K-pop dominates South Korean music, accounting for roughly half of all streams in that market in 2025, according to Luminate,* while relying on foreign listeners for nearly three of every four of its global streams.
But another distinctive characteristic of the genre is how top-heavy it is, with growth dependent on its biggest stars. Data shows only 48 artists were responsible for 39% (or 50 billion) of K-pop’s foreign streams in 2025.
While it is common for a genre’s hits to generate a disproportionate share of its streams, K-pop’s listenership is less equitable than that of other globally popular genres, including American R&B/Hip-Hop, which saw 112 artists account for 36% of its foreign streams last year.
Faced with an increasingly competitive global market and the previously noted top-heaviness of K-pop, South Korea must look beyond the genre for cultivating its next generation of artists to catalyze growth and protect the country’s outsize cultural influence.
By comparing the distribution of K-pop with all other Korean-produced recordings, the bell curve (as seen in the chart above) illustrates how its foreign listenership is less driven by the biggest hits — in contrast to K-pop’s more off-center distribution. When viewed against K-pop’s winner-take-all model, other styles of Korean music (e.g., Korean rock or rap) are supported to a greater extent by a mid tier of artists.
Streams of other Korean music styles are driven by a middle class — or “core” — of recordings and artists (those within the 100K-99M yearly stream range). In comparison, K-pop’s core can be defined as spanning the 1M-999M yearly stream range.
Comparing these cores reveals that other Korean music is diversified across 36% more artists, making it less likely to be disrupted by any single artist.
Not only is other Korean music better diversified, it enjoys a higher premium streaming margin than K-pop, suggesting listeners are willing to spend more and can be acquired at a lower cost. Despite these attractive features, foreign streams of all other styles of Korean music were dwarfed by K-pop in 2025,16 billion to 129 billion.
K-pop’s musical consolidation is no accident; its vertically integrated business model is designed to produce the handful of megahits necessary to support its capital-intensive talent development, production and marketing activities. But with so few artists at the top, the K-pop economy is left vulnerable to situations such as when there’s a dispute with an artist or a musician goes on hiatus.
That disparity presents an opportunity for South Korean entertainment companies and policymakers alike to capitalize on higher margins through targeted investment in the country’s music business. This includes crucial investment in a social safety net for the cultural entrepreneurs who are both the creative engine and middle class of the country’s music economy.
*Note: Analysis was conducted using Luminate genre classification, which includes categories not found on the Billboard charts. Read more about the difference between Billboard and Luminate genres here.
