Music Shows Beginner Guide

• K-Pop music shows feature live performances of K-Pop songs, artist interviews, and fan interactions.

• K-Pop music shows choose one winner each week based on their rankings in different categories.

• Winning a music show is a sign of popularity, good reputation, hard work, and fan support.

• LOONA's invitation to participate in QUEENDOM 2 was attributed in part to their music show wins.

• Winners of music shows often receive a trophy and PR from the network and other K-Pop journalists.

• It is often a goal of artists to achieve a first music show win and is often seen as a 'defining' moment in an idol's career.

Based on all the information provided, as well as the current status of the LOONA units and soloists, the two most ideal music shows for us to focus on are The Show and Show Champion.

• The Show has an attendance requirement for the nominees, and usually the number of higher-profile artists is slim to none, making The Show less challenging than other music shows.

• Show Champion allocates a substantial weightage to pre-voting, making it an ideal music show for focused promotional efforts by Orbits (who tend to excel in this category), and it places comparatively less emphasis on digitals in its scoring system.

• Moreover, if the artist appears on Weekly Idol, the broadcast score is automatically maxed out, further making Show Champion a good music show to target for promotions if Chuu or Heejin makes appearances on Weekly Idol.

There are two methods for score calculation in music shows.

Relative Score Method

The relative score method is used for every category in The Show, Show Champion, M Countdown, Show! Music Core, and Inkigayo. It is also used to calculate Music Bank's pre-vote score. In this method, the artist with the most sales/streams/votes will receive the maximum score, and all other artists will be compared to that highest score.

Example:

Three groups, A Team, B Team, and C Team, are all promoting for this week's episode of The Show, and we want to know who will have the highest digitals score for the episode. The following is the number of streams each artist received during The Show's tracking period:

1. C Team - 1,583,290 streams

2. A Team - 893,108 streams

3. B Team - 552,019 streams

Since C Team has the highest number of streams this week, they will automatically receive a maximum score of 4,000 digitals points.

To calculate A Team's digitals score, you must first divide A Team's streams by C Team's streams (893,108 ÷ 1,583,290 = 0.564). Then, you need to multiply that decimal by the maximum possible score, which in this case is 4,000. This means that A Team will receive a score of 2,256 in digitals this episode (4,000 x 0.564 = 2,256). Using this same method, B Team would receive 1,394 digitals points.

Market Share Method

The market share method is only used by Music Bank. It is used for every category except the pre-voting category (which uses the relative score method explained above). In this method, artists are given points based on the percentage of the sales/streams market they shared during the tracking week. 

Example:

Three groups, A Team, B Team, and C Team, are all promoting for this week's episode of Music Bank, and we want to know who will have the highest physicals score for the episode. The following is the number of sales each artist received during Music Bank's tracking period:

1. C Team - 591,388 sales

2. A Team - 392,135 sales

3. B Team - 22,391 sales

Assuming these three artists are the only artists who sold albums this week, this means there was a total of 1,005,914 albums sold. 

To calculate C Team's physicals score, you must first divide C Team's sales by the total number of albums sold this week (591,388 ÷ 1,005,914 = 0.588). Then, you need to multiply the decimal by the maximum possible score, which in this case is 10,000. This means that C team will receive a score of 5,879 points in physicals for this episode (10,000 x 0.588 = 5,879). Using this same method, A Team would receive 3,898 physicals points and B Team would receive 223 physicals points. 

We use this information to strategize in a number of ways.

Firstly, we can use our knowledge of the artist's expected performance in various music show categories to understand whether there is even a possibility for a win on a certain show.

For example, imagine LOONA receives 50,000 streams in a tracking week for Inkigayo, while A Team receives 250,000 streams and is the artist with the most streams that week. Using the Relative Score Method, A Team would receive 5,500 points, while LOONA would receive 1,100 points. For LOONA to have a chance of winning, they would need to come close to maxing out in every other category, as well as hope A Team scores very low in every other category. A win would be highly unrealistic in this scenario, and therefore we would likely decide it is not worth investing our time, money, and votes into Inkigayo that week.

Let's imagine this same scenario, but in Show Champion instead. A Team would receive 3,500 digitals points, while LOONA would receive 700 points. However, there are another 6,500 points left to distribute between the other groups, and if LOONA can have a stronger voting score, as well as a competitive physicals, broadcast, and SNS score compared to A Team, we could very well have a chance at a win. We would likely choose to focus on Show Champion in this scenario.

There are still many other factors that affect our decisions when strategizing. For example, since The Show has an attendance requirement, we know that if the artist won't be scheduled to attend The Show on a certain week, we don't need to spend as much time saving votes on Star Planet for that week, and can instead focus on voting for another music show. We also look at when in the tracking period the comeback is released, what other groups will be releasing music in the same time frame, and other smaller factors.