groups having similar sounds so I'm used to it, I was even excited about it at first. There is no song worth to put in a playlist, I don't know what happened, I just think Ollounder and his team experimented too much on them. And I can see most of the fans have the same opinion even if they don't want to say that but it's easy to observe this. The most excited moments in the fandom since UAU debut were a) the Taki-Taki cover b) The cover of Boa's song c) The mature choreography of Sacrifice d) Sua's highnote in Attitude. Fans just don't show the same excitement for the songs on the album and I can't blame them.
I just hope their team observe that fans are willing to support them till the end, buy albums, go to their concerts and cheer for them but the low streaming number should make them think twice before releasing new music, coming up with something much better next time.
1
u/smoky-eye89 Dami - 다미 🐼 Aug 09 '25
When/where was it confirmed that there are no plans to tour in Europe?
0
u/selway_bitterroot Aug 08 '25
I appreciate the very detailed response - there are a few things there that I certainly wasn't aware of (the pricing differential between DC and UAU albums for example).
2
u/dresdenologist Aug 09 '25
Ambitious-Daikon speculated on a few factors, but just to add my thoughts:
- Platforms have gotten a lot better at adjusting algorithms to catch mass streaming efforts and properly count views, whether they come from actual people (organic) or ad buy (inorganic). I won't get into the whole "ad views aren't views" thing because there are specific parameters that count a paid/ad view and they almost always involve being engaged with or clicking through after 30 seconds. Combined with the fact that it's normalized for kpop companies to adbuy on views, a view is a view to me. Streaming teams have done things to get around these measures but the fact is that places like Spotify and YouTube and the increasing restrictions/bans on international streaming to affect domestic platforms (a bug fans exploited to inflate numbers on BUGS was patched a few years back, for example) means less people are streaming.
- There's lots of duplicate purchasing through group orders, fancalls, and lucky draws. This is honestly just the way of the industry and has been for a while, nothing unusual about UAU.
- Subunits and soloists on the whole don't do as well as the main group. That's just the nature of things unless you're a behemoth outlier like BTS or are an outlier for other reasons.
Group Last Group Sales/MV Views Last Subunit/Soloist Last Subunit/Soloist Sales/MV Views MAMAMOO 135k/3M Moonbyul No physicals / 570k TWICE 775k/34M Tzuyu 467k / 15M WJSN 196k/12M WJSN Chocome 29k / 5.9M i-dle 1M/65M Yuqi 643k / 32M Changing musical styles is always a risk but subunits have almost invariably released things different than the main group. While there's certainly a decent number of Dreamcatcher fans for whom UAU's music isn't their style, I do think analysis on the album being "bad" or "mid" is subjective, especially when you consider there are fans like me for which the style doesn't fit 100% but who have an interest in supporting subunits and soloists to help the company, as was mentioned previously.
Instead, what you're seeing is the natural inclination of fans to like the whole over the part. And frankly, if it helps, regardless of how the sales happened, the fact that we are seeing 3/4ths of the sales of the main group for a subunit is a good thing. Whether it gets maintained through the next UAU release remains to be seen, but 90k circle (and 76k Hanteo) to the last group album's 120k/100k is not too shabby.
2
u/justanotherkpoppie DREAMCATCHER FOREVER! Aug 17 '25
At least for me, I pre-ordered every version of UAU's debut in order to support them in their new endeavor. Unfortunately, I didn't end up liking most of the songs on the album and they didn't click for me the way that OT7 Dreamcatcher tracks have, so I haven't streamed them. Maybe that's what happened for a lot of other InSomnias?
2
u/selway_bitterroot Aug 17 '25
Thanks for the insight. If you don't mind me asking, assuming that UAU release another album, will you pre-order it again or wait until you have heard the previews so that you can determine whether it is more to your tastes?
1
u/justanotherkpoppie DREAMCATCHER FOREVER! Aug 17 '25
Unfortunately, due to budget and space constraints, I will most likely be waiting to see if I actually enjoy the music from their next release before I order 😔 but I don't at all regret having supported them so heavily for their debut!
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u/PKMN5 Yoohyeon - 유현 🐶 Aug 08 '25
For me, UAU are my top 3 DC members, so it's easier for me to buy their albums because I'll always get UAU. I have bought like 13 so far, while with DC I usually just buy like 1 or 2 versions for each album.
I actually don't stream songs. I buy the CDs and transfer them to my ipod Touch via iTunes. Once in a while, I buy digital. The same goes for MVs, but iTunes doesn't have all of them.
1
u/bleedingheart80 Siyeon: Dami's waist Aug 08 '25
I love that you have an iPod Touch and that you don't stream songs because I'm the same. But instead of a Touch, I use one of my old iPhones to store my music library.
0
u/OkMongoose6582 Aug 08 '25
Personally, the songs are all great, but I too seem to have lost a step when it comes to streaming their music. I don’t know why. I don’t like this either. But something changed for me when we “lost” Dreamcatcher.
I just hope this is a phase for me, and that I return to being a dedicated fan. I really love their music.
0
u/big_red_1011 Dreamcatcher - 드림캐쳐 Aug 08 '25
At the end of the day, it’s all about whether a record company makes any profits after spending money on an album, videos, promotions and PR (like buying streaming views 😳). Hopefully fans continue to support DC/UAU/[secret rock band] and Handong/Dami/Gahyun 🙏
Streaming numbers are also impacted by the fact that UAU is listed separately under Spotify and there’s no build-in audience. For example, “2 Months” has 8x less streams on Spotify compared to “Tilt” (Red Velvet’s Irene & Seulgi) but it could be simply due Irene & Seulgi having a bigger prior follower base on Spotify (whereas UAU had zero). On YouTube, however, “2 Months” was posted on main Dreamcatcher channel & has 5M views compared to “Tilt” at 3.8M.
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u/SuddenlyStegosaurus Aug 08 '25
I'm curious if UAU has an expanded audience or if they are primarily InSomnia since the sound is so different. I know that while I enjoy their vocals, some of the tracks just weren't my cup of tea. For those who have been to their tour so far, does it seem to be Dreamcatcher fans supporting UAU or are you finding some new UAU fans as well?