K-Pop Daisuki - Metrics and trends over 10 years

Having observed K-Pop metrics for over 10 years, I have realized many nuances and details that most casual listeners might have missed. Most of these are not even puzzling, but they are often somewhat disheartening to realize, such as how Music Show Awards are not just unfair and meaningless, but actually quite random when you analyze them long-term. Some people claim sales are important ... well, if they were, no artist were breaking it at the peak of K-Pop crazy in the 2010's, but you know what? A lot of people got rich and famous back then, and sales were not what drove them there. Streaming pay little, so its not important? Well, not so fast. It may pay little but 1000 streams will generate revenue equivalent to a sale, and while there are a lot of sales from people who just want the memorabilia or gift it (or an easy inflation on sales its easier for some Marketer to invest in 1000 albums that will end up on a landfill, than to actually manupulate the charts for 1 million streams - no to mention mass buying is legal, manipulating the charts isn't, so you can't get caught) In the end of the day, what did I learn for the metrics of K-Pop, and how do it translate to Music Industry, if at all.

Music Show Awards are useless

One of the most sought-after metrics is certainly Music Show Awards. Curiously, it is a self-inflicted wound from the fandoms themselves: if you just listen to the music and don't really follow the fandom or news sites, you would probably not even know about Music Show Awards, and that would change nothing in your decisions on what to listen to next, since you would use more natural and reliable data to choose, such as what is most liked, what is popular, or what has even managed to reach mainstream media. But after you sink into the fandom, you will find yourself comparing artists by awards, rooting each day for your favorite artist to win, and often being disappointed when they don't. Well, here is the thing: you were not hallucinating; Music Show Awards are unfair, are easily manipulated, and are about half the time quite random. Here is a breakdown of why:

Popularity disproportion - The number of fans and therefore listeners/viewers/voters hugely influences the results. More people boosting the metrics by simply listening to their favorite new song causes the awards to have a strong popularity bias, so quality is straight out of the picture (in fact, no Music Show Awards today include a critics' or specialist vote). Even a bad song from a very popular artist will end up having more metrics than the best song of a less popular artist, so the more popular artist will snatch the awards with anything they release, often beating better and proportionally more streamed songs.
Pointless metrics - Have you ever really stopped to think about how artists are pitted against each other on the Music Shows? What metrics are used? The most important metric is often fairly based on streaming (listeners) during the week, but most of the other metrics are not that important. Music Video views are seriously counter to what an Award should be, mostly because no Music Show actually tries to get the proper organic views from the videos: studios which invest heavily in YouTube promotions will beat everyone else with numbers that are not actual listeners, but advertisement views. You pay, you get. Likewise with the Popularity disproportion mentioned above, big fandoms will also cause views to be higher than smaller artists by default. Popular vote might sound great and democratic, but democracy is actually just the "Tyranny of the Majority", in other words, popularity. Sales? Who actually buys physical media these days if not for memorabilia? And who do you think wants memorabilia from an artist? The fandom, and again the artist with a bigger fandom, especially worldwide, will get huge sales — often pre-orders. How can you use a metric that is indicative of people who bought without even listening to it? Don't even get me started with the more recent metric: YouTube #Shorts. Counting these fast-food views is just an endorsement that Music Shows couldn't care less that YouTube metrics are easily manipulated.
The "Void" effect - But wait, some less famous artists, sometimes even really indie ones, still manage to get a random award here and there. It certainly means that popularity isn't everything, right? Well... not quite. Big, popular artists can't release non-stop, and as much as they try not to overlap, sometimes they do. What that actually means is that sometimes there are no recent releases from popular artists - the ones you know will win even with the worst song possible - and that creates a void where indie artists can win. The problem with this "void" effect is that with completely disproportionate and pointless metrics, when popularity is no longer in the picture, what remains is just noise, and the awards will start going to often random, less popular artists. So, the next time you are surprised an unknown group won an Award, check if it was actually competing with equally recent popular artist releases — chances are, it wasn't.
Not all shows are "born" equal - Another thing to keep in mind is that each show uses different metrics, or rather, weights the same metrics differently. What ends up causing an artist to win in one show might be less valuable to another show, causing another artist to snatch the award. But if different weights can already cause certain biases on each show, nothing beats "The Show" for difference: Contrary to the other shows, "The Show" requires attendance to be eligible for the award. With popular artists' schedules often packed with promotions and actually profit-driven appearances with no time to attend every Music Show (and often having outgrown the need to snatch awards to gain popularity, it now wins awards because of popularity), the small indie groups that attend finally get their random chance at the lottery of pointless metrics.
Broadcast Manipulation - Forget chart manipulation; it's expensive, criminal, and easy to spot (really). The real MVP to gain that extra margin to beat the competition (other than investing in ad-views) is more subtle and harder to prove without insiders (and has been exposed a few times): Broadcast manipulation. This is done by big studios that make underhand deals with a broadcaster to inflate the number of times their artist appears in their programming, and sometimes even sabotage the competition by reducing how much they appear. The Broadcast Score on Music Shows is a case-by-case Broadcaster score based on how often that artist was featured in their programming. If a broadcaster doesn't like an artist, they can simply not invite or air that artist's release, causing the score to drop. Some famous cases include Taeyeon's "INVU" (which had its broadcast score reach zero despite being the most popular artist during its run on Music Bank) and Lim Young Woong. That scandal even led to arrests. But we only see the tip of the iceberg, and every time an artist has zero or very low broadcast values, something is definitely going on: why not air a song that is poised to battle for first place on their metrics?

