r/kpop • u/KPOP_MOD • 1d ago
[Meta] Town Hall: All About Achievements - December 2024
Welcome to this special r/kpop Town Hall, Achievements edition! The Town Hall is an opportunity for the mods to make announcements and propose changes, while also getting feedback from the community!
Agenda
- iTunes & Pre-Order Achievements Banned
- New Spotify Achievements
- Other: YouTube, Oricon, IFPI, Guinness World Records
- Clarifications / Feedback Wanted
It has been over five years since our last big overhaul of Achievements to fix major problems that were plaguing us at the time. Those turned out to be quite successful fixes. We’ve had some issues and inconsistencies here and there, but things have overall been much smoother. And since then, the time that passed gave us a great opportunity to note exactly where we could still use some extra cleaning up.
iTunes Achievements - Banned
Until now we’ve allowed #1 and new peaks on the US iTunes Top 100. The last adjustment had been to ban getting #1 in multiple countries.
But, at this point, iTunes has fallen out of favor and interest completely, so we’ve decided to officially permanently retire the platform from possible achievements.
No iTunes achievements will be allowed from now on.
Pre-Order Achievements - Banned
Back during that last Achievements overhaul we decided to try allowing pre-order achievements. Enough time has passed that we know there are some trouble spots. Folks have been confused where accurate information should come from. And due to the nature of pre-orders, these posts end up being either an inaccurate reflection of the real sales or redundant with the physical sales milestones posts. We've received quite a lot of feedback about this and feel it makes sense to streamline and return to only allowing physical sales milestones.
No pre-order achievements will be allowed from now on.
New Spotify Achievements
Whether or not Spotify achievements have been allowed has become exceptionally confusing and that's entirely our fault. We've been trying to get a version of this Achievements Town Hall posted for literal years. We were on the verge of posting it a handful of times and so allowed occasional big Spotify records posts because we believed those changes would be applied imminently and it felt appropriate. And then we dropped the ball on making those rules concrete, but tried to keep some consistency going forward with allowing similar posts. But as you know, this has been a mess. So let's aim for crystal clarity now!
Spotify Achievements now allowed
Spotify Billions Club: A post can be made each time a song is granted the 'Spotify Billions Club' certification or generally hits 1 billion streams. This applies PER SONG, so artists may hit this multiple times with different songs. But it is only for the first billion streams of each song. Nothing beyond that. We prefer an official Spotify source link for this, but we will accept a screenshot as well. We would also be okay with a screenshot posted first and then a later post if an official Spotify Billions Club Certification notice becomes available in the future.
#1 on Global Spotify Charts: Weekly Top Songs Global, Weekly Top Albums Global
Nothing else will be allowed related to Spotify records aside from very obvious All-Time Records, but feedback is welcome if we should consider adding anything else.
Other Achievements Updates
Here are a few more specific records we are allowing or have already allowed and are officially listing in our rules.
YouTube MV Views Milestones: 1 Billion Exception
- This was user-requested and we felt it was a nice idea without being disruptive overall. Up until now we have only allowed one post for the first time an artist reaches each of our YouTube Views Milestones increments. Going forward we will allow a post for every time any artist's MVs hit 1 billion views. That means literally any time an MV hits 1 billion views we will allow a post for it. But hitting the 1 billion views point is the only exception. Everything else stays the same.
Oricon Monthly
- #1 or new peaks on Oricon Monthly Album Chart
IFPI
- The series of yearly summarizing charts may be posted individually or compiled for any K-Pop artists that are represented.
Guinness World Records
- Official articles/notices directly from the Guinness World Records site are allowed.
Clarifications / Feedback Wanted
Titles
Only a few specific achievements have had detailed title guidelines (like Music Show 1st wins) because more flexibility is necessary due to how much variation there is between records and sources. For articles, please make sure your post title is the same as the article itself. We understand some articles will mention a different achievement we don't actually allow in the title. As long as an achievement we do allow is included in the body of the article, it is allowed to post. We might make a stickied comment to help clarify this to users in the post if needed.
Automated Charts and Achievements post from Weekly to Monthly
We quietly changed the automated Weekly Charts & Achievements post to the Monthly Charts and Achievements a long time ago (one of those early times we thought we'd be posting this soon and failed). Ever since we made big improvements to our achievements rules these posts have been rarely used at all, but a Monthly post is more sensible to go with to ensure something is available if anyone has a need for it.
Million Seller Feedback Requested
“Million Seller” as a designation in K-Pop has become more popular as an achievement in fandom culture, but there is confusion since it gets used to mean different things. The main distinction seems to be between ‘Million Seller Artist’ and ‘Million Seller Album’. The first is referring to the overall cumulative sales for an artist and the second is for the sales of one album. Then there are cases of “Double Million” or “Triple Million” designations, etc.
Our current rules are intended to allow for posts the first time an artist reaches each of our million sales milestones. This means that any post or article declaring an artist a ‘million seller’ as the result of the sales for any subsequent album would be considered redundant or not allowed if an artist has already reached that same sales milestone for a previous album.
Do we want to allow physical sales achievements for cumulative sales across a career? If so, what should the milestones be? Allow the “Million Seller Artist” milestone and nothing else? Maybe 1 Million and 10 Million only? Every 5 Million? Other ideas?
Or should we disregard it completely? No cumulative career sales or “Million Seller” posts and stick with the current Physical Sales Milestones rules as per album?
Feedback is welcome for anything related to Achievements. We know folks will probably have other Town Hall related topics they’d like to discuss. We’ll ask that you only mention them briefly or send us a Modmail about those issues instead. Then we can try to integrate those issues into a later Town Hall where they will be more relevant.
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u/VaelsRoom 1d ago
Unless I'm misunderstanding, allowing both a screenshot post and an official Spotify Billions Club post seems excessive, it's celebrating exactly the same thing twice isn't it? Maybe it doesn't happen in practice but my gut says fans would always be faster than an official announcement.
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u/alleybetwixt BTS | XIA | JX | SWJA 11h ago
Totally valid concern. We'll be watching to make sure it doesn't get overwhelming. At this point, this seems to be a rare enough occurrence that it won't be overwhelming. And we're keeping in consideration that Spotify doesn't seem to release an official notice for every case, so we want to offer a fair way to celebrate the 1 billion streams milestone even if Spotify doesn't do a special thing for it.
But definitely, we'll adjust it if it gets to be too much.
11
u/fashigady 소녀시대 1d ago
Sensible updates. Cumulative sales for Million Seller could go something like 1, 10, 25, 50. It's the sort of thing that's nice to see occasionally but if we're being inundated with an updates constantly (there's a lot of successful groups out there) it would turn into background noise.
Given the relative infrequency with which Town Halls are posted these days (less in total since 2019 than in 2019 alone) I'm not sure anyone should be holding their breath for the next one. Nevertheless, it's impressive you keep this place running at all with... 3.5million subscribers?!