It has become increasingly common for K-Pop groups to have hundreds of photocards of their members for fans to collect in their album releases. The management behind groups like SEVENTEEN, NCT DREAM, and others have drawn criticism for this trend, which has made it practically impossible for fans to get full collections of photocards without spending an exorbitant amount of money.
Photocards for NCT DREAM’s ISTJ album
It has also led to many people buying tons of albums just for the photocards, which has led to a huge problem with waste created by the habit.
Waste created from thrown away albums
Additionally, though more and more artists are reaching sales milestones these days, some netizens think that these numbers aren’t really an accurate portrayal of their popularity due to so many fans buying multiple — sometimes dozens or more — albums just for themselves.
Up until now, it seems like it’s been mostly boy groups that have had this issue be extreme enough for fans to protest against. But recently the team behind NMIXX has earned similar criticism after it was revealed how many photocards there were for the group’s most recent album, A Midsummer NMIXX’s Dream.
NMIXX | JYP Entertainment
The single album, released back in July, included just two songs — “Party O’Clock” and “Roller Coaster” — and two instrumentals of each of them. Despite the small album, though, there are allegedly a whopping 150+ photocards per member, which would mean there are a total of 900 cards or more to collect.
Haewon’s photocards for A Midsummer NMIXX’s Dream
Some of the cards are harder to get than others, such as for certain events, lucky draws, and specific platforms to buy the albums on that have exclusive versions. It’s hard to believe that anyone would genuinely try to collect all of even one member’s photocards, but the album currently has over 922k sales, a big leap from their last single album, Entwurf, which sold around 560k. This suggests that the marketing method is working.
Here’s how netizens are reacting to the realization that NMIXX’s team has joined the growing list of groups that have way too many photocards to be reasonable in their albums.
Most netizens seem to think that this kind of promotional material can’t be sustainable, and hope that photocard numbers come back down to more reasonable amounts soon.
