South Korea’s ridiculous album sales surged in 2023
Image credit: Daniel Bernard
The country may well have some of the most streamed artists in the world but in their native country people are buying more albums than ever.
The writing is on the wall: 2023 saw more music being listened to than ever before. Most reports cover the incredible rise of streaming; the UK’s 12.8% increase in audio streams and the 7 trillion songs streamed worldwide last year.
In one of the world’s fastest rising music markets, things are still working a little old school. South Korea has exploded onto the global music scene in recent years with huge acts like BLACKPINK and BTS. Last year, Spotify reported a 65% increase in streams of K-Pop since their platform launched in South Korea. Not to mention the popularity of local streaming services like Melon.
However, South Korea’s music successes of 2023 look a little old school. Allkpop reports that album sales grew by an impressive 49% in 2023. Overall, the country sold 115 million units in album sales.
The growth is significant. Album sales in South Korea for 2019 saw only 25 million units sold. Allkpop points to “the prevalence of pre-sales and speculative bundle sales” as driving the renewed growth in the traditional format. Promotions such as the chance to win tickets for events encourage not just the sale of records, but the purchase of multiple copies.
26 artists sold more than a million copies of their album in 2023. K-pop group Seventeen sold over 16 million themselves. Stray Kids had the second most album sales for the year followed by Tommorrow X Together, NCT Dream, and NewJeans rounding out the top five.
Whilst the success of the traditional format is great news for artists and the music industry in South Korea, there are concerns about the environmental impact of pushing the old format which relies on plastic casing. This concern is magnified by the competitions driving people to buy the same record multiple times without need for the physical materials.