KPop Analytics - Part 1

Picture 1. SM Town World Tour III in Jakarta

Korean Wave is the general term used to address growing popularity of Korean culture (mostly is about KPop) outside Korea (South Korea). A study was conducted to answer a simple question:

"Does Korean Wave have impact to the popularity of local music?"

Summary
In general, Korean Wave in the form of K Pop has impact to the popularity of local music. This is supported by the facts that:

• There was search query of K Pop is increasing while it is decreasing for local songs.
• It was started even before 2004 in Japan, but started to show growth on 2011.
• Growing interest dominated particularly by South East Asia region.
• Other than in Japan, K Pop hasn't surpassed the popularity of local music.

Opinion

Decreasing interest over local music is possibly an early indicator of dropping market share of local music and increasing market share of imported music (especially from Korea, India, and USA). KPop shows growing interest in countries, especially where KPop concerts were ever be held. A lot of Korean artists are regularly active in Japan, hence it's common to see high interest growth in Japan.

Methodology
Measurement was conducted through web-based approach using Google Trends (including the data)
Step 1. Analyzing popular search location for the following term: K Pop
Study found that Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and Philippines came in the top 6.
Note: Since Korean Wave doesn't happen in its own country, so Korea was taken out from analysis.

Step 2. Analyzing search trends (limited by region) between K Pop (blue) and Local music (red) by comparing trend of interest of term "K Pop" (blue) and local music (red).

Japan Malaysia Singapore
N/A

Indonesia Philippines