One Year in South Korea and Local Artists Are Finding Fans Around the Globe
One year ago, Spotify made its debut in South Korea, and since then, even more listeners around the world have fallen in love with K-Pop music. So to celebrate the anniversary, Spotify is sharing data that shows how Korean artists have found a home—and global audience—on the platform.
K-Pop’s borderless reach
Spotify’s global K-Pop hub, which was unveiled last year at the South Korea launch, has become a one-stop destination for listeners to discover a wide range of Korean artists and music. In just one year, the monthly average K-Pop streams worldwide reached over 7.97 billion per month, a 27% increase compared to the year before. In the same time frame, traffic to the K-Pop Hub reached 1.43 billion, a 19.5% increase in comparison to the year before launch.
Across Spotify’s 184 markets, the top 10 countries whose listeners had discovered Korean artists during the last year were the United States, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Germany, UK, Philippines, Japan, and France. Listeners from these countries also went to the K-Pop hub in droves to discover new music. And among the playlists within the K-Pop hub, the top 10 most streamed globally were K-Pop Daebak, TrenChill K-R&B, WOR K OUT, Women of K-Pop, Dalkom Cafe, Girl Krush, K-Pop Rising, KimBops!, Korean OSTs, and Best of Korean Soundtracks.
Spotlight on artists
Spotify also showed support for the Korean music industry with the launch of “Spotify for Artists,” a platform designed to help singers, producers, and musicians expand their reach.
Spotify for Artists provides real-time stats and helpful resources for artists, and in the year since Spotify South Korea’s launch, the registration rate on Spotify for Artists by Korean artists grew by 42.4% when compared to pre-launch figures. Korean artists were also big fans of the “Canvas” feature, which lets artists experiment with their album artwork by creating short-form looping videos for each of their songs. The number of sign-ups for Canvas increased 254% compared to the year before.
The best is yet to come
“As a committed global partner to Korean artists, creators, industry partners, and more, we will continue to support the growth of the Korean music-streaming ecosystem and offer more opportunities for Korean artists to be connected with more listeners around the world,” said David Park, Managing Director of Spotify Korea. “This is just the beginning.”
To top off an exciting year, here’s a look at some of the achievements since Spotify launched in South Korea:
- Spotify’s Holiday Singles featured LeeHi, the first Korean artist to participate in the global project.
- AUDREY NUNA’s cover of G-DRAGON’s “That XX” was the first Spotify Singles track released in Korean.
- A number of K-Pop artists, including TWICE, NCT 127, and SEVENTEEN, released Enhanced Albums.
- Spotify launched a series of local partnership playlists with Korean dramas, boosting global exposure of K-OSTs like Nevertheless, and IDOL: The Coup.
- New K-entertainment partnership playlists launched on Spotify, including Street Woman Fighter, Street Dance Girls Fighter, and Cyworld BGM.
- Spotify added new genre playlists to the platform, including Fresh Finds Korea and Jazzy Korea.
- Spotify released an exclusive K-Pop Global chart to track the success of Korean artists and their music.
- Korean artists have been featured over 35 times on New York City’s Times Square billboards, including ASH ISLAND, CL, Gaho, LeeHi, Simon Dominic and more.
Ready to stream with the masses? Discover the artists climbing the ranks on Spotify’s K-Pop Hub.
https://open.spotify.com/genre/kpop-page
*All data is from Feb 1st 2021 to Feb 1st 2022, 1 year since launch in South Korea
