K-pop's new power fans? Middle-aged Americans with money and time to spend
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Last year, the United States imported more kimchi from Korea than K-pop albums. However, in the first half of 2026, K-pop album exports to the United States surged to three times the value of kimchi exports, while the country surpassed Japan and China to become the largest overseas market for K-pop albums.
The United States was not alone in seeing a surge in K-pop album imports. Germany became the fourth-largest overseas market after its imports increased more than sixfold in a year. K-pop also breathed new life into CDs, once thought destined for extinction, while fans in their 40s and 50s emerged as an increasingly visible part of the fandom.
Korea also rose to become the world’s third-largest “music export powerhouse,” behind only the United States and Britain, breaking the English-speaking world’s monopoly on the top three. The global music market witnessed one K-pop surprise after another in the first half of this year. As striking as the pace of growth was the way that growth unfolded: Where, by whom and how K-pop is consumed are all changing.
US reshapes K-pop album export market long led by Japan and China
According to a Hankook Ilbo analysis of Korea Customs Service data on album exports in the first half of this year, shipments to the United States reached $74.12 million, overtaking China at $61.18 million and Japan at $45.61 million. The change at the top of the export rankings suggests that the center of K-pop consumption is shifting beyond East Asia to the United States, the world’s largest music market.
The growth in K-pop album exports to the United States is even more striking when compared with kimchi. The fermented Korean staple was expected to receive a boost after being included in the U.S. government’s “Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025-2030,” released in January. Kimchi exports to the United States rose 12.9 percent year-on-year in the first half of this year, from $21.79 million to $24.60 million.
By contrast, K-pop album exports surged 281 percent over the same period, from $19.45 million to $74.12 million. In simple terms, their growth rate was more than 20 times that of kimchi exports. The release of BTS’ new album was a major factor behind the explosive growth.
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Germany overtakes Taiwan as major K-pop album market
The shift in K-pop’s export landscape was also evident in Europe. Exports to Germany surged more than sixfold, from $3.43 million in the first half of last year to $21.17 million this year. That put Germany ahead of Taiwan, which had ranked fourth a year earlier and imported $17.95 million worth of K-pop albums in the first half of this year.
Germany also far outpaced the Netherlands at $4.32 million and Britain at $3.32 million, rapidly emerging as a major new hub for K-pop in Europe.
“Before BTS, there was a tendency in Germany to dismiss K-pop as something enjoyed by a small group of obsessive teenage fans or to view it through a racist lens,” Lee Yu-jin, a former Berlin correspondent for the Korea Foundation for International Cultural Exchange, told the Hankook Ilbo. “These days, however, the local media and music industry are treating K-pop seriously.”
Once regarded as a subculture consumed by a niche group of enthusiasts, K-pop has become a commercial force that Germany’s mainstream music market can no longer ignore.
Such a shift would have been difficult to imagine just five years ago. In 2021, Matthias Matuschik, a DJ at German public radio station Bayern 3, sparked accusations of racism after likening BTS to SARS. The pendulum has since swung the other way, to the point that the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has described Frankfurt as “Germany’s K-pop capital.”
A Billboard report on K-pop fandom in the United States shows that middle-aged consumers have emerged as some of the fandom’s biggest spenders, contrary to expectations that younger fans would spend the most. Captured from Billboard
Americans aged 45 to 54 emerge as biggest buyers of high-priced K-pop CDs
The changes K-pop has brought go beyond the rankings of the countries buying its albums to how music itself is consumed. CD sales in the United States, once thought destined to disappear in the age of streaming, have rebounded, with K-pop driving the resurgence.
But their purpose has changed somewhat. Rather than buying CDs simply to listen to music, fans are buying them to “own” their favorite artists’ music in physical form.
According to Luminate’s “2026 Midyear Report,” CD sales in the United States rose 16 percent year-on-year to 16.3 million copies in the first half of this year. Excluding K-pop releases, however, the increase was only 6.7 percent. Luminate, which compiles global music consumption data for Billboard, concluded that K-pop had driven the sharp rise in U.S. CD sales.
Eight of the 10 bestselling CDs in the United States during the same period were K-pop albums. K-pop also swept the top three spots, led by BTS’ “ARIRANG,” followed by ENHYPEN’s “THE SIN: VANISH” and ATEEZ’s “GOLDEN HOUR: Part.4.”
Members of ENHYPEN pose during a press conference celebrating the release of their eighth mini-album, “THE SIN: BLISS,” at Mondrian Seoul in Yongsan District, Seoul, Aug. 20. Newsis
Members of ATEEZ pose at the blue carpet event for the “2026 SBS Gayo Daejeon Summer” at KINTEX Exhibition Center 2 in Ilsan, Gyeonggi Province, Aug. 9. Yonhap
Behind the revival of CDs is a K-pop fandom culture that treats them less as a way to listen to music than as collectibles or merchandise.
According to Billboard’s “K-Pop Fandom in the U.S.” report, based on a survey of 1,304 K-pop fans in the country, 52 percent of respondents had bought multiple versions of the same album, mainly to collect items such as member photocards that differed between editions. Another 41 percent said they spent more than $100 annually on K-pop CDs. In reviving a dying format, K-pop has also transformed what the CD is for.
The revival was not driven by young fans alone. Fans in their 40s and 50s have emerged as some of the genre’s biggest spenders. Among those aged 45 to 54, 55 percent had bought higher-priced box sets bundling albums with merchandise, the highest proportion of any age group.
Billboard drew particular attention to the spending power of middle-aged K-pop fans. Vicki Ronn, an English professor at Friends University, gave her son, who is in his 40s, a vinyl copy of BTS member J-Hope’s solo album “Jack in the Box,” prompting him to become a BTS fan.
Grace Kao, a sociology professor at Yale University, also said the K-pop fan base was growing older as more middle-aged fans with the time and disposable income to travel for concerts entered the fandom.
Behind the revival of K-pop CDs, then, is the crumbling of another old assumption: that K-pop is music only for teenagers and 20-somethings.
This article from the Hankook Ilbo, the sister publication of The Korea Times, is translated by a generative AI system and edited by The Korea Times.