What actually counts as a stream on Korea's charts

There is no single published rule for how a stream counts in Korea. Each music service publishes its own arithmetic, the national chart applies a different one on top of them and where the published rules meet they do not always agree: the two largest services, Melon and Genie, publish opposite answers to the question of whether a muted play counts.

So this is not a guide to “how the count works”. It is a guide to what each operator publishes about its own count, read in the order a play travels — the service where the play happened, that service’s own chart and Circle Chart (써클차트), Korea’s national popular-music chart, above them. Where nobody publishes an answer, this guide says so plainly. On this topic that is usually the more useful sentence, and it is why a fan-community summary and an operator’s own notice so often disagree.

Every page cited here was read on 27 August 2026, and every date below is the date the operator put on its own notice.

1. Work out which chart the question is about

Two different things are called “the chart”.

• Circle Chart (써클차트) is the national popular-music chart, operated by the Korea Popmusic Industry Association (사단법인 한국대중음악산업협회). It was called Gaon Chart (가온차트) until 7 July 2022, when the association rebranded it to take in K-pop data from overseas platforms as well as Korean ones.
• Each music service also publishes a chart of its own, built from its own listeners: Melon (멜론), Genie (지니), Bugs (벅스), FLO (플로) and VIBE (바이브).

They answer different questions. A service chart measures that service’s own listeners on that service’s own clock. Circle Chart measures no listeners at all: it receives counts from services and re-weights them.

Circle Chart does not publish which services it collects from. Its operator’s page states only that it is officially supplied with K-pop data from Korea and from global platforms, and names none of them. The only naming on the record comes from the association speaking to the press at the July 2022 rebrand: Newsis and etnews both reported it collecting domestic data from Melon, Genie, Bugs, FLO and VIBE, and having signed data partnerships with YouTube in 2020, TikTok and Spotify in 2021 and Apple Music in 2022. That is a statement made in 2022, and it does not say which chart each feed reaches. Circle Chart’s own FAQ places YouTube videos containing a released track in its Social Chart 3.0, and worldwide K-pop streaming in its Global K-pop Chart — both separate from the domestic streaming chart.

2. Read Circle Chart’s formula for the streaming chart

Circle Chart’s FAQ states the streaming chart in one sentence: each digital release’s streaming count is multiplied by a weight for the service it happened on (서비스별 가중치), and the weighted results are added together. The chart is therefore not a total of plays, and one play is not one point.

The weight is described as being based on neighbouring-rights fees (저작인접권료 — the fees due to performers, record producers and broadcasters, which are separate from the songwriter’s copyright).

• The digital comprehensive chart (디지털 종합차트) is the combined one: download, streaming, background-music and V-coloring counts, each multiplied by its weight and summed.
• The weight values are not published. Circle Chart states that the weights exist and what they are based on; no number appears anywhere on its site. Nothing published turns a play into a chart figure, so any conversion table claiming to do it is not working from Circle Chart’s own material.
• There is no per-site ratio. Circle Chart’s FAQ says one play on an unlimited-listening product on Genie is reflected identically to one play on an unlimited-listening product on FLO: the weight attaches to the kind of product, not to the brand.
• Gifting sits outside the count. A song given and received as a gift is not reflected in Circle Chart.

3. Check the week Circle Chart counts, and the day it publishes

Circle Chart’s digital charts are periodic rather than live, and its FAQ gives every window with its publication time.

• Weekly: Sunday 12:00 noon to the following Sunday 11:59, published that Thursday at 11:00.
• Monthly: the 1st at 12:00 noon to 11:59 on the day after the last day of the month, published the second Thursday of the month at 11:00.
• First half: 1 January 12:00 noon to 1 July 11:59, published the second Friday of July at 11:00.
• Yearly: 1 January 12:00 noon to the following 1 January 11:59, published the second Friday of January at 11:00.

A public holiday falling in the week can move a publication date.

There is no national real-time chart and no national daily digital chart. The hourly charts that exist belong to individual services, and the shortest window Circle Chart’s digital charts use is a week.

4. Read Melon’s weighting and its one-play-per-account rule

Melon publishes the usage score (음원점수) it applies to every one of its charts: streaming counts for 40% and download for 60%.

