SEVENTEEN’s Fandom Criticized For Throwing Away Their Albums On The Streets Of Japan: A Common KPOP Problem
SEVENTEEN's new albums piled up on the streets of Japan is causing heated controversy.
On April 29, SEVENTEEN officially made a comeback with “Best Album: 17 Is Right Here” and the MV “Maestro.” Promoting the group’s strong album sales, “Best Album: 17 Is Right Here” sold 2 million copies on the first day of sales.
However, a series of photos showing SEVENTEEN’s “17 Is Right Here” album piled up and thrown around on the streets of Japan recently made the fandom fiercely criticized. In particular, many SEVENTEEN album boxes were thrown away in the Parco Shibuya area with the message “Please feel free to use them,” which made netizens unhappy. Most of the albums were unboxed, all items of some albums had been taken, especially the photo cards, while the box, CD and even photo books were thrown away.
The most prominent problem is the amount of waste released into the environment. CDs and album boxes are very difficult to recycle. SEVENTEEN’s fandom was criticized by Japanese netizens because of this. Many people who buy albums only want to own the random cards and throw the rest in the trash. Besides, throwing away albums around also tarnishes the idol’s image, which cannot be accepted by fellow fans.
Some posts have been made to defend CARATs, saying that the above mentioned albums were not thrown away by the fandom, but by the sellers who bought the albums in large quantities, took the cards and offline codes to resell for profit. Not to mention, some album dealers collect orders from abroad and keeping the original album box will increase the shipping costs.
But whatever the reason, throwing away albums is worth criticizing. Not only SEVENTEEN, this has become a problem for all of Kpop. In recent years, Kpop has expanded its influence, leading to “album sale inflation”. Music groups continuously record million-copy sales, and many fandoms put their efforts into buying albums to increase their idols’ achievements for each comeback.
Groups with large fandoms such as BTS, BLACKPINK, SEVENTEEN, TWICE, Stray Kids, NCT all have this problem. The bigger it purchasing power is, the larger amount of album waste being released into the environment. Many companies choose recyclable materials to make albums to reduce the music industry’s negative impact on the environment. However, for every idol comeback, their sale-pushing policy of releasing many special versions and giving fansign tickets to fans who buy many albums still causes this problem to expand.
