DUBAI — K-Pop is one of the fastest growing music genres around the world and amongst MENA countries, Saudi Arabia is the top country to be captivated by this genre’s catchy beats and vibrant colors. The sold-out BTS concert, held in Riyadh last year is a testament to that. Since the launch of the first K-Pop flagship playlist “K-Pop Daebak” on Spotify in 2014, there have been more than 41 billion K-Pop streams, which is more than 134 billion minutes worth of streams on the platform. Between 2014 and January 2020, K-Pop’s share of listening on Spotify increased by more than 1,800% and that same playlist now has more than 2.4 million followers. And in 2015, Spotify launched an entire hub dedicated to K-Pop, which features playlists catering to the many facets of this exciting genre, from rising artists, to collaborations to original soundtrack recordings from Korean film and TV dramas, known as OSTs. So how else is K-Pop Dominating? Spotify’s most-streamed K-Pop group, BTS, released their album MAP OF THE SOUL: 7 on Friday, Feb. 21, and on Spotify the group’s journey has been marked by a series of milestones: In 2019, BTS is the first group from Asia to surpass 5 billion streams on Spotify As of February 2020, BTS have clocked more than 8 billion streams. So in 2019 alone, the group’s music streamed more than 3 billion times. In September 2017, BTS became the first K-Pop artist to enter Spotify’s Global 50 chart, with the track “DNA.” BTS has the most-streamed K-Pop track on Spotify: “Boy With Luv” featuring Halsey, with more than 380 million streams. The track was released in April 2019, so it took less than a year to become Spotify’s most-streamed K-Pop track. “There’s no denying the massive global explosion of K-Pop over the last few years, and we’ve witnessed it first hand on Spotify,” says Kossy Ng, head of artist and label marketing in Asia. “This is truly the first Asian music genre to resonate so well with a global audience. K-Pop fans are among the most passionate and active, and K-Pop fandom — the way fans function, communicate and connect with one another — is like no other. There’s no doubt that K-Pop"s immense popularity will only continue to grow, and we"re excited to continue driving discovery and connecting K-Pop artists to fans all over the world.” — SG