Top 10 Kpop groups' Peak Monthly Listeners in the US (good indicator for touring demand and potential audience)

Peak Monthly Listeners in the US

1. BTS - 2.97M

2. Blackpink - 1.52

3. NewJeans - 1.35

4. Twice - 860K

5. TXT - 709K

6. Stray Kids - 585K

7. (G)I-DLE - 498K

8. ENHYPEN - 414K

9. NCT 127 - 404K

10. LOONA - 369K

Current Monthly Listeners in the US

1. BTS - 2.04M

2. NewJeans - 1.34M

3. Blackpink - 939K

4. Twice - 830K

5. TXT - 678K

6. Stray Kids - 553K

7. (G)I-DLE - 460K

8. NCT 127 - 368K

9. ENHYPEN - 339K

10. SVT - 309K

Note: This only takes into account the Top cities with the highest listeners of an act because the Spotify API only gives limited access. So what made the list is probably only like 40% - 55% of the base listeners in the USA as a whole. Other cities didn't make a cut because the listeners are so spread out. The cities that made the list are usually like the biggest cities with huge population in each cities in US.

Source: https://songstats.com/

It seems like the promoters, companies and organizers use this data to gauge the potential audience for tours. For example, in BTS' cancelled tour in the US leg- all of the cities they booked has appeared on their listeners (if that makes sense lol).

Quote from BlackpinkHouse

Gidle really high wow. Also Loona making both lists, really shows their international appeal compared to how Korea ignores them. And if New Jeans had 20 songs, they could actually tour in the US already

Not Loona ending SVT tho lol

Still too early to say anything about NewJeans, but ADOR would probably booked them a smaller arena or theater venues in their first tour.

Quote from Kitty_Saurus

What are BTS current top cities?

Screenshot (14).png

All the * mark are the cities that BTS hasn't visited yet or has planned visiting in their cancelled tour. But this is the only cities that has appeared on the list, so a lot of cities were not included. Also, the current listeners in each city were not updated. I made this before.

For example, in NewJeans, the last city that has appeared in the US only has 4,000 listeners, so it's good to say that almost all of their base listeners in the US was counted.

Or for Blackpink, the last city that has appeared in the US has 51,000 listeners, meanwhile BTS last city's listeners have 126,000. Looking through the other HYBE's groups cities (since a lot of armys listen to them) and the members' solo profile- it seems like Phoenix, Anaheim, Austin, Philadelphia are amongst the cities in BTS as well.

Quote from tetetete

Are these mostly blue states for bts? Is there any red state?

What do you mean? I'm not from the US, so IDK lol

All I can say is that BTS or KPOP's audience mostly resides in big and popular cities esp in Bay Area, L.A and NYC probably because a lot of Asians live there or multi-cultural people.

Quote from Slayurfaves

I'm sure this only an estimate not sure about the accuracy wouldn't be better to add more data like on demand music streaming it would be more accurate as an indicator for touring imo

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It's not an estimate. Songstats get their data from Spotify's API itself. The difference is that you can only see the Top 5 cities on SP's desktop version, meanwhile you can get more in-depth data on Songstats even if it's not 100% complete. There's also another platform called Spotontrack which gives an even more in-depth data but it's premium.

Streaming affects chart but not touring. Listeners is the accurate indicator for touring demand since we're talking about ticket sales per person here. 1 people streaming 10x of one track doesn't magically makes it count as 10 people attending a concert lol. You cannot inflate touring attendance like streaming or buying an album. Totally different lol.

Quote from BlackpinkHouse

True. OPs data is only for Spotify i think. Would be really cool to see US Spotify, US Youtube Audio and Video, US Amazon Music, and US Apple Music streams combined.

Quote from Slayurfaves

streaming on demand is that lol but including other music streams combined lol it's actually more complete than only spotify ( spotify + other platforms) also some are subscription based if I'm not mistaken

Only Spotify gives us the # of listeners per city which is why it's a good indicator for touring. AM, YT Music and Amazon Music don't even reveal the streams per song. And streams is not a good indicator to gauge the touring demand.

US has the highest user count on Spotify as a country and almost everyone in the US who listens to music use SP as their music platform other than AM.

Spotify’s largest market in 2021 was Europe, with 146 million users. The country with the most users is the United States, with over 88 million Spotify users.

Source: https://www.businessofapps.com…0million%20in%20Q1%202019.

Quote from Minazuki

Since OP didn't add Stray Kids on the Top 10, I had to search on my own lol

Interesting their peak is very close to their current monthly listeners, like a 30K difference. I think that's cause their MLs peak was like last month, 4 months after their last korean cb

Yeah, I added them already.

