At the end of 2015, I collected data on k-pop idol groups’ activities over the year to determine their rankings. Well, I gave marks for each field on a maximum of 1000 points, while all the idol groups on the ranking have entered top 100 of Melon’s monthly chart at least once in 2015, and idol groups' solo and sub unit activities are also reflected in the ranking. Melon’s monthly chart is reflected in the digital single point of each group, and I referred to Gaon’s album sales record to get the album point. The Youtube points are based on the views of each idol group’s music video on Youtube, and the idol groups who won No.1 trophies of M Countdown, Music Bank, Show! Music Core and Inkigayo got extra points.
A noteworthy fact is that k-pop idol ranking has been changing drastically. As you can see above, second-year girl group Red Velvet was in fifth place, while rookie girl group GFriend was placed just below Red Velvet. They were two of the girl groups who showed exceptional performance in the k-pop world in 2015. On the other hand, big names who have led k-pop world for years such as Wonder Girls and KARA were down there. What do you think it means? Yeah, there's been an active generational shift in the k-pop world. There are exceptions, of course. ninth-year girl group Girls' Generation is still at the top of the ranking.
There has been an active generational shift among k-pop boy groups too. Even though big 2 of the boy groups, Big Bang and EXO, have been receiving overwhelming support by k-pop fans, promising young boy groups, iKON and BTS were already ahead of big names such as Beast, CNBLUE, Shinhwa and 2PM. And other young boy groups such as VIXX and BTOB also have been growing steadily, threatening high rankers. A period of turbulence, huh? The k-pop idol group ranking will continue to change and change again due to a generational shift in the k-pop world.
