Year-end figures from K-pop market tracker Circle Chart released on Dec 16, 2022, Friday showed that girl groups listened the most, but boy groups sold more albums.
Starting with sales, 18 South Korean albums have sold more than 1 million copies this year, a 64% increase from 2021’s 11 million sales. In 2020, only six South Korean albums sold a million copies, compared to just one in 2019, BTS. Soul Map: Characters. ”
The first three albums this year are from boy bands: BTS, Stray Kids, and Seventeen. Thirteen of the 18 million-won sellers were boy groups or male singers.
BTS’ “Proof” topped the list with sales of 3.58 million copies since its release last June, followed by Stray Kids’ “Maxident” (3.17 million copies) and Seventeen’s “Face the Sun” (283 million copies). million copies), Blackpink’s “Born Pink” (2.51 million) and NCT Dream’s “Glitch Mode – The 2nd Album” (2.1 million). BTS has just one album in the top 18 — their only release this year — but the group has been the best-selling Korean artist since 2016.
However, it is the songs of girl groups that have the most listeners in Korea and abroad.
Girl group IVE’s “Love Dive” is the most streamed and downloaded Korean song domestically and globally. It was followed by Blackpink’s “Pink Venom” globally and (G)I-DLE’s “Tomboy” in Korea.
BTS’ “Dynamite” and “Butter” are the No. 3 and No. 4 most-played Korean songs in the world, respectively, and (G)I-DLE’s “Tomboy” is No. 5.
In South Korea, ballads by male singers came in third to fifth: folk group Melomance’s “Love, Maybe,” singer Kim Min-seok’s “Drunk Confessions” and Lim Young-woong’s “Love Always Runs Away.”
Female and male K-pop groups have different audiences, according to pop music critic Cha Woo Jin. Boy bands focus on building deep (if often intimate) relationships with loyal fans, while girl groups aim to appeal to a wider audience.
“Since the advent of streaming services, it’s become unnecessary to buy albums to listen to music, which means that those who do do so out of loyalty,” Cha said.
“Boy bands’ fandom has been considered to be sturdier than girl groups and that’s visible in the numbers. But what’s changing is that album sales for girl groups have increased in the last two years, especially for younger bands such as (G)I-DLE and aespa, who are appealing to both fans and general listeners.”
In fact, aespa’s “Girls – The 2nd Mini Album” is the seventh biggest album in Korea in 2022 with global sales of 1.8 million copies. It’s the first K-pop girl group to break ground within a week of its release last July, and the group has sold more than 1 million albums just two years after their debut. IVE’s “After LIKE” is the 10th best-selling album in South Korea since last August with sales of 1.61 million albums.
Girl groups in the 2010s — such as Girl’s Day, Sistar, AOA, Nine Muses, After School — opted for feminine, sexy concepts that appealed primarily to male audiences. Newer bands, often referred to as Fourth Generation, favor a so-called “girl crush” vibe, which appeals to female fans.
“As girl groups expand their fandom, they may shift their target from general audiences to fandom-centric companies,” Kim said. “From a business standpoint, the K-pop market may even change if it becomes meaningless to differentiate between boy groups and girl groups.”
