2020 is only five months in. However, the competition is pretty rough in terms of making an impression on South Korea's music charts. MelOn, being one of the most successful music streaming services in the country, has released multiple chart rankings based on time. They have recorded an accurate representation of how many Unique Listeners have been tuning in to a specific song over an hour, a day, and even a month.
As of May 7, 2020, the highest-ranked song on MelOn's yearly charts is none other than Zico's "Any Song," garnering over a whopping 58,623,116 Unique Listeners since its release in January this year.
Leading up to it is solo artist Changmo's "Meteor" with approximately 50,141,615 Unique Listeners, which is just a few numbers less than "Any Song."
In third place is Red Velvet's latest comeback with "Psycho," which is recorded to have 37,811,227 Unique Listeners.
Other songs included in the top 10 are IU's "Blueming," Boem June's "Your Shampoo Scent in the Flowers," NOEL's "Late Night," GAHO's "Start," Yerin Baek's "Here I Am Again," MAMAMOO's "Hip" and Various Artist's "Imma Do."
Noticeably, the only idol group included in the top 10 are female groups Red Velvet and MAMAMOO. At the same time, the song under the rap genre is the collaboration song "Imma Do" by YUMDDA, Deepflow, Paloalto, The Quiett, and Simon Dominic featuring Woo, Keem Hyoeun, Nucksal, and Huckleberry P.
Another thing to take note of is that IU has two other songs, "Give You My Heart" and "Love Poem," charting high on the charts, she's the only solo artist doing this so far. Similarly, the only idol group to have three songs included in the top 20 is BTS with "Boy With Luv," "Black Swan," and their most recent title track, "ON."
Please take note that these results are cumulative findings from January 2020 to April 2020 only. Other songs that were recently released in May were not included in the computation.
MelOn is not only one of the most popular online music stores and music streaming services in South Korea, but it is the largest music subscription service in the country as well. With over 28 million users who can download music and MVs and create custom phone ringtones, it's no wonder why other international music streaming services are having some difficulties in setting up roots in the country.
Moreover, MelOn has previously and currently sponsored a list of music-related TV shows such as SBS's Inkigayo (October 2010 - December 2016) and all six seasons of K-pop Star (2011-2017), MBC's Show! Music Core (August 2014 - March 2018), Show Campion (January 2013 - May 2018) and King of Mask Singer (July 2017), KBS 2TV's Yu Huiyeol's Sketchbook and Immortal Songs: Singing the Legend and Music Bank (January 2020) and finally JTBC's Tribe of Hip Hop and MIXNINE (2017-2018).
Moreover, the large music-streaming site holds the annual year-end award show, Melon Music Awards (MMA), which is dedicated to acknowledging artists who have ranked high on top of the charts during the duration of the year. The company calculates the digital sales of an artist based on MelOn's charts as well as online votes by fans on their website.
