“The Law of the 17th Day” — The Surprising Coincidence Between FIFTY FIFTY, H1-KEY, and Zior Park’s Success

South Korea’s Circle Chart director, Steve Choirecently shared an interesting and unexpected coincidence between the recent releases by FIFTY FIFTY, H1-Keyand Zior Park. All of these K-Pop acts were met with a surprising amount of success, seemingly out of nowhere. While analyzing the commercial response to these artists’ releases, Choi highlighted that they all experienced a rise in the charts on the 17th day after their release.

The Circle Chart director referred to this phenomenon as “The Law of the 17th Day.”

There’s no doubt most K-Pop fans have heard of FIFTY FIFTY’s massive success through their megahit “Cupid.” However, H1-Key and Zior Park also gained unprecedented attention, similar to FIFTY FIFTY, with “Rose Blossom” and “Christian,” respectively. During his analysis of the artists’ releases, Steve Choi pointed out that all of the songs found success several days after they had been released.

After showing the difference the 17th day of streaming showed in the chart ranking graphs, Choi started explaining what, in his opinion, made this sudden rise possible. He attributed this phenomenon to global streaming, stating that from the 17th day and onwards, “Cupid” started receiving over 1 million daily global streams. This amount of streams is considered to be an amazing achievement for K-Pop groups.

Their performance is outstanding overseas.

— Steve Choi

Adding to FIFTY FIFTY’s global appeal, which only increased their global numbers further, is also the English version of “Cupid.” Choi stated that global fans and listeners likely found it easier to listen to the song’s English lyrics.

When explaining a graph that compared the daily streams gained by both versions of “Cupid,” Choi highlighted a specific point. On that particular day, the streams for “Cupid”‘s English version surpassed the streams of the Korean one. Choi then revealed that the day was precisely the 17th day since its release, which marked the point after which the daily streams for the English version of “Cupid” started rising at a much higher rate than the Korean version.

This is the point where the song starts to spark. From then on, it gradually increases, and it takes a big leap… This is on a roll. It reached streams of over 3 million.

— Steve Choi

Similarly to FIFTY FIFTY’s “Cupid”, H1-Key’s “Rose Blossom” also started rising little by little on the 17th day. And so did Zior Park’s “Christian.”

The Circle Chart Director then took this opportunity to explain that “The Law of the 17th Day” is proof producers and singers should not give up if their song isn’t doing so well in the first few days of release. He added that there are different factors that can make a song find success later on while emphasizing that for these three releases, it was past the 17th day.

It’s unnecessary for [producers] to be upset just because [they] didn’t get any response in the first week. We have to sit and wait for at least 15 days. You never know what’s going to happen. This is the world we are living in.

— Steve Choi