Despite all of these caveats, some even known by casual listeners, Music Show Awards are still prized tokens of validation among most fans and Idols alike, and with little to no attention to how absurd they are, it is not likely to change anytime soon. At least established popular artists stop promoting on music shows for a reason, and even if their passive popularity still gives them awards, it might just be enough to allow new artists a chance at the Russian Roulette of pointless, disproportionate, manipulated awards.

K-Pop is not dying

In recent years, the community has been lamenting the end of K-Pop and the idea that its "peak" has passed. Arguments point to poorer domestic support, high-profile scandals, inconsistent streaming and sales, and the perception that the entire idol industry is obsolete. Is it?

It is true that idols, which form the bread and butter of K-Pop, have been charting less consistently in recent years. Genres like Trot, Rock, Alternatives, and even Indie artists have managed to score higher and sometimes even beat idols. It is also true that sales, which grew at an impossibly fast rate for over a decade and peaked in 2023, are now falling despite large international sales. The number of idol group debuts has also fallen sharply since 2019/2020. Another interesting point is the appearance of competing global groups structured on the K-Pop model, such as NiziU, XG, KATSEYE, or GIRLSET, in addition to homegrown artists. None of these signs point to the demise of K-Pop.

The fact is that K-Pop is stabilizing and maturing to a sustainable level. While the K-Pop Hallyu wave started without a doubt with PSY's "Gangnam Style" in 2012, it would take almost half a decade for it to translate in serious international interest, with the bigger numbers only showing up in 2016. The years leading up to its peak around 2020 were actually characterized by saturation and experimentation. Companies were investing heavily in trying different things and formats, while others tried to mimic a successful formula with a low budget, which seldom works. With a degree of public fatigue, most mainstream companies realized they couldn't simply throw money at multiple experiments and expect most of them to succeed. The consequence was obvious: fewer groups, more work invested in developing them for specific niches, and arguably better quality. While K-Pop's current state might not be to everyone's taste, for better or worse, it is how pop music usually settles. K-Pop isn't all that different from pop music anywhere else in the world, and in fact most have international songwriters and producers; the difference lies in the extra emphasis on visuals and choreography, which are not only hallmarks of the Idol industry but also necessary to monetize the idol image.

As both the public and the industry have matured into today's K-Pop, the hype has diminished or vanished altogether, leading to a more homogeneous chart distribution. Today's charts don't suggest that K-Pop has lost its touch; quite the opposite, they show that it has found its place within the broader landscape of contemporary Korean music. Before the year 2000, you could hardly find modern pop in Korean charts, mostly because there were very few idol groups, and pop groups were just trying to copy either J-Pop or international pop. Today, K-Pop holds its own, still keeping its head above the average, but allowing other music genres to prosper. There is nothing "doomsday" about being part of the crowd. In fact, being at the peak of a hype cycle is not sustainable, and it was fated to end. It ended above average, so we can call it a win for the formula.