• The TOP100 combines the last 24 hours of usage at 50% with the last hour at 50%, updated hourly. Between 01:00 and 07:00, when few people are listening, Melon issues the chart on the last 24 hours alone, stating that this prevents chart distortion; the 01:00 and 08:00 charts, where the ratio changes, show no rank movement.
• The HOT100 covers songs within 30 or 100 days of first release and uses the last hour of usage. It is not published between 01:00 and 07:00, and the 07:00 chart shows no rank movement.
• The daily, weekly, monthly and yearly charts rank on the same usage score.

Then the single most consequential sentence Melon publishes: on all of its charts, streaming is counted once per account ID, and a download is counted on the first download only, with re-downloads not included. A second play from the same account adds nothing to the score. There is no per-account limit to describe, because the published figure is one.

No Korean service publishes a numeric daily or hourly limit per account. The closest thing on the public record is a 2013 culture ministry policy paper, which set out a direction of limiting how many times one ID could be counted for one song in a day; no service publishes the number it settled on.

The shape of the TOP100 also explains a result that otherwise looks impossible. Because it measures the last 24 hours and the last hour, it is a chart of recent listening rather than of a total since release. Money Today reported on 9 July 2026 that ‘LOVE ATTACK’ by RESCENE had reached number one on Melon; Bugs lists the song as a title track of the mini album SCENEDROME, released on 27 August 2024. A chart built on the last day of listening can be led by a song from two years earlier.

5. Read Genie’s rule for when a stream is counted

Genie’s help centre publishes its counting basis in four lines.

• It counts streaming and download usage arising on a PC and in the smartphone app.
• Streaming and download are both reflected in the usage figure.
• A download is counted on the first download only; re-downloads are not counted.
• “스트리밍은 스트리밍 재생 완료 시 집계가 이루어집니다” — a stream is counted when playback completes.

That last line is the only threshold any of these operators publishes, and it is an event rather than a length of time. No Korean service publishes a minimum number of seconds — not Circle Chart, Melon, Genie, Bugs or FLO. The “one minute” repeated across fan summaries appears in none of their published rules. The only official one minute on Melon’s site is the length of the preview a listener gets without a paid pass, which is a payment boundary rather than a counting rule, and Melon does not publish whether a preview play counts.

Genie also publishes a list of things that make no difference to its chart: the amount paid, the subscription plan, mute, the audio-quality setting, the playback method, download quality and use from overseas.

Genie’s windows are on its chart page. The real-time chart is hourly; the daily chart runs from 12:00 noon the previous day over twelve hours; the weekly chart from Monday 12:00 noon over one week; the monthly chart over the previous calendar month — each summing streaming and download. Genie’s real-time chart is not operated between 01:00 and 07:00, and the 07:00 chart reflects 06:00 to 07:00. That overnight stop began at 01:00 on 11 July 2018 by a decision of the Gaon Chart Policy Committee (가온차트 정책위원회), a body made up of the Korea Music Content Association and the domestic music services, which is why several services stopped at the same time.

6. Compare what each service refuses to count

This is where the published rules stop agreeing with one another.

• Melon: from 00:00 on 1 October 2023, abnormal listening history is excluded from chart counting. Melon’s notice describes it as listening mechanically with the volume set to zero, and applies the exclusion to the TOP100, the HOT100 and the daily, weekly, monthly and yearly charts. When Melon launched the TOP100 in August 2021 it also said it was strengthening technical blocking of abnormal use and constant monitoring.
• Genie: mute appears on its published list of things unrelated to its chart, alongside the subscription plan and the amount paid.
• FLO: a notice of 18 March 2020 replaced the real-time chart with the FLO chart, changing hourly counting to a 24-hour cumulative count refreshed every hour in order to prevent abnormal patterns over a short window, and applying machine learning that excludes distorting play patterns from the ranking. SK Telecom’s newsroom described the same change in April 2020. FLO’s help centre publishes no counting rule, and that notice is its newest published statement on the subject.
• Bugs: one published sentence on the chart page — listens and downloads within the counting period are summed.
• VIBE: no counting rule published at all.

