Reviews say a steep lower in group purchases by Chinese language followers is guilty.
In an trade that thrives on sturdy worldwide gross sales, significantly from the profitable Chinese language market, K-Pop has hit an surprising downturn. The current plummet in album gross sales inside China, which has almost halved, is sending shockwaves by means of South Korea’s leisure sector, as mirrored within the reducing inventory costs of the nation’s main leisure firms.
On November 17, an unusually stark decline was noticed — with JYP Leisure experiencing a major one-day drop of 9.52%, closing at ₩90,300 KRW (about $69.70 USD), its largest dip up to now yr.
The pattern of falling inventory costs was widespread amongst main leisure homes, with YG Leisure, HYBE, and SM Leisure seeing drops of 9.01%, 7.40%, and 5.43%, respectively.
This downturn is attributed to institutional buyers withdrawing en masse from the market, as evidenced by the web sale of leisure shares totaling tens of billions of received. Overseas buyers additionally participated within the sell-off, with HYBE and JYP Leisure going through substantial gross sales from it particularly.
Regardless of constructive third-quarter earnings, investor confidence waned because the anticipated album gross sales from main idol group comebacks fell brief.
Aespa‘s 4th mini album, beneath SM Leisure, Drama, garnered gross sales of 530,000 copies on its first day, a stark distinction to the 1.37 million copies offered on the primary day of their earlier mini album.
Equally, Stray Youngsters, managed by JYP Leisure, offered 2.39 million copies of their third full album final June, however their newest mini album, ROCK-STAR, solely reached first-day gross sales of 1.88 million copies.
These disappointing figures are partly as a result of marked lower in group purchases by Chinese language followers, a cornerstone of K-Pop album gross sales. Daol Funding & Securities experiences a steep decline in album exports to China, with main leisure firms solely exporting about $28 million price of albums from January to October this yr, a major drop from the $48 million reported in the identical interval final yr.
The K-Pop trade, which has lengthy been buoyed by its worldwide attraction and cross-border cultural influence, is now going through a difficult part in considered one of its key markets. This downturn in Chinese language consumption could compel South Korean leisure firms to reassess their market methods and discover new avenues for income to mitigate the influence of fluctuating worldwide markets on their monetary stability and artist promotion methods.