South Korea’s cultural influence is no longer confined to K-pop, and Spotify says it wants to help push the country’s growing creative power even further around the world.
Gautam Talwar, Spotify’s general manager for Asia-Pacific, said the streaming giant is committed to exporting Korean culture globally, describing Korea as a major force in entertainment and other creative fields. He made the comments during an interview with Yonhap in Seoul on Sept. 9.
“Korea is a home base for creative expression,” Talwar said, pointing not only to music but also to entertainment, esports and webtoons. His comments signal a broader strategy for Spotify: use the enormous international appetite for Korean content as a springboard for artists and genres that have traditionally received less global attention.
K-Pop Was Only the Beginning
Spotify’s relationship with Korean music goes back more than a decade. The company launched an early K-pop-focused playlist in 2014, helping establish a dedicated home for the genre on its platform.
Since then, K-pop has evolved into one of Spotify’s most internationally successful music categories.
Spotify reported in April that K-pop rose from the No. 579 genre on its platform in 2008 to the top 50 by 2026. More than 61 billion K-pop streams came from listeners outside South Korea in 2025 alone, illustrating how dramatically Korean music has expanded beyond its home market.
The latest numbers suggest that the Korean music story is now broadening.
According to Spotify, K-rock streaming increased 58% year over year in 2025, while K-indie streaming jumped 68%. International listeners also discovered Korean artists for the first time more than 2 billion times, while royalties generated by Korean-language music increased 25% year over year. Crucially, 92% of those royalties came from outside South Korea.
That means the global opportunity is increasingly extending beyond the biggest idol groups.
Spotify Sees a New Korean Music Wave
Talwar said K-pop has effectively opened the door for international listeners to explore other Korean artists and genres.
That shift is already visible across Spotify, where Korean indie, rock, R&B, hip-hop and other genres have dedicated playlists and discovery hubs.
Spotify’s strategy reflects a wider transformation in the Korean Wave, or Hallyu. What once centered largely on K-pop and Korean television has expanded into film, webtoons, fashion, food, gaming and other forms of popular culture.
The streaming platform is positioning music as part of that much larger cultural ecosystem.
Spotify Wants More Than Digital Streams
Perhaps the most interesting part of Talwar’s comments concerns what Spotify plans to do next.
Rather than focusing solely on streaming, the company wants to create more physical opportunities for artists and fans to meet, arguing that audiences increasingly want shared experiences in an increasingly digital world.
That approach is already being tested through Spotify House, a Seoul pop-up featuring live performances, content and fan activities.
Spotify has also expanded its relationships with Korean companies. Its partnership with Naver has integrated Spotify music and podcasts into parts of Naver’s digital ecosystem, giving the streaming service a stronger connection to Korean users and creators.
Spotify Is Growing Fast in Korea
Spotify entered the South Korean market in 2021 and has since built a significant local audience.
The company had 6.22 million users in Korea as of June 2026, according to the latest figures cited by Yonhap, making it the country’s second-most-used music streaming app behind YouTube Music, which had 9.49 million users.
Globally, Spotify reported 777 million monthly active users and 300 million subscribers as of 2025, giving Korean artists access to an enormous potential international audience.
The platform has also increasingly experimented with artist-focused experiences. In June, for example, Spotify hosted a special LE SSERAFIM live event in Seoul and later made the performances available internationally, extending the group’s fan experience beyond the physical venue.
BTS has similarly benefited from Spotify’s global promotional ecosystem. In July, the group’s “NORMAL” became Spotify’s most-streamed K-pop music video in a single day, while its ARIRANG album had already become the platform’s most-streamed K-pop album.
The Bigger Bet: Turning Korean Fandom Into Global Discovery
Spotify’s latest strategy points to a potentially important change in how Korean music is exported.
The first stage of the Korean Wave was about getting global audiences to notice Korea. K-pop became one of its most powerful entry points.
The next stage could be about getting those audiences to explore everything else Korea’s creative industries have to offer.
For Spotify, that means helping an international listener move from a major K-pop act to an indie Korean band, an electronic producer, a rock group or another emerging artist.
And with Korean-language music already generating the overwhelming majority of its royalties from outside the country, the commercial incentive is becoming harder to ignore.
WWC ONE MEDIA G.A
Leave a Reply