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| ▲ (Yonhap) |
SEOUL, May 22 (Yonhap) — South Korea's digital music market nearly doubled in size over the past four years, outpacing that of Japan, a recent report showed Thursday.
According to an in-depth report commissioned by the Korea Music Copyright Association (KOMCA) and conducted by EY Hanyoung, the combined size of the domestic music streaming and download market surged from US$692 million (952.5 billion won) in 2019 to $1.318 billion in 2023, marking a 90.5 percent increase.
In particular, the streaming segment jumped 95.6 percent during the same period, from $661 million to $1.293 billion.
"The domestic digital music market surpassed Japan, which is considered Asia’s leading music market and stood at around KRW 900 billion as of 2023," KOMCA said. "Streaming drove the overall growth of the digital market."
The report projects that the South Korean digital music market will grow to $1.695 billion by 2027.
Despite the market’s expansion, KOMCA pointed out that revenue distribution to creators remains insufficient compared with advanced markets.
In terms of streaming revenue distribution, the share per song received by copyright holders is 12.3 percent in the United States, 16 percent in the United Kingdom, and 15 percent in Germany, all higher than South Korea's 10.5 percent.
"This is 1.8 to 5.5 percentage points lower than major countries, which is not fitting for a country known as the home of K-pop," the association said.
KOMCA added that domestic streaming platforms, which operate under vertically integrated structures encompassing production, distribution, and sales, retain over 83 percent of streaming revenue per song when platform operator shares are combined.
The association also criticized the so-called “music copyright royalty co-prosperity plan” introduced in 2022, which excludes the increase in Google and Apple’s in-app payment fees from the revenue base used to calculate copyright royalties. KOMCA argued that this measure, extended for another two years last year, has resulted in reduced income for creators.
"We will actively work toward raising royalty rates and improving related policies to better protect copyright holders' rights," KOMCA said.
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