PARTNERSHIPS | COMMUNITY | PODCAST | FRIENDS
K-Pop Has A Lot Of Room For Global Growth
Courtesy of YG Entertainment
K-pop has been exploding in popularity for a decade, and it’s now poised to expand its reach beyond Korea in every way — making the music a key piece of global soft power.
Why It Hits: The K-pop market tripled in revenue between 2019 and 2023, according to Morgan Stanley, yet it still accounts for only 3% of the American music market — about half of the Latin and country genres. But as K-pop-driven movies like KPop Demon Hunters crush viewership records and BTS prepares for its first world tour in a year and a half, it’s safe to assume that market share will multiply again.
Behind The Music: Hollywood exported blockbuster filmmaking techniques to the world… and Seoul may be doing the same with pop supergroups.
Bernie Cho, president of K-pop artist and label services agency DFSB Kollective, says the genre has entered a “made beyond Korea” moment — meaning it’s no longer being created only by those who are South Korean.
Bloomberg underscores this by pointing to the makeup of one of the biggest groups in the space: Blackpink. Lisa is from Thailand, Jennie grew up in New Zealand, and Rosé was raised in Australia — only Jisoo was born and raised in South Korea.
And with talent and listenership in Korea at peak levels, labels see global expansion as key to building new groups and growing revenue. Bang Si-Hyuk, founder of HYBE, even wants to drop the “K” from K-pop to appeal to more markets.
Encore: All of this explains why half of the K-pop songs released last year include English lyrics — the genre is globalizing in both members and its fans. There are actually more fans of K-pop outside South Korea than in it, with Indonesia, the US, and the Philippines each having more than the home country. And now, South Korea is only behind the US, UK, and Sweden in exporting more music than it imports, per a study by Pivotal Economics.
Maybe there’s ultimately no need for K-pop to drop the K.
Next Tour: While the US may be the king of building individual pop stars, it’s possible that American labels will start courting international talent to build their own version of K-pop-esque supergroups.
Together with Descript
Ship Stories, Not Just Products
Great founders don’t just build — they storytell on screen.
With Descript, editing is as easy as typing, so you can create standout launch videos and scroll-stopping clips in minutes.
PARTNERSHIPS | COMMUNITY | PODCAST | FRIENDS
Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Polled and Copy-edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.