Two of those are opposite answers to the same question about muted play, and both are current. Neither operator explains the other’s rule, and none of them publishes how it decides that a listening pattern is abnormal.

7. Read the law that sits above the count

Above every operator’s arithmetic sits a statute, and it is the reason a guide like this describes the mechanism and goes no further.

• The Music Industry Promotion Act (음악산업진흥에 관한 법률), Article 26(1)1, in force since 26 June 2025, prohibits parties in the record and music-video business from improperly buying — or having related parties improperly buy — releases they produce, import or distribute, in order to raise those releases’ sales figures. Article 26(1)2 prohibits publishing sales figures while knowing that this has happened. Under Article 26(3)3 the culture minister or a provincial governor may issue an order excluding a release from the sales count (판매집계 제외명령).
• The penalty, Article 34(3)2-2: imprisonment of up to two years or a fine of up to 20 million won.
• The conduct is called chart manipulation in English and 음원 사재기 — literally music-source hoarding — in Korean. The government’s 2013 definition is buying a release improperly, or having specialist firms or other related parties buy it, in order to manipulate its chart rank or its royalty income.
• Who it reaches: when the 2016 amendment passed, the culture ministry stated that it punishes the businesses involved in producing, distributing and using such releases, and also people paid by those businesses to buy releases improperly and that collective fan action mobilised by an agency is included in what is punishable. The provision is written about industry parties and paid purchasing; it does not describe an ordinary listener playing music.
• Where the line falls is deliberately unpublished. The 2013 paper said the standard would be set at a level agreed between rights holders and service operators, considering the average number of plays per user and the arithmetically possible maximum — that is, by deviation from ordinary use rather than by an announced number.

That is where the published record ends, and this guide with it. It sets out what the operators say they count, and it does not tell anyone what to do with that. When a rule looks as though it has changed, the published record is the operators’ own channels: Melon’s customer-centre announcement board, Genie’s help centre and Circle Chart’s FAQ page, all linked in the sources below. A fan-community summary is a pointer to those pages rather than a substitute for one.

Frequently asked questions

Does playing a song twice count twice?

On Melon, no. Its published rule is that streaming is counted once per account ID on every one of its charts, and that a re-download is never counted. Genie and Bugs publish a first-download-only rule but no per-stream rule, so for them there is no published answer.

How long does a song have to play before it counts?

No Korean service publishes a number of seconds. Genie is the only operator that publishes a threshold at all, and it is playback completion rather than a duration. The one minute often quoted appears in none of these operators’ published rules; the only official one minute is the preview length Melon gives a listener without a paid pass.

Does a play on mute count?

The two largest services publish opposite rules, and both are current. Melon has excluded listening recorded with the volume set to zero and driven mechanically since 1 October 2023. Genie publishes that mute is unrelated to its chart.

Is the Circle Chart streaming chart a total of plays, and is one service worth more than another?

It is not a total. Each service’s count is multiplied by a weight for that kind of service product, based on neighbouring-rights fees, and the weighted results are added; the weight values are not published. Circle Chart states there is no per-site ratio — one play on an unlimited-listening product is reflected the same whichever service it happened on.

Is there a national real-time chart?

No. Circle Chart publishes weekly, monthly, first-half and yearly digital charts. The hourly charts belong to individual services, and those services do not run them between 01:00 and 07:00, following a Gaon Chart Policy Committee decision that took effect on 11 July 2018.

Does gifting a song count?

No. Circle Chart’s FAQ states that gifting and receiving a song are not reflected in the chart.

Does a paid subscription change how a play counts?

Genie publishes that the subscription plan and the amount paid are unrelated to its chart. Melon publishes a separate product fact: without a pass a listener hears a one-minute preview instead of the full track, and a pass is required for full-track streaming and downloads. Melon does not publish whether a preview play counts.

What totals does Circle Chart certify?

Circle Chart certifies songs released on or after 1 January 2018, from their release date. For streaming the thresholds are 100 million cumulative streams (Platinum) and 1 billion (Billion); for downloads, 2.5 million (Platinum) and 10 million (Diamond). Certification covers online on-demand streaming and downloads, and free promotional tracks are excluded.