K-pop album exports reach record levels in 2021, US surpasses China as second biggest market

The United States surpassed China and became the second-largest K-pop music export market after Japan, lamenting that K-pop is becoming a genre in North America.

K-pop album exports soared to a record high in the first half of this year, showing their unstoppable popularity.

According to the Korea Customs Service’s import and export trade statistics today (18th), the amount of album exports from January to June of this year was 132.934 million dollars (about 168.5 billion won), up 17.1% from the same period last year.

This is the highest ever for the first half of the year.

Japan was the top export destination with 48,523,000 dollars (about 61.5 billion won) in the first half of this year.

It was followed by 25.519 million dollars in the United States (about 32.3 billion won) and 22.64 million dollars in China (about 28.7 billion won), forming the ‘Big 3’.

Germany, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Canada, the United Kingdom and France were also in the top 10.

Notably, the United States, which is regarded as the world’s largest music market, climbed up to the second place in music exports, overtaking China.

China had been the second largest export market for albums every year since 2012 except for one year in 2020, after Japan.

In the first half of this year, K-pop stars achieved remarkable results in the United States, the ‘home of pop’, even without BTS’ group activities.

Jimin (BTS) made history as the first K-pop solo artist to enter the US Billboard’s main single chart ‘Hot 100’ with his solo album title song ‘Like Crazy’ and also topped it at the same time.

Stray Kids and TOMORROW X TOGETHER also ranked first on Billboard’s main album chart, ‘Billboard 200’.

BTS Jimin and Suga, Seventeen, Ateez, and Twice ranked second.

Fifty Fifty, known as the ‘miracle of small and medium-sized idols’, entered the ‘Hot 100’ for 16 consecutive weeks with their catchy song ‘CUPID’.

As K-pop achieved such results, Luminate, an American music market analysis company, reported in its mid-year report that Korean was the third most streamed language (based on top 10,000 songs) in the United States after English and Spanish.

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Choi Kwang-ho, secretary general of the Korea Music Contents Association, said, “K-pop, which was represented by BTS and Blackpink in the North American market, has now established itself as a genre.” It took several years for K-pop to establish itself after BTS won an award at the US Billboard Music Awards (BBMA) for the first time in 2017.”

He continued, “There were concerns about the enlistment of BTS, but

He also emphasized, “The K-pop physical album market has grown, but as seen in the success story of ‘Cupid’, the streaming market still has a lot of room for growth.”