This year hasn\u2019t been much better. From a lack of breakthrough groups to fan fatigue, the reasons are varied and nuanced. That\u2019s even as songs from Netflix\u2019s hit K-Pop Demon Hunters topped global charts and won Grammy nominations.<\/p>\n
BTS\u2019 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\u2019 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.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cconservative\u201d, without factoring in unusually strong album sales.<\/p>\n
As I\u2019ve written before, K-Pop isn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
BTS\u2019 return will be an important factor in the genre\u2019s 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\u2019s second-largest music industry behind the US.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Sign up to Herald Premium Editor\u2019s Picks<\/a>, delivered straight to your inbox every Friday. Editor-in-Chief Murray Kirkness picks the week\u2019s best features, interviews and investigations. Sign up for Herald Premium here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This year hasn\u2019t been much better. From a lack of breakthrough groups to fan fatigue, the reasons are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[97682,23930,9442,6326,8613,97678,8615,22773,124,21048,58216,156,6440,28450,29812,2454,97680,1019,185,5511,34546,3857,661,157,97679,9812,111,139,69,26897,423,1527,57639,1439,50216,1240,313,2044,208,97681,6923],"class_list":["post-145207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-159b","tag-band","tag-better","tag-biggest","tag-billion","tag-btss","tag-come","tag-comeback","tag-could","tag-couldnt","tag-dominance","tag-entertainment","tag-ever","tag-groups","tag-imminent","tag-industry","tag-inflection","tag-international","tag-is","tag-just","tag-koreas","tag-kpop","tag-major","tag-music","tag-navigating","tag-needs","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-patch","tag-point","tag-return","tag-rough","tag-scene","tag-sights","tag-south","tag-super","tag-time","tag-tour","tag-us9","tag-what"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}