The imminent return of super band BTS couldn’t come at a better time. South Korea’s music scene is navigating a rough patch and has set its sights on international dominance. The group’s biggest tour ever could be a major inflection point for the US$9 billion ($15.9b) industry.
With a new album due to drop in March, the decade’s most commercially successful boy band is planning to perform about 65 dates around the world, including nearly half in the growing North American market.
BTS went on hiatus to serve compulsory military service at the height of their popularity, leaving the Korean music industry without a much-needed anchor. Despite intense debate, there was never any serious doubt that the seven members – RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V and Jungkook – could forgo conscription. Idols, as superstar Korean performers are known, are held to exceptionally high standards of principles, behaviour and civic duty. But nearly four years of not touring as a group together is an extremely long period for a youth-oriented band to be away.
Their decision to enlist was commercially risky, but will ultimately pay off for them, their management company Hybe Co and the South Korean economy, which made US$31b from cultural exports last year.
Indeed, BTS’s absence has been felt keenly, and not just by fans. After nearly a decade of steady growth in sales of physical albums, anachronistically still a key revenue driver of South Korea’s music industry, total sales of the top 400 albums dropped by about 20% last year compared to 2023. Exports were hit, too.
This year hasn’t been much better. From a lack of breakthrough groups to fan fatigue, the reasons are varied and nuanced. That’s even as songs from Netflix’s hit K-Pop Demon Hunters topped global charts and won Grammy nominations.
BTS’ comeback will be all the more important for an industry that is trying to develop the concerts and streaming side of the business to catch up with global music trends. Glenn Peoples, lead analyst at Billboard, estimates that BTS’ upcoming album and tour could generate more than US$1b in revenue from concerts, merchandising, licensing, album sales, and streaming over a 12-month period.
Assuming 65 shows with an average of 60,000 fans at each venue would result in sales of US$664m. By comparison, Coldplay generated about US$400m from three million tickets across 51 concerts last year. Peoples told me that his forecast was “conservative”, without factoring in unusually strong album sales.
As I’ve written before, K-Pop isn’t anywhere close to peaking globally, despite challenges at home. It has plenty of room to expand in an industry that Goldman Sachs Group believes will be worth nearly $200b by 2035.
BTS’ return will be an important factor in the genre’s advance, particularly in Japan. With 9.4 billion streams in the country so far this year, according to data and insight firm Luminate, K-Pop is roughly half as popular as general pop but growing at double the rate. Will Page, author of Pivot and former chief economist of Spotify, predicts it could overtake pop in a matter of years, if not months. That would be a game-changer for the world’s second-largest music industry behind the US.
China is another key market. Beijing imposed an unofficial ban on Korean content nearly 10 years ago, shortly after Seoul decided to deploy a US missile defence system, which was perceived to be a security threat. The entire Korean entertainment ecosystem, especially its struggling TV and film producers undercut by Netflix, is watching closely for any thawing of relations.
It’s very unusual for a musical group to be more popular after a years-long hiatus than they were before. Now BTS has to live up to the hype and deliver.
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