The popular culture market has been hit hard by the prolonged COVID-19 (COVID-19), but on the contrary, the K-pop album market is booming for the first time in decades.
According to the music industry on the 17th, the group Stray Kids' second full-length album <NOEASY> sold 1,228,591 million copies based on Gaon Chart by the end of last month. It's the first album in JYP Entertainment history to sell more than 1 million copies.
As a result, all so-called "Big 4" agencies in the music industry, including HYBE (BTS, SEVENTEEN), SM Entertainment (EXO, Baekhyun, NCT DREAM, NCT 127), YG Entertainment (BLACKPINK), and JYP Entertainment, will produce million sellers.
In recent years, domestic album sales have been noticeably soaring.
According to Kim Jin-woo, senior researcher at Gaon Chart, annual album sales (1-400 combined) hit a low of 7.38 million in 2014, followed by 8.38 million in 2015, 16.93 million in 2016, 22.82 million in 2017, 24.59 million in 2019, and about 42 million last year.
This year alone, sales reached about 43 million between January and September, exceeding last year's sales and 60 million by the end of the year.
Records related to album sales are also speeding up.
If you look at the data of female singers among the initial records (record sales for a week after release) that show the fandom's "firepower" best, both the first and 10th places were released last year or this year.
In the 2000s, the album market has been in a long-term slump for more than 10 years due to the spread of music sources, but has revived splendidly in recent years.
In addition to the popularity of BTS, another level, the music industry cites COVID-19 as the background of the boom in the album market.
An official from a large agency said, "Since we can't hold an offline concert because of COVID-19, fandom seems to be solving the disappointment by purchasing albums," adding, "The pie in the album market has increased a lot, especially K-pop overseas fandom has grown significantly."
According to Korea Customs Service's import and export trade statistics, K-pop albums are so popular overseas that album exports amounted to $173.948 million (about KRW 266.4 billion) between January and September this year, up 119.9% from the same period last year.
By country, Japan imported the most K-pop albums, followed by China, the United States, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Thailand.
The music industry seems to be increasingly dependent on album sales as income from performances and events plunged due to COVID-19.
According to the Financial Supervisory Service's electronic disclosure system, the proportion of album and sound sources in SM Entertainment's sales in the first half of this year was 44.5%, up 12.5 percentage points from the same period last year. JYP Entertainment also accounted for 56.5% of album and music sales, up 8.5 percentage points from last year.
Some observers say that if album sales increase sharply every year, it may be possible to dream of "100 million copies per year," but the key is the direction of the COVID-19 incident.
Kim Jin-woo, a senior researcher, said, "With COVID-19 has been scheduled one by one since November, and this trend could disperse fandom consumption, which has been focused on album purchases," adding, "Domestic fandom has limitations in expanding due to the 'population wall', but the global K-pop market can gradually increase."
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