Spotify delivers 41 Bn K-Pop streams since January 2014 increasing the genre’s share of listening by more than 1800% according to a recent blog post by the streamer. K-Pop, which originated in South Korea, has taken on a life of its own thanks to East-meets-West collaborations from BTS and US singer-songwriter Halsey, whose ‘Boy With Luv’ track has over 380 million streams.
The popularity of the genre continues to grow as more and more fans in countries like Egypt and Colombia connect with the music. From Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 Egypt has seen a 33% increase in the rate of streaming and Vietnam a 30% increase. Spotify isn’t available in South Korea yet although there are indications that it might be launching there this year.
Since Spotify released its first K-Pop playlist, K-Pop Daebak, in 2014 (and then a massive hub dedicated to the genre in 2015), there have been more than 41 Bn K-Pop streams on Spotify. Top-streamed K-Pop artists on Spotify include BTS, BLACKPINK, EXO, TWICE, and Red Velvet. In 2019, BTS was the first group from Asia to surpass 5 billion streams on Spotify. By February 2020, the boy band reached a new milestone with more than 8 Bn streams on the platform.
K-Pop on Spotify in numbers
41 Bn K-Pop streams since January 2014
1800% increase in listening share between January 2014 and January 2020
134+ Bn of minutes K-Pop streamed on Spotify
73% of K-Pop listeners are female
93 million user-generated playlists which have added K-Pop tracks
53% of K-Pop listeners are aged 18-24
K-Pop streams in all of Spotify’s 79 markets. USA is top, followed by Indonesia, Philippines, Japan and then Brazil. The stats were published by Spotify as BTS launched an ‘enhanced album’ on Spotify for ‘Map of the Soul: 7’ – although at the time of writing, the enhancements appear to be just short intro and outro videos book-ending the album tracks. Today, BTS have 17.4 million monthly listeners on Spotify, making them the 148th most popular artist on the platform.
Spotify have created a K-Pop infographic which can be downloaded here.