Further proof that the K-Pop structure didn't die but matured is the fact that, with the current stabilized version, international groups are emerging everywhere. Ten years ago, when everyone spoke of the Hallyu wave, no one outside Korea tried to mimic it, as it was clearly still an experiment in progress. Five years ago, a few tried, and now that it has settled into a recognizable format, the floodgates of the K-Pop industry structure have opened worldwide, with South American K-Pop, African K-Pop, and European K-Pop alike. Even Japan, the home of the original idol structure, is trying its hand at its own recycled and improved formula. You don't see the globalization of a dead concept; rather, you see a mature final product going global.

Ever since the Billboard Global 200 started in 2020, there have always been K-Pop entries, and the number of entries continues to rise despite the slowdown domestically. This again shows the maturing of an exportable formula. Reduced sales are also a sign that fandoms have reached a saturation point with merchandise and are becoming more conservative (plus, affording physical media, shipping, and taxes is getting expensive).

Companies are indeed releasing fewer groups than before, but they are taking more time to properly prepare them (with some even overthinking their strategy). Sales are falling, but this is a global trend that Korea managed to postpone with the peak hype of K-Pop. Alternative music is competing with "mainstream" K-Pop, but it has traditionally always been consumed; it has just returned to a more normal and sustainable market share. The K-Pop structure has reached an exportable level, and as for the idol industry — well, you don't need to look far to see an idol being the face of a global brand today, so it is still going strong. With the extra reach the Hallyu wave created, even if it has stopped expanding (once you reach the whole world, it's hard to spread further), you often see Korean idols on Western brands and on shelves around the world.

For old-timers used to the exciting, ever-changing format of K-Pop with constant novelty, dozens of monthly debuts, new faces all the time, and new records being broken constantly, it certainly appears that current K-Pop is dead. But it has just matured, settled, and broken the records — in the past tense.

Oldies but Goldies

The period between the start of the Hallyu wave in the early 2010s and its perceived peak around 2020 was not long enough to erase the legacy of great artists from that time. If Korean music was truly declining, one would expect to see top artists suffer during the idol industry's peak, or notice a decline in their fame and metrics over time. This did not happen. Top artists like IU, Lim Young-woong, BigBang, and Davichi continue to be chart-toppers and legends in Korean music. They did not suffer during this period (some even got a boost from the idol boom), and they are still going strong. Other artists who debuted in the 2010s outside of the idol format also achieved great metrics, proving that other areas of Korean music did not pause or recede: Akmu, Paul Kim, and Lee Mujin all started during the idol period and are also heavy hitters. The fact that the change happened didn't affect the baseline of the music, with the only difference being that now we have a new option.

Chart manipulation is rarer than you think

From time to time, people cry foul on the charts, asking, "How can this indie or unknown artist be charting at the top?" I still remember the outrage when Changmo charted at number one for nearly a month straight with 'Meteor'. "Who is Changmo? How can he be number one? How can he beat Red Velvet or IU!?" The truth is, it's because more people were listening to his song. It's that simple. There was no chart manipulation.

There have been other instances of chart manipulation complaints, sometimes targeting artists who weren't even that indie, but fans of the second-place artist couldn't accept it. Having looked at the charts for nearly 10 years, I can say I have never seen anything suspicious or unexplainable. While there have been a few proven cases of manipulation, manipulating charts to barely appear in the Top 200 is somewhat easy, but getting a song into the Top 10 is extremely expensive.

For a time, some artists could boast about charting at number one on the hourly charts for just one hour, which was easy to do, especially at night. Having discovered this loophole, most live and hourly charts now stop between 1 a.m. and 7 a.m.

In one proven case, a company employed hundreds of virtual PCs and cloned or hacked accounts to stream music for clients who could pay up to several thousand dollars^{(Internet Archieve)}. The catch? Success was not guaranteed. Take Nature's 'Oopsie', for example, which was a song quoted as being boosted by this scheme. It hardly managed to get into the Top 100. Other songs mentioned in the same scheme did manage to chart, but not really above the average for the artist, so it is hard to argue if the "manipulation" was to blame or just the normal artist charting power.

