ARMY takes to Twitter to protest Billboard ranking of Jimin’s latest track

Boy band BTS’s fan club ARMY started an online protest against Billboard on Tuesday, claiming that the U.S. music chart tweaked its rules to lower BTS member Jimin’s rankings.

Billboard announced the latest chart on Tuesday with Jimin sitting at No. 45 on the Hot 100 singles chart with his latest song “Like Crazy.”  The Hot 100 singles is considered the most important of all Billboard’s charts.

Jimin’s ranking this week’s is down 44 places from the previous week when he became the first K-pop soloist to sit at No. 1 on the Hot 100 chart. His album “FACE” sat at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 albums, another record for a solo K-pop artist.

Following the announcement, fans argued that Billboard had changed its rules so that the chart counted multiple purchases from one person only as one valid purchase, and started a hashtag movement on Twitter using the phrases “#BillboardCorrupt” and “#BillboardRacist.”

Contrary to the Top 200 albums chart, which only takes into account album sales, streams and downloads, radio airplay is also calculated into the Hot 100 chart metrics, making it difficult for non-English songs to climb the charts.

Over 1 million tweets had been posted under the #BillboardCorrupt hashtag as of Tuesday afternoon.

Billboard has not released a statement regarding the issue.

BY YOON SO-YEON [yoon.soyeon@joongang.co.kr]