Market monitor Luminate‘s 2024 year-end report clearly shows K-Pop’s continued appeal outside of its home market of South Korea.
According to Luminate, no less than seven of the Top 10 biggest-selling CDs in the United States last year were K-pop albums.
The non-K-pop entries were – with two albums – Taylor Swift (The Tortured Poets Department at No.1 and 1989 Taylor’s Version at No.7), and, with one album, Billie Eilish, whose Hit Me Hard and Soft was the tenth-most sold CD in the United States last year.
The other seven albums on the list – all K-Pop albums – sold a combined 1.942 million CDs in the States last year (see below).
Indeed, as reported in Luminate’s new report, 73% of K-Pop superfans have purchased physical copies of music versus the average US music listener.
Yet over in K-Pop’s home market of South Korea, a significant decline in physical album sales in 2024 is a potentially worrying sign for one of the global music industry’s cultural export powerhouses.
After nine consecutive years of growth, cumulative sales for the Top 400 albums in South Korea fell by over 19% year over year in 2024.
That’s according to new data published by South Korea’s Circle Chart. As you can see from the graph below, 2024 was the first year since 2014 that album sales have declined in the South Korean market.
Circle, which tracks domestic sales in South Korea, is operated by the Korea Music Content Association.
The chart monitor reports in its Annual Chart Review that 93.3 million physical albums were sold in South Korea in 2024 – versus 115.7 million in 2023, the first – and so far only – year that the 100 million album sales threshold has been crossed in the market.
In addition to K-Pop’s domestic sales slump in 2024, growth in the global export of physical K-Pop albums also slowed last year.
New stats published by the Korea Customs Service show that the monetary value of K-Pop album exports reached USD $291.8 million in 2024, up just 0.55% YoY versus 2023.
As reported by the Yonhap news agency, last year’s performance followed a K-Pop boom during and directly after the pandemic, when the global export of K-Pop albums soared from an export value of $74.6 million in 2019 to $231.4 million in 2022.
Collectively, three markets, including Japan, the US, and China, accounted for 72.8% of all K-Pop album exports in 2024. Japan, the world’s second-largest recorded music market, was the biggest importer of K-Pop albums in 2024, with a value of $89.8 million.
The United States was the second-largest export destination for K-Pop albums, with $60.29 million in revenues. China, the third-biggest importer of K-Pop albums in 2024, generated $59.79 million in revenues from K-Pop exports last year.
According to that new Korea Customs Service data, K-Pop album exports to China soared 76.4% YoY in 2024, while album exports to Japan fell 24.7% YoY.
The album sales slump in the South Korean music industry could be attributed to several different factors, from a shift in fan spending to fewer blockbuster album releases.
Citing Circle Chart data, the Korea Times notes that the number of domestic acts that achieved over 3 million album sales annually in South Korea fell from 11 in 2023 to just seven in 2024.
The number of acts surpassing 1 million album sales fell from 26 in 2023 to 24 last year.
Another contributing factor is less commercial activity from superstar artists such as BTS and Blackpink, who, as the Korea Times says, “previously drove the market”.
Global superstars BTS, the flagship act from entertainment giant HYBE, are expected to reunite later this year once all of the group’s members have completed their compulsory military service in South Korea.
HYBE, the market’s largest K-Pop-focused entertainment company, reported a 1.9% YoY drop in revenue for Q3 (the three months to end of September).
The company’s recorded music revenues declined 18.8% YoY in Q3 to KRW 214.5 billion ($158.2 million), while revenues from concerts were down 14.8% YoY to KRW 74 billion ($54.6 million).
The company said on its Q3 investor relations call that “album releases by HYBE were less frequent [in the period] but with the continued growth of the fandom power of HYBE artists, revenue of indirect-artist involvement such as merchandise, licensing and content recorded a significant growth YoY”.
Another potential factor impacting sales of K-pop albums is the industry’s ongoing PR crisis, fueled by controversies such as the long-running and very public dispute between HYBE’s Ador label, its former President, and K-pop stars NewJeans.
Some of the latest news on that front saw HYBE’s Ador label take legal action against NewJeans, seeking to prevent the group’s members from pursuing independent activities without company approval.
NewJeans recently appointed law firm Shin & Kim LLC to represent them in the escalating legal battle.
In October, meanwhile, HYBE’s CEO issued an apology to K-pop artists, fans, and rival labels after a trove of leaked internal HYBE documents that included disparaging comments about K-pop artists, both HYBE’s own and those managed by rival labels.
As reported by the Korea JoongAng Daily, a December report from the Korea Creative Content Agency noted that “the dispute between HYBE and ADOR as well as K-pop idols causing issues brought a feeling of fatigue to the public“.Music Business Worldwide
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