Okay-pop boy band NCT Want’s good album, “WICHU” / Captured from SM Leisure’s X account
After years of development pushed by bodily album gross sales, the Okay-pop trade is now present process a serious structural shift. Whereas album gross sales have declined from their peak, total income continues to broaden as corporations diversify into live shows, merch gross sales and paid fan providers, reshaping the position of bodily albums.
Relatively than signaling a downturn, trade officers describe the change as a transfer away from volume-based gross sales towards participation-driven consumption, the place albums perform much less as music carriers and extra as gateways to fan engagement.
In response to the Circle Chart, cumulative album gross sales for the highest 400 releases in 2025 reached about 90.9 million items by way of November, down roughly 2.56 million from the identical interval a yr earlier. The long-cited benchmark of 100 million albums offered yearly, as soon as handled as a symbolic marker of Okay-pop’s growth, has now fallen brief for a second consecutive yr.
Boy band Stray Children led album gross sales with practically 7 million items, adopted by Seventeen, NCT Want, ENHYPEN, BOYNEXTDOOR and ZeroBaseOne. Whereas main acts proceed to publish multimillion-unit totals, analysts say the figures counsel a plateau after years of bulk buying by followers.
Okay-pop boy band Stray Children performs throughout its “dominATE” world tour at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London, July 2025. Courtesy of JYP Leisure
Nonetheless, the decline has not translated into weaker monetary efficiency, as stay performances have emerged as one other main income pillar.
In Billboard’s 2025 year-end Boxscore report, HYBE Labels ranked fourth among the many world’s high promoters, producing $469.2 million from world excursions throughout 213 exhibits, attended by greater than 3.3 million individuals.
SM Leisure reported 52.5 billion received ($36.2 million) in live performance income within the third quarter of final yr, up 37.5 p.c from a yr earlier. JYP Leisure’s live performance income surged practically threefold, whereas YG Leisure earned roughly one-third of its income from stay performances, pushed by massive acts like BLACKPINK and 2NE1.
Together with touring, merchandise gross sales have additionally grow to be a big income driver for Okay-pop corporations.
HYBE reported a 70 p.c year-on-year improve in merchandise and licensing income, posting 168.3 billion received within the third quarter of 2025, whereas SM, YG and JYP every recorded merch income within the tens of billions of received.
“Followers at the moment are selecting to spend on gadgets that provide sensible worth relatively than buying albums merely to spice up their favourite singers’ rankings,” mentioned an trade insider at a midsized leisure company. “They’re nonetheless devoted, however labels are starting to acknowledge that followers are expressing it in numerous methods.”
An inside view of the “HOLIDAY with MINITEEN POP-UP” merchandise retailer for Okay-pop boy band Seventeen / Courtesy of Pledis Leisure
From music to merch
Albums, nevertheless, stay too essential to desert. For main companies, recorded music nonetheless accounts for roughly 30 p.c of complete income, prompting corporations to deploy a number of methods to spice up album gross sales.
Okay-pop albums are generally launched in a number of variations and bundled with randomized picture playing cards, encouraging followers to purchase a number of copies to safe a selected merchandise or a whole set.
One other confirmed methodology is the fansign occasion lottery system, the place album purchases function entries. Although marketed as randomized attracts, it’s broadly understood inside fandoms that purchasing extra albums will increase one’s possibilities of being chosen.
Inside fandoms, data about what number of albums are wanted to realize entry to those fansign occasions have now grow to be widespread, turning album shopping for right into a aggressive course of. It has grow to be frequent for followers to buy dozens — generally greater than 100 — copies of the identical album to safe a gathering with their favourite idols, both in individual or by way of video name.
The “Little Mimi” model of Okay-pop lady group ILLIT’s November 2025 album, “NOT CUTE ANYMORE,” which comes with an unique mini doll / Courtesy of Belift Lab
Alongside these volume-driven techniques, corporations have additionally reworked the albums themselves, shifting them nearer to the class of merchandise. Relatively than centering on CDs, for instance, releases are more and more designed round purposeful or collectible items meant for use or worn.
One current instance got here from lady group ILLIT, whose company Belift Lab mentioned the merch model of the group’s November album, “NOT CUTE ANYMORE,” offered out shortly after preorders opened.
The Little Mimi model of the album, constructed round a mini doll key chain impressed by the members and created in collaboration with toy model Little Mimi, prompted further manufacturing amid sturdy demand, based on the label. The bundle combines merch and music, that includes a mini CD, lyric booklet and picture playing cards, and 6 variations had been launched, together with a restricted hidden version designed to spice up collectibility.
The response echoed earlier demand for the group’s June 2025 mini album, “bomb,” which included a model bundled with a pair of earphones that additionally reportedly offered out throughout its preorder interval.
The same technique may very well be seen in NCT Want’s 2024 album, “Regular,” which was provided in a “good album” format packaged as a star-shaped key chain. Utilizing contactless know-how, the product allowed followers to entry music digitally whereas carrying a character-inspired accent tied to the group’s id.
“Customers are not shopping for items merely to benefit from the merchandise themselves, however more and more treating cultural style as a core a part of private id,” popular culture critic Lee Moon-won famous in his current column.
“Buying merchandise has grow to be a means for followers to affirm that id, and as popular culture markets proceed to broaden, comparable types of fandom-driven consumption are prone to emerge throughout world music markets.”
