by Members of the group BLACKPINK appeared at the arrival hall of Incheon International Airport in the late afternoon of the 22nd. Like K-pop stars, they received intensive camera baptism from reporters at the airport. However, the scenery of their return home on this day drew more attention thanks to their recent achievements abroad.
BLACKPINK held the concert ‘BLACKPINK WORLD TOUR [BORN PINK] LOS ANGELES’ at the Bank of California Stadium in Los Angeles, USA, on the 19th and 20th (local time). Before this, they met fans in Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, and Chicago.
It was a North American tour with 14 performances in 7 cities in the United States. Through this, BLACKPINK, which attracted a total of 200,000 fans, received cheers from world-class pop stars such as Camila Cabello, Selena Gomez, Usher, Olivia Rodrigo, and Gracie Abrams, especially at the LA concert. It shows the interest in BLACKPINK inside and outside the overseas pop music market.
Departed from London, England on the 30th of this month and December 1, following a performance in Seoul in October and this US tour, followed by Barcelona, Spain, Cologne, Germany, Paris, France, Copenhagen, Denmark, Berlin, Germany, It is expanding its stage to Europe, including Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Next year, they also plan to hold performances in Asia and Oceania. A total of 1.5 million fans are expected to see their stage through this. It is considered the largest among K-pop girl groups.
As such, few records show that BLACKPINK is the representative K-pop girl group in name and reality. However, just looking at the recent ones, the K-pop girl group’s first US Billboard main album chart ‘Billboard 200’ No. 1 (regular 2nd album ‘BORN PINK’), No. 1 artist YouTube channel subscribers worldwide (83 million as of November 17), YouTube music The first K-pop group to reach 1 billion views, including videos with 1.5 billion views (Boombayah, Ddu-du Ddu-du, Kill This Love), remain as outstanding achievements.
The stock market sees BLACKPINK’s global performance as a yardstick for estimating the performance of YG Entertainment (YG) this year. YG recorded sales of 114.7 billion won and an operating profit of 15.5 billion won on a consolidated basis in the third quarter of this year.
However, the stock market believes that the sales scale of their album ‘BORN PINK,’ which came out on September 16, still needs to be fully reflected. In particular, YG’s performance is expected to jump, given that sales of overseas albums and sound sources are usually settled about two months late.
In addition, if the world tour concerts sales scale is included, it is worthy of evaluation that Blackpink was responsible for a large part of YG’s performance this year.
Park Ha-Kyung, a researcher at Korea Investment & Securities, analyzed that “Blackpink accounted for 92% of album sales in the third quarter” and that “this year’s album sales contribution was 61%.” (News 1 on November 11, 2022) “Blackpink will lead YG’s album sales,” he predicted, “and their concert tour will also lead concert performance by the first half of 2023, with the largest scale among girl groups” (Money Today, September 6, 2022).
Blackpink, which has already built a solid global fandom with BTS, is being evaluated as showing that the K-pop girl group market is expanding. Aespa, (G)I-DLE, I’ve, New Jeans, Le Seraphim, and so-called ‘fourth generation’ girl groups have achieved significant results on the Billboard charts. Lee Ji-Eun, a researcher at Daishin Securities, said, “A large number of new girl groups debuted this year,” and “In the case of fourth-generation artists, the fandom growth of girl groups is higher than that of boy groups.” (quoted above) Various indicators and figures indicate this. point
According to the “2022 K-pop World Map” released by K-pop Radar of the K-pop fandom platform Space Oddity on the 23rd, BTS gained the most popularity with 64.3 billion views of YouTube videos related to K-pop, including music videos, this year. It accounts for 18.7%. It was followed by Blackpink (11.3%), Twice (5.8%), and Lisa (3.7%, Blackpink members) from 2nd to 4th. Itzy and Espa also ranked 6th and 8th, respectively, competing against Stray Kids (5th), Seventeen (7th), and Psy (10th). If you include IU in 10th place, there are 6 K-pop girl groups and female singers in the top 10, letting you read their performance.
Even more so when compared to the same data from 2019. In K-Pop Radar’s ‘2019 K-Pop World Map’, four teams – Twice, Momoland, and Red Velvet – along with Blackpink in 2nd place, followed by BTS in 1st place, as well as EXO, Psy, iKon, GOT7,
A similar trend can be seen in the report ‘2022 Global Hallyu Trend’ released by the Korea International Cultural Exchange Agency in September of this year. The word “analyzes the annual Hallyu issue, Hallyu (Korea) awareness and consumption, ripple effects, and the current status of Hallyu in each country using the results of a survey of 8,500 Hallyu consumers (users) in 18 countries and statistical data related to Hallyu content exports.” All.
According to this, overseas Hallyu consumers picked K-pop as the ‘first image associated with Korea’ for five consecutive years, and when asked about ‘Choi Seon-ho, a Korean singer and group,’ BTS (26.7%), followed by Blackpink (10.4%) and IU (2.8%). ), Lisa (2.4%), and Twice (2.1%, tied with PSY). In contrast to last year’s survey, only Blackpink and Twice were included in the top 5.
The performance of K-pop girl groups is more evident in physical album sales.
According to the Circle Chart (formerly Gaon Chart), which counts music streaming/download and BGM (background music) sales, album sales in October this year (total of 1st to 400th places) increased by 22.1% from September and by 39.2% from October of last year. , Physical albums also increased by about 2.6 million compared to last October. Despite this, Ive, New Jeans, Blackpink, and (G)I-DLE placed six songs in the top 10. Also, (G)I-DLE, Le Seraphim, and Ive showed off their strength in physical album sales. In addition, BLACKPINK released ‘BORN PINK’ on September 16 and sold 2.1 million copies (circle chart) in the first week.
Circle Chart senior researcher Kim Jin-woo said in a column in September, “The music market in August almost recovered to the level of last August thanks to the release of new songs by WSG Wannabe Project (MBC’s entertainment program ‘What do you do when you play?’) and new songs by girl groups.” he wrote. “5 out of the top 10 singers in the Circle Index share in the top 400 are girl groups (New Jeans, Ive, Espa, WSG Wannabe, Blackpink), and their combined share reaches 14.6%, making the girl group’s sound source more powerful. So it was solid,” he said.
