The K-pop industry experienced significant growth last year, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry’s "Global Music Report 2019." BTS and BLACKPINK were cited as artists leading the market growth.
In 2018, the South Korean music market experienced a 17.9% increase in revenue growth, and it was described as “shifting from ‘potential’ to ‘power player.’” The country also ranked at No. 6 among the top 10 music markets worldwide.
While revenue for physical sales declined by 10.1% worldwide, countries like Korea, Japan and India actually saw increased growth. In fact, Asia became the second-largest region for “physical and digital music combined for the first time.”
Although Spotify hasn’t launched in Korea, K-pop artists widely upload their work to the streaming platform as well as collaborate on projects such as personal playlists.
Last year, BTS became the second most-streamed group on Spotify behind Imagine Dragons.
Over on IFPI’s charts, BTS had the Nos. 2 (Love Yourself: Answer) and 3 (Love Yourself: Tear) top global albums last year with 2.7 million and 2.3 million album units, respectively. They also hit No. 2 on the top 10 global recording artists chart.
“From day one, K-pop has been one of the key focus genres for our editors in Singapore,” David Erlandsson, Spotify’s data scientist, told IFPI. “These playlists were originally created for the South East Asian markets, but, as playlists have no borders, their popularity has since travelled around the world and there is now a more global focus on the genre.”
He also said that K-pop artists got over 100 million streams from listeners in Peru, Canada and France last year.
It’s clear that K-pop is making strides in a global market that is more internationally connected than ever before.
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