Quote from Slayurfaves

some people listen to apple music

Did I say otherwise?

Apple Music had 88 million subscribers in 2022, an increase of eight million on the previous year.

That's for global numbers. In the US, there are 33M subscribers as of 2022, whilst there are 88M users on Spotify as of 2021 (I think). Majority of people who subscribe to AM most likely has Spotify account too.

And I don't see why it's very significant to KPOP, since kpop groups don't exactly chart very well on AM US lol. Kpop groups do well in Japan AM not US. Dynamite was the most streamed song in 2021 because of Japan.

How Many People Use Apple Music in 2023? (Statistics) - The Small Business Blog

How many people use Apple Music? Here’s what we know about its users.

thesmallbusinessblog.net

Quote from Slayurfaves

didn't you say you don't live here? I personally know some people that prefer apple music

and youtube music is also getting popular my point is all platforms should be considered

"if you’re in the market for some new stats quantifying the bigness of YouTube for music, research firm YouGov has you covered. It has been surveying people in 17 countries about their media habits, including music streaming. In a blog post, it broke out some of the latter figures.

44% of Americans use YouTube for music, according to the study, putting it well ahead of Spotify (27%), Pandora (25%), Amazon Prime Music (24%) and Apple Music / iHeartRadio (both 12%). Interestingly, for 18-34 year-olds, the gap with Spotify is much closer: the services are used by 53% and 45% of that age group respectively.

The study gets even more curious when it comes to the UK though. There, YouGov claims that only 19% of the adult population use YouTube for music, compared to 31% who use Spotify. And for 18-34 year-olds, it claims that YouTube tallies just 25% compared to Spotify’s 54%. This really would be surprising, if it were true, especially as YouTube’s penetration rates in France match the US exactly – 44% of adults and 53% of 18-34 year-olds."

also found this

The most used online music services in the United States in 2022 were Spotify, Youtube music, and Pandora, with 35 percent of survey respondents having recently listened to Spotify, 18 percent to Youtube music, and 15 percent to Pandora. Apple Music and Amazon Music lagged behind with just 12 and nine percent of study participants having used each service respectively in the last month.

I wonder if the data you provided are using data of spotify premium subscribers

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It's a rule of thumb. I see a lot of people on socials who live in the US say that they use both platforms. And I know some friends who came from the US who also use both platforms.

I also never excluded other platforms. I just used Spotify because they are more transparent on their data unlike the rest.

It doesn't matter if it's premium or not, 1 account = 1 listener.

Like I said, I don't see how AM is that significant to Kpop groups. Like, okay they're getting an additional of 1000 to 10's of thousand of new users who don't use Spotify as their music platform. So? KPOP's demographic is just not on AM US. Most artists who do well there are only hiphop/rapper acts and huge pop acts like Doja, Taylor and etc...meanwhile KPOP groups are lucky to even enter the Top 100 and not tank after a day lol.

Since, this is getting a bit further from the topic and the context, I will stop replying now. All I needed to say was already said.

Reason why I think promoters, organizers and companies use data like this to gauge the 'potential' touring demand or audience.

Screenshot (15).png

This is Twice's concert venues in the US and as you can see almost all of their Top cities were included in the tour. Same happened with BTS in 2020 US dates (with additional cities post-pandemic because of how much they grew ever since MOTS 7 era).

Not saying this is accurate for other groups especially for newer groups, but it pretty much is for veteran/older groups like BTS, TWICE and BP who have already secured or amassed their own fanbase and not only casual fans/listeners.

Quote from sweetenerstan

Reason why I think promoters, organizers and companies use data like this to gauge the 'potential' touring demand or audience.

Screenshot (15).png

This is Twice's concert venues in the US and as you can see almost all of their Top cities were included in the tour. Same happened with BTS in 2020 US dates (with additional cities post-pandemic because of how much they grew ever since MOTS 7 era).

Not saying this is accurate for other groups especially for newer groups, but it pretty much is for veteran/older groups like BTS, TWICE and BP who have already secured or amassed their own fanbase and not only casual fans/listeners.

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Besides, what else do they use to gauge the demand for concert or what cities to visit to???

It's not like they have a magic ball to predict everything else lol. Ofcourse, for newer groups since they are rookies, they will also need to prove each era that they have a growing and stable fanbase like their seniors.

For example, TXT's first tour is in theater, then HYBE booked them arenas this year since there's proof that there's demand. But pretty much the cities that they visited are also their top cities in the US. That's what I'm talking about.

And it's also known that boygroups do have larger & stable fanbase than girl groups. Also, boygroup fans tend to be more loyal than gg fans who's listeners are more spread out to other ggs. Which is why one of the reasons why boygroups will always sell more.