Cortis members. Photo courtesy of BigHit Music
Korea’s music streaming platforms face a dual crisis. Their home market is rapidly being eroded by global platforms such as YouTube Music, Spotify, and Apple Music, while securing a presence in overseas markets remains a distant goal. As K-pop has grown into a global genre and the center of consumption has shifted abroad, Korea’s music platforms remain confined to the domestic market.
According to industry sources Thursday, the revenue structures of Korea’s four major entertainment companies have already been reshaped around the global market. Sales reports for 2025 from HYBE (352820), SM Entertainment (041510), JYP Entertainment (035900), and YG Entertainment (122870) showed that overseas revenue accounted for more than 60% of total sales at the four companies. This means K-pop’s main revenue source has moved from Korea to overseas markets.
The overseas revenue share of Korea’s music platforms remains negligible. Based on music service revenue last year, Genie Music’s overseas revenue share stood at just 18%. FLO was at 2%, and Bugs at 0%. Melon does not separately disclose its overseas revenue share. While K-pop is growing on the back of global fandom, the domestic music platforms that should capture it remain stuck in a business structure dependent on the home market.
Another limitation is the difficulty overseas consumers face in accessing Korean music platforms. Major domestic platforms such as Melon, Genie Music, FLO, and Bugs are mostly designed with Korean-language-centered interfaces. Some require identity verification and payment procedures based on Korean mobile phone numbers or Korean credit cards, or restrict app downloads from overseas app stores. With global platforms having secured most K-pop music, there is little incentive for overseas fans to go out of their way to use domestic platforms. Although Melon is expanding music supply to parts of East Asia through a partnership with Tencent Music, the structure makes it difficult for global users to flow directly into Melon.
This leads to a credibility problem for Korea’s music charts. Because overseas listening is not sufficiently reflected in domestic charts, the charts have become structurally unable to fully show K-pop’s global popularity.
Differences in platform use by age group are also widening the gap. According to the 2025 Music Industry White Paper, Melon showed relatively high usage among those aged 50 and older, while Spotify and Apple Music showed higher usage among those in their teens and 20s. Research by the Korea Information Society Development Institute (KISDI) also found that younger people tend to use overseas platforms such as YouTube Music, Spotify, and SoundCloud at higher rates, while older age groups show relatively higher use of domestic services.
Differences in the age structure of users by platform also connect to differences in genre consumption. In a genre preference survey, ballads showed the highest preference at 39.5% across all age groups. The genre was especially strong among the middle-aged and older, at 47.8% for those in their 40s, 57.1% for those in their 50s, and 43.6% for those in their 60s. Trot also recorded a high preference of 28.5% among those in their 60s. This is the backdrop for analysis suggesting that domestic charts may reflect repeated listening by the middle-aged and older and domestic-oriented genre consumption to a relatively greater degree, compared with consumption trends in the global market. There are also criticisms of a “concretization” phenomenon, in which mega-hits released years ago repeatedly stay at the top and limit the entry of new songs, and of a “lagging chart” that is slow to reflect the popularity of new global releases.
The decoupling between domestic and global charts is also becoming increasingly clear. Even songs that draw rapid responses on overseas platforms often see belated results on Korea’s leading music charts.
A recent representative example is CORTIS’s new song “Red Red.” The song entered Spotify’s “Daily Top Songs Korea” chart at No. 65, then reached No. 1 within a week of release. It showed a similar trend on Apple Music. After entering the “Top 100 Korea” chart at No. 72, it reached the top six days after release. On Melon’s daily chart, by contrast, it started at No. 332 and only entered the top 100 after a week. It took a month to reach No. 1.
The industry sees such chart gaps as a possible constraint on attracting overseas users. Music charts are a key channel through which users check the latest trending songs and move toward consumption. If songs popular in the global market are not sufficiently exposed on domestic platform charts, overseas users are likely to perceive that the platform fails to properly reflect current music consumption trends.
Experts advise that for Korea’s music platforms to find a way forward, they must reflect global music consumption trends while also developing differentiated functions. Streaming services that simply provide music, they say, will struggle to compete with global platforms.
Kim Jung-hwan, a professor in the School of Media and Communication at Korea University, said, “Unlike the past, which was dominated by music streaming, the recent trend in global music consumption is toward a more subdivided role for each platform.” He added, “Spotify has established itself as the gateway to global music discovery and the world’s largest playlists, TikTok as the ignition point for Gen Z and millennial trends, as seen in the case of FIFTY FIFTY’s ‘Cupid,’ and Apple Music as a space for high-engagement, high-quality listening.”
“K-pop is an ecosystem in which music, music videos, shorts, performances, and fan communities operate in a complex way,” Kim continued. “Domestic music platforms, too, must have specialized functions tailored to this ecosystem if they hope to attract global consumers.”