SEOUL— A federal antitrust hearing took a bizarre turn yesterday when industry insiders testified about the mechanics behind the Billboard 200. Counsel pressed witnesses on how every major release achieves immediate chart dominance. The official list of K-pop albums on Billboard 200 charts came under intense scrutiny during the heated cross-examination.
PROSECUTOR: Please state your name and occupation for the record.
WITNESS: My name is Min-jun Park. I am the Director of Strategic Cardboard Logistics for Seoul Entertainment Group.
PROSECUTOR: Mr. Park, your firm shipped four million copies of a single release last month. Yet, BTS and other massive groups have millions of fans who only stream music. Why did you ship so much physical paper?
WITNESS: The fans require the photo cards, sir. The music is merely a heavy coaster that comes with the portrait of the handsome boys.
PROSECUTOR: You are saying nobody listens to the CDs?
WITNESS: We do not even put music on the CDs anymore. We just burn the sound of a dial-up modem onto the plastic. Nobody has noticed because no one owns a CD player. They just stack the boxes in their closets to help their favorite group win the weekly trophy.
PROSECUTOR: Is it true that you sold one album in eighty-four different collectible covers to inflate the number of K-pop albums on Billboard 200 lists?
WITNESS: Yes. If a fan does not buy all eighty-four covers, they do not truly love the band. We also put a single piece of the singer's hair in every ten-thousandth box. It drove physical sales up by four hundred percent.
PROSECUTOR: And where do the leftover plastic discs go?
WITNESS: We dump them into the Pacific Ocean. The turtles like the shiny colors.
