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On June 29, 2024, BTS ARMY flooded X with their outrage as Park Jimin's latest single, Smeraldo Garden Marching Band (feat. LOCO), allegedly got its YouTube views deleted. Fans rallied behind the matter and tagged YouTube's official X account, @YouTube, and sought an explanation regarding the same.
The BTS singer-songwriter dropped the pre-release single, Smeraldo Garden Marching Band, from his forthcoming solo album, MUSE, on June 28. The song topped the iTunes chart in over 100 countries within 3 hours of its release.
Additionally, the song reached #1 on the YouTube Music videos trending worldwide chart on June 29 across 43 countries, however, fans claimed that his views allegedly got deleted on YouTube. As of June 29, 2024, at 8:15 AM (PST), the track's video has 6,566,470 YouTube views. One fan expressed their anger and wrote on X:
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"The same happened to Like Crazy. The reasons could have been the ones I mentioned in this tweet- but there could always be side reasons yk this industry is messed up. Sabotages are real"
The BTS fandom shared screenshots and recording clips of Livecounts.io, a website to track YouTube followers and MV views in real time. Allegedly, some fans claimed that millions of views were deleted from Jimin's Smeraldo Garden Marching Band's live views tracking. Here's how the ARMY reacted:
"I was witness 2x yesterday lost around 1,6 m in front of my eyes in 3h ... it's awful... I am mad as hell" — an X user wrote.
"This needs to be investigated. Which label is paying u to delete his views? Why does this sabotage happen to Jimin only?? All these injustice happening to Jm, why?" — an X user wrote.
"It only happens to bts. they began doing this after butter and ptd they put on a automatic filter to delete a certain amount of views in an hour. I remember it kept happening for rm’s wildflower too it was stuck at 99 mil no matter what we did. Same with like crazy" — an X user wrote.
Fans further gave prior examples of how YouTube allegedly deleted views from the BTS videos.
"So for Face era, YT deleted views. When questioned, did they not restore them? I'm so sick of this. First Geffen and now YT. It's frustrating because other groups don't seem to have these issues, only BTS.[...] Why are they not being deleted???" — an X user wrote.
"There's definitely something fishy. mind to explain? @YouTube. youtube always does this every time bts releases new projects. We need explanations right now @YouTube" — an X user wrote.
"His views or still deleted by @YTCreateurs @YouTube. This sabotage Is not funny anymore, we create premium accounts to stream correctly & when some are cheating the streams for their artist it's normal. I want to know how much their companie paid you to deleting his Millions views" — an X user wrote.
BTS Jimin stirs the music industry with his latest release despite getting his YouTube views allegedly deleted
Smeraldo Garden Marching Band (feat. LOCO) has already taken the top place on the iTunes Top Songs rankings in 110 countries as of June 29, 2024. These included the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Japan, Brazil, Costa Rica, Germany, Australia, Spain, and Canada, among others.
It became the fastest song in 2024 to reach #1 on the Worldwide and European iTunes song charts across 100 countries within three hours of its release, surpassing BTS Jungkook's Never Let Go. Furthermore, it scored an ALL-KILL in the eight biggest music markets including the United States, Japan, and Brazil, among others. BTS Park Jimin's second solo album, MUSE, is anticipated to be released on July 19 at 1 PM KST.
The album touches on the theme of love and finding true inspiration to live one's life—a stark contrast to the artist's debut solo album, FACE, which spoke about loneliness, inner struggle, depression, and losing a loved one. Smeraldo Garden Marching Band (feat. LOCO) gave a peek at MUSE's optimistic theme centering around happiness, inspiration, love, and hope.
In other news, Park Jimin of BTS enlisted in the Republic of Korea Army (ROK Army) on December 12, 2024, alongside his bandmate, Jungkook. Jimin is currently serving in the 5th Infantry Division and is reportedly a part of the fire artillery unit. Additionally, Jimin is reported to return from the military in June 2025 after completing his mandatory 18 months of military service.
