A sense of unease is spreading in the K-pop market. After a decade of steady growth, K-pop’s physical album exports and sales faltered last year. According to trade statistics from the Korea Customs Service on Jan. 19, physical album exports in 2024 totaled around 423.8 billion won ($290.7 million), reflecting a modest 0.55% increase from the previous year’s 421.5 billion won, signaling a slowdown after consistent growth since 2015.
K-pop exports to Japan, the largest market, fell sharply by 24.7% last year, totaling 130.3 billion won. Japan, along with the United States (87.5 billion won) and China (86.8 billion won), accounts for 72.8% of total K-pop export revenues. However, a 76.4% rebound in exports to China, recovering from the significant decline caused by Beijing’s Korean content restrictions in 2023, helped mitigate the overall drop in exports.
The era of 100 million K-pop album sales, which first emerged in 2023, also came to an end after just one year. According to Circle Chart, operated by the Korea Music Content Association, K-pop physical album sales from January to December last year totaled 98.9 million units, a 17.7% decrease from the previous year’s 120.2 million.
Industry experts attribute this decline primarily to the absence and underperformance of major groups that typically drive the market. With groups like BTS and Blackpink on hiatus, newer generation groups have shown declining album sales. Seventeen, which achieved record-breaking sales of 16 million albums in 2023, only managed 8.96 million sales last year. The number of groups selling over 3 million copies of a single album decreased from 11 in 2023 to seven last year, while groups selling over 1 million copies dropped from 26 to 24. No group achieved sales of 5 million or more.
New global mega-hits were also notably absent. Among the top 2,500 most-streamed songs on Spotify globally last year, 25 K-pop songs made the list, but they were still dominated by BTS (16 songs) and Blackpink (nine), including both group and solo tracks.
The conflict between former ADOR CEO Min Hee-jin and HYBE executives over NewJeans is seen as another factor affecting album sales. An industry source noted, “The public fallout brought attention to problems such as excessive competition for first-week sales, fan-driven bulk purchases for signing events, and aggressive album release strategies, prompting a more restrained approach to marketing.”
K-pop streaming has grown, but the Big Four entertainment companies saw declining operating profits, as album sales typically yield more than twice the revenue of streaming. HYBE reported a 10.5% year-on-year increase in daily streams, reaching 12.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2024. Despite this growth, the company’s operating profit is projected to decline by 6.1% compared to the previous year.
The K-pop industry is tackling the downturn with bold investments in new talent. Major entertainment companies have announced plans to debut rookie groups early this year. SM Entertainment will launch girl group Hearts2Hearts and U.K.-based boy group Dear Alice next month. JYP is set to debut the boy group Kickflip on Jan. 20, while HYBE plans to introduce a Latin-focused group through an audition program later this year. YG, following last year’s debut of Babymonster, is preparing to launch another group, tentatively named Next Monster.
The anticipated return of BTS and Blackpink later this year is expected to signal a rebound for the K-pop market. BTS is set to resume full group activities after completing military service in June, while Blackpink plans to relaunch their global tour in the second half of the year. Analysts estimate that BTS’s return could generate about 1.87 trillion won in revenue over the next year, making up half of HYBE’s projected sales.
