105 -- A Study in the Growth and Popularity of K-pop Globally Through the Success of BTS from 2013-2021

The purpose of this project is to spatially analyze the growth in the popularity of K-pop globally from 2013-2021. As a case study, I focus on the success of K-pop boy group BTS. K-pop, also known as Korean pop, is a genre of music that originated in South Korea that combines different styles of music such as pop, rock, and hip-hop. BTS is a popular and award-winning K-pop boy group that debuted in 2013 under HYBE Cooperation, formerly known as Bighit Entertainment. Data were collected from websites such as Google Trends, chartmasters.org, billboard.com, ibighit.com, metlifestadium.com and other venue’s websites, on K-pop Google search frequencies, and BTS album and tour sales from 2013-2021. The data were collected and organized in Excel then inputted into QGIS to create maps to analyze spatial and temporal patterns in album sales, ticket sales, and google searches. The results show the areas where K-pop has become popular, as well as where BTS has become successful. For example, BTS album sales dominate Asia with about a total of 23,645,000 sales leaving Asia to make up a little under half of BTS’s total album sales. The results also show that BTS’s ticket sales in the United States have contributed to well over half of BTS’s total ticket sales in 2021, while in 2013 US sales didn’t even make up half of total ticket sales.