South Korea's largest music subscription service Melon has revealed major changes to its ranking and chart system.
On May 19, Melon announced the top 100 real-time chart will now be calculated based on the number of unique users over the past 24 hours, and the ranking numbers will no longer show. The real-time chart will still update every hour as it previously did, but it will no longer be based on the amount of hourly usage for each song.
Additionally, the 'Play All' feature will now be shuffled by default. Previously, the 'Play All' feature would simply add the top 100 songs to a playlist in order.
Melon stated the changes are being made to decrease its focus on competition and let users discover a more diverse range of music and be exposed to more trending music.
The changes will be implemented this summer.
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I guess this is for the best. Kpop has just been way too much focused on competition and less about the music lately that even when a song by an unknown artist genuinely shoots up the ranks, they're automatically accused of manipulating the charts. Hopefully this way, more focus would be shifted to how good a song is that you want to replay it rather than replaying it to bump up the count.