In fact, there are more legal actions targeting false claims of chart manipulation than there are for actual, proven manipulation. This so-called sajaegi (chart manipulation) is often just slander against artists perceived as not deserving of their rating and is seldom real. Korea has a huge streaming industry with millions of subscribers, and you cannot stream anonymously. Therefore, it takes a lot of money and devices to even make a dent. In the mentioned scheme, the company would even refund part of the investment if there was little effect, acknowledging that even their large number of PCs and accounts were not guaranteed to boost anything. More often than not, the accusations are the actual attack, since until an artist is cleared of suspicion, their fame can get a hit, specially in Korea where fame and image are extremely important. Social Media just exarcebated it.

Sales are losing appeal

Physical sales in Korea have always defied the global digital trend. In the early 2010s, even before K-pop gained international popularity, Korea (along with Japan) maintained above-average sales compared to the rest of the world as the industry transitioned to digital purchases and streaming. As K-pop went global and fans began focusing on collectibles, sales remained stable between 2012 and 2016.

However, this changed significantly in 2017, when domestic sales were double those of 2015. The boom was unstoppable, and sales climbed steadily year after year until peaking in 2023. While K-pop became "known" in 2012 with 7 million domestic sales, this number grew to 16.7 million by 2017 and peaked at an astonishing 116.3 million units sold in 2023. This growth is less an indicator of widespread popularity and more a sign of the immense dedication of fandoms.

The divide between physical sales and streaming is clear. Top-selling artists like BTS and Seventeen have relatively poor streaming numbers inside Korea while dominating internationally. Meanwhile, domestic streaming giants like IU have very low sales. Yet, within Korea, IU is widely more successful than BTS and is likely to remain so as long as she doesn't retire. She has broken several concert attendance records and her performances are known for attracting famous attendees. IU has also broken records for foreign concert attendance in other East Asian countries. She is also a strong philanthropist, making headlines with donations every year, and has been listed as one of Korea's most influential celebrities for several years. Fandom-driven artists usually have strong sales, while public/music driven ones focus on streaming. Another very important change in the last decade is the transition from full-fledged Albums with over 10 tracks to EPs (4~6 tracks) to singles (1~2 tracks), which ended up inflating sales considerably.

IU has pretty much no respectable international sales, while BTS beat 600 million sales a while back. However, that is an unfair comparison: IU never focused her career outside Korea, instead trying to being nostalgia to Koreans with her Flower Bookmark selection of covers. IU has always been focused domestically, while BTS globally. Both reached great success in their goals.

The contrast highlights that although her sales are lackluster, people listen to her. While some agencies may see sales as a source of easy profit (mass produce, distribute, and bank), the passive income from streaming (publish and bank for decades) and hard-earned concert revenue (which often generates additional sales and streaming) are the heavy hitters. Sales are certainly a part of the portfolio for top artists, but for most, it is easier to earn money from streaming or smaller concerts.

Now that the K-pop market has matured, sales have dropped sharply since the 2023 peak. 2025 is projected to be the second consecutive year of a serious decline in numbers, with sales returning to 2022 levels (graphic). This maturing market looks much more like the international music market, where physical sales have reverted to being collectibles rather than the main source of profit.

Conclusion

Korean pop is not dying or going anywhere; in fact, it is going everywhere. Never before has the K-Pop idol formula been used so widely by foreign studios with great success. Despite being global groups, they don't directly compete with K-Pop artists, just as other global pop artists never did. People never stopped listening to their favorite Korean soloist because of Taylor Swift, nor their favorite Western soloist because of Psy. Music is one of the few businesses where more "competition" doesn't necessarily mean there will be losers. Groups fail mostly because of poor choices, not because the competition killed them.

As the market stabilizes, the revenue of K-Pop also align better with a more international norm: Concerts and Streams are the main drivers, Sales are important to keep fans happy with collectibles, while Music Video views and Music Show Awards are mostly for promotion and exposure.

Korean Pop is now reaching maturity, and that should be a reason for K-Pop fans worldwide to rejoice. With maturity often comes stability, and groups that succeed, barring a major scandal, are likely to last.

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