Hallyu heavyweights BIGBANG and EXO both held their respective comebacks last week, with this week marking the start of the intense competition between the two groups to emerge as champions on the major weekly music shows, namely M! Countdown, Inkigayo, Music Bank and Show! Music Core.
M! Countdown and Inkigayo in particular were pinpointed by fans of the respective groups with lapses that occurred during the voting process. M! Countdown’s current system that determines the weekly winner consists of 50 percent digital music sales, 10 percent album sales volume, 10 percent social media, 10 percent popularity, 10 percent broadcast and 10 percent live broadcast real time voting score.
Of which, the validity of this week’s popularity score, which is determined through the results of global voting on their official site, was questioned. EXO was in the lead when the votes were slated to close at 8 am local time (9 am KST) but it appeared that fans were still allowed to vote even after the voting window, which resulted in BIGBANG coming in tops for this week’s poll.
In response, the team confirmed that there was an issue with the deadline but assured fans that the tally which will be reflected in this week’s results will only take votes that were made prior to the cutoff timing into consideration.
Likewise, Inkigayo incurred the wrath of fans for putting up BIGBANG’s ‘BANG BANG BANG’ for voting 41 hours late. Their pre-show scoring system can be broken down into the following: 55 percent digital sales, 35 percent SNS scores, five percent performance score and five percent online voting.
In addition, an apology was issued when EXO’s ‘LOVE ME RIGHT’ was put up seven hours later than scheduled and voting by email was allowed for their case. As such, VIPs (BIGBANG’s fans) baulked at the differential treatment between the two groups.