By now a lot of Kpop fans are talking about EXO and EXO-Ls because of an award show that took place on August 30.
2018’s Soribada Best K-Music Awards had announced the list of winners on August 30. EXO took home 2018 Global Fandom Award, they expressed their gratitude to fans through a video message.
However, to many EXO-Ls an award was missing, an award they thought they would be getting for sure because of various reasons.
Since there seems to be a lot of confusion among Kpop fans and those who are not EXO-Ls I thought it would be a good idea to explain why EXO-Ls are this mad and why the lawsuit might not be as far away from reach as you’d think.
Here is the deal (and I say this based on many EXO-Ls testimonies), it comes down to the way Soribada decides how to determine the winners of a Bongsang award.
A little backdrop, Soribada is one of Korea’s 6 charts alongside Melon, Naver, Bugs and many others; it’s a peer-to-peer file-sharing service. They had introduced their first awards show last year and held another one this year as well.
According to Soribada themselves, the judgment criteria includes Soribada’s internal data, online mobile votes from all across the world, and ratings from professional adjudicators and critics.
It is believed that the criteria for this year Bongsang award were as follows 50% in digital (streaming and downloading), 30% voting, 10% for the voting committee and 10% experts’ choices.
I have tried to find official links that confirm this is the criteria but I haven’t so I am not 100% sure it’s the right one but this is what everyone agrees on for now. So let’s discuss why EXO should have won a Bongsang award.
First, in streaming and downloading EXO leads all other artists with more than 21 million hits. For universe 10.3 million and for TPOM 11.5 million streams.
This is counting from the period of 01.09.2017 to 25.08.2018, so the argument that EXO didn’t win because they didn’t have a comeback in 2018 is now invalid because the awards show calculates as of last year after the first award show ceremony was held.
So this means that, across the board, EXO topped all of the competitors in the 4th quarter of 2017 and 3 quarters of 2018 despite their inactivity during 2018.
To add to that, there is also the voting part which counts for 30%, which EXO had also won as well since the fandom spent so much time voting for EXO to ensure they take home an award.
Even if the voting committee and experts’ choices didn’t vote for EXO it wouldn’t matter by now because EXO had already secured a Bongsang win hypothetically.
However, this wasn’t the case and this is why EXO-Ls are very frustrated right now. The fandom at first tried to ask for an explanation, they demanded one from Soribada but they didn’t reply.
EXO-Ls (Koreans and international) paid for the streaming service that is Soribada, it is known that fandoms usually hold streaming parties to get their favs to top the Korean charts.
The fandom also talks about the pressure of voting for EXO and how they were allegedly convinced they had to vote as much as they could in a span of time to secure the voting part for EXO.
This is why a lawsuit idea was formed because the fandom feels that EXO was mistreated and set aside because they simply didn’t attend the event.
They (Korean EXO-Ls) plan on consulting a law firm and see if there is a possibility to sue, the fandom says they will give a reply on Monday to see if its possible.
This is why EXO-Ls are upset and this is why they are suing, since the rest of Kpop fandoms might not be aware of whats going on, I thought I should explain.
Now, whether EXO-Ls are going overboard suing Soribada or not remains a controversial topic. Some think they are overreacting while others are happy because they are taking such a stance against the giant streaming service.
What do you think of this?
