Two solo comebacks in one show. In English, seven of eight soloists are outread by their group
Taemin and TEN both had comeback stages on Music Core on 5 September. We put eight K-pop soloists beside their own group on English Wikipedia: only Hwasa is read more than their own group. Jimin sits at 0.27 of BTS.
The table this is written from: /member-vs-group
On 5 September, Music Core carried two solo comeback stages by members of groups: Taemin of SHINee with “Float”, and TEN of NCT and WayV with “Outwest”. Two people stepping out from under a group name on the same afternoon.
That is a good day to ask a question we can actually answer: when a member goes solo, do English-language readers follow the person, or stay with the group?
Seven of eight stay with the group
| Soloist | Reads/day | Group | Reads/day | Times the group |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hwasa | 795 | Mamamoo | 687 | 1.16 |
| Taemin | 414 | SHINee | 573 | 0.72 |
| Sunmi | 286 | Wonder Girls | 452 | 0.63 |
| Rosé | 2,461 | Blackpink | 4,337 | 0.57 |
| Jihyo | 597 | Twice | 1,572 | 0.38 |
| Baekhyun | 285 | EXO | 808 | 0.35 |
| TEN | 232 | NCT | 692 | 0.34 |
| Jimin | 2,091 | BTS | 7,869 | 0.27 |
Median daily English Wikipedia reads over the last 30 days. The full comparison, including four other languages, is here.
Only Hwasa is read more than their own group, and only just. Everybody else’s group page is opened more often than their own — in six of the eight cases, more than twice as often.
Scale does not rescue anyone. Rosé at 2,461 reads a day and Jimin at 2,091 are the two most-read individuals in the set, and both sit well under their groups. Being widely read yourself and being read more than your group turn out to be different things.
The answer changes with the language
We have measured this comparison before, on the Indonesian, Vietnamese, Thai and Malay Wikipedias. There, several members are read more than their groups.
In English, one of eight is.
We do not know why, and this measure cannot tell us — it holds page names and counts, nothing about who the readers are or what brought them. What it does establish is narrower and worth keeping: “readers” is not one group of people. Any sentence of the form the member is bigger than the group is incomplete until it says which language it was counted in. Ours now do.
What this is not
It is not a contest, and we are not scoring anyone. A person’s article and their group’s article answer different questions for whoever opened them, and the two counts cannot even be added — one reader can open both.
It is also not about today. Wikimedia fills in its counts about a day late, so neither Taemin’s nor TEN’s comeback is inside this measurement. The stages are why we asked, not part of the answer.
This counts people who opened an English Wikipedia page. It says nothing about sales, streams, charts, or audiences in Korea.
Where these numbers come from
Sources
- Wikimedia — Pageviews API, en.wikipedia, all-access, user agents only (bots excluded), daily, last 120 days, median of the most recent 30 days per article · https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/
- Wikipedia — REST summary endpoint, used to confirm each title is a person and not a disambiguation page. Kai was dropped for exactly this reason · https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php
- Reddit r/kpop — Comeback stage threads for Music Core, 5 September 2026, which is where the two same-day solo stages came from. We did not count anything on Reddit · https://www.reddit.com/r/kpop/
What we checked
- Medians, not averages, over 30 days. A comeback week would otherwise decide a figure by itself
- Each title was checked against Wikipedia's own one-line description before its reads were counted. Kai resolved to a disambiguation page and was dropped rather than counted as a person
- The two counts are never added or turned into percentages of a whole. A reader can open both the member's page and the group's, so there is no single audience to take a share of
- Eight pairs. The number is stated every time the result is, and it is not described as a rule about K-pop
- The comparison is repeated from an existing page that measures the same thing on four Southeast Asian Wikipedias, which is how we know the answer is language-dependent rather than fixed
- Today's reading is not in this. Wikimedia fills its counts in about a day late, so neither comeback is measured here
The data behind this
Written from the same data
Take this away — 10 cards
The figures in this article, as images. Free to repost with the address on them.
If you work in this business
Everything on this page is measured from the same weekly Netflix lists, per market and per title. We publish the pages free; what we sell is the same measurement cut to one company's catalogue — including the figures behind /member-vs-group and /rookie-reading.
What a company sheet contains, and what it cannot tell you →