Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
When you think about it, what would an Mnet survival show be without a manipulation controversy? It’s practically what they’re known best for, so it’s only appropriate that one arose for Queendom 2‘s final results as well.
About 10 hours ago, Mnet said they were looking into allegations that the final score for song streams were manipulated. Essentially, netizens thought it was odd that WJSN was given second place so close to LOONA‘s first place total and ahead of VIVIZ‘s third place total considering it was VIVIZ who had the second-most streams.
Well, all of two hours or so later, Mnet has cleared themselves of a manipulation controversy.
“In order to hear the voices of global K-Pop fans, Mnet counted global streaming scores using Spotify’s ‘Queendom 2 Playlist’. As previously detailed, the streaming scores factored in each daily play by each unique user on the ‘Queendom 2 Playlist’. Multiple plays in a day, as well as multiple plays by the same unique user, did not count toward the score. This streaming data was provided by the global streaming service, and the final points were tallied by a scoring official before the results were handed over to the staff of ‘Queendom 2’. After confirming with the scoring official, the scores shown on the final broadcast of ‘Queendom 2’ were correct. We would like to thank all fans for their interest in ‘Queendom 2’ all the way up to the finale.”
So basically they explain that the apparent discrepancy was just a methodology difference. That people were taking the total streams or total streams per day and they were taking daily unique listeners.
Plausible? Sure. Understandable if nobody takes them at their word? Also, sure. Regardless, as always the lesson is to care less about the competition aspect of this bullshit and just enjoy the performances/interactions, but Mnet knows full well that’s impossible to resist and thus we have mess.
Now I hate to step on Hojo’s toes here, as he will obviously be recapping the Queendom 2 finale like he has been doing for the show all season, but here’s a sneak peak:
