Global Streaming Of K-Pop Artists Increased By 42% Compared To Last Year

Due to the K-Pop wave spreading worldwide, global streaming of Korean artists has increased compared to last year. According to American music market analysis company Luminate’s weekly report, Tuesday Takeaway, this year’s cumulative on-demand audio and video streaming of the top 100 K-pop singers increased by 42% from last year.

Luminate is a reputable company that provides various music-related sales data to the U.S. Billboard charts, and the fact that it highlighted the growth here proves that K-pop is growing rapidly in the global music market.

Looking at each country, Japan was found to be the country where K-pop was listened to the most, followed by the United States, Indonesia, Korea, India, the Philippines, and Mexico.

Luminate analyzed that “the number of K-pop streams in Vietnam and Hong Kong showed impressive growth, increasing by 59% and 60%, respectively, compared to the same period last year.”

Top 7 K-Pop streaming countries this year | LUMINATE

In Japan, which is considered the largest K-pop market, the popularity of Korean singers was found to be led by women of Generation Z (born between the mid-1990s and 2000s).

Based on its own survey results, Luminate introduced, “39% of Japanese Generation Z women listen to K-pop, and the likelihood of listening to K-pop is 105% higher than that of the general Japanese.”

In particular, Luminate also released regional streaming data for the so-called “Top 5” K-pop groups such as BTS, TWICE, BLACKPINK, Stray Kids, and NewJeans.

According to this, all five groups had a large proportion of Asia, but the degree of dependence varied greatly depending on the group.

Streaming proportions of top five K-Pop groups by region | LUMINATE

Asia accounted for 67.6% of NewJeans streaming, followed by North America (USA and Canada) 14.4%, Latin America 9.0%, and Europe 7.2%. TWICE and BLACKPINK also accounted for more than half of the Asian votes, with 59.6% and 58.7%, respectively.

BTS’s share in the Americas reached 34.9%, with 20.2% in Latin America and 14.7% in North America. Stray Kids also had 37.2% in America, with 16.3% in Latin America and 20.9% in North America.

Luminate said, “It is important that the regional composition (of streaming) varies depending on the singer,” and added, “For example, more than 60% of Stray Kids’ streams came from outside Asia, and 29% of them were consumed in the United States, Mexico, and Brazil.”