Gaon Music Chart

The Gaon Music Chart (Korean: ) tabulates the relative weekly popularity of songs or albums in South Korea. It is produced by the Korea Music Content Association and sponsored by South Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, with an aim to create a national chart for South Korea similar to the "Billboard" charts of the United States and the Oricon charts of Japan. It started tracking sales since the beginning of 2010. It was officially launched in February 2010 with a launching ceremony held on February 23, 2010 at the Westin Chosun hotel in Seoul. The launch also included a small awarding ceremony, which awarded girl group Girls' Generation with top artist of January and boy band Super Junior with best album of 2009. Meanwhile, the song "We Fell In Love", performed by Jo Kwon of 2AM and Ga-in of Brown Eyed Girls, took the title of best weekly mobile ringtone.
In February 2011, it published information on both online and offline album sales of 2010, including a detailed breakdown of online chart data and was the first time since 2008 that offline album sales were released, since the Music Industry Association of Korea had stopped compiling data.
Music charts.
There are two primary charts: Gaon Album Chart and Gaon Digital Chart. The charts lists domestic artists' sales, international (non-Korean) artists' sales and a combined overall sales in weekly, monthly and year-end format.
The Gaon Album Chart ranks physical album shipments, including mini and single albums. It is compiled from offline data provided by record labels and distributors such as Kakao M, CJ E&M Music, Genie Music, Sony Music Korea, Pony Canyon Korea, Universal Music Korea, and Warner Music Korea.
The Gaon Digital Chart ranks best-selling non-physical, digital music sales, and is an aggregate of downloads, streaming and background music. It excludes radio airplay, and different versions of a song are listed as separate entries. It is compiled from online data provided by web-based music providers such as Genie, Melon, Mnet, Soribada, Naver Music, KakaoMusic and Bugs. There is no digital album chart because each song is a separate digital download.
All charts rank the top 100. Before mid-2014 and 2018 until now, the digital, streaming, download, and noraebang charts ranked the top 200.
Social charts.
The Gaon Social Chart is a weekly chart that ranks the top 50 most popular K-pop artists using data from V Live, Mubeat, SMR, and Mycelebs.
The Gaon Weibo Chart was a weekly chart that ranked the top 10 most popular K-pop groups and the top 30 most popular individual K-pop artists in China using data from Weibo.
Certification.
In April 2018, Gaon introduced music recording certifications for albums, downloads and streaming. Album certifications are awarded based on shipment figures provided by record labels and distributors. Download and streaming certifications are awarded to songs based on online data provided by web-based music providers. Albums and songs released on or after January 1, 2018 are eligible for certification.