South Korea ranked third in the world on Luminate‘s Export Power score for the first half of 2026, behind only the United States and the United Kingdom and ahead of Canada. The U.S. analytics firm, which first published the ranking in January 2025, had placed Korea fourth for both full-year 2024 and full-year 2025. The H1 2026 report, released on July 15, 2026, is the first half-year reading to put the country in the top three.
The headline needs a caveat before anything else: this is not a sales ranking. Export Power is built on streaming data — how widely a country’s artists are heard abroad — not on how much music a country sells overseas.
Key numbers at a glance
- Luminate Export Power Score, H1 2026: 1st U.S., 2nd U.K., 3rd South Korea, 4th Canada, 8th Brazil (the only ranks disclosed in the public post).
- The score is streaming-based, not revenue-based — it combines how high a country’s artists chart abroad, how many countries stream them, how big those importing markets are, and how many of its artists reach foreign listeners.
- Luminate says in its own write-up that Korea rose ‘as BTS drives South Korea.’
- English-language songs fell to 87.1% of U.S. streams, an all-time low; Spanish reached 9.4%.
- U.S. CD sales rose 16% to 16.3 million units — K-pop limited editions were a big driver, but sales were still up 6.7% without them.
From 4th to 3rd — a first on the half-year scorecard
Luminate introduced the Export Power ranking in January 2025. Korea was 4th in the 2024 full-year list and the highest-ranked non-English-speaking country, as reported by The Korea Times on February 3, 2025. It held that fourth spot through the Q1 2025 update and the full-year 2025 ranking before overtaking Canada in H1 2026.
| Rank | Q1 2025 | H1 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | United States |
| 2 | United Kingdom | United Kingdom |
| 3 | Canada | South Korea |
| 4 | South Korea | Canada |
The full H1 2026 top-10 chart appears only as an image on Luminate’s blog, and the written text names just two ranks — Korea at No. 3 and Brazil at No. 8. Ranks 5–7 and 9–10 are reserved for the paid report and are not used here.
What the score actually measures
Reading this as ‘Korea is the world’s third-biggest music seller’ would be wrong. By Luminate’s own definition, published in January 2025, Export Power is calculated from streaming data, not revenue, and combines four components.
| Component | What it measures |
|---|---|
| Artist streaming rank | How high a country’s artists sit on foreign charts |
| Number of importing countries | How many countries stream that music heavily |
| Importing-market size | How large those foreign streaming markets are |
| Artists reached abroad | How many of its artists find overseas listeners |
A formula built this way is sensitive to a single big act. When one artist charts highly across many streaming markets, the first three components move together — which is exactly what Luminate flags as the driver here.
BTS’s ‘Arirang’ did the lifting
Luminate was explicit about the cause, writing that Korea climbed ‘as BTS drives South Korea.’ The underlying tallies, carried in Korean press reports (Sports Kyunghyang, July 17, 2026) and attributed to label HYBE, break down as follows.
| Chart | Rank | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| U.S. CD sales | 1st | ‘Arirang’ |
| U.S. vinyl sales | 1st | ‘Arirang’ |
| U.S. overall albums | 4th | ‘Arirang’ |
| Global songs | 6th | ‘SWIM’, 987 million streams |
A single comparison shows how big the shift is. According to Luminate’s January 2025 release, no Korean artist appeared on the U.S. top-100 of 2024. The U.S. was not even among Korean music’s top-three importing countries that year — Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia filled those slots. Eighteen months later, Korean press reports say five of the top-10 U.S. albums came from HYBE-affiliated acts.
A caveat: those sub-tallies are not reproduced in Luminate’s own blog post. The parts verifiable directly from the publisher are the 3rd-place rank and the BTS attribution; the rest comes through Korean press reports citing what appear to be label figures.
Non-English music gains ground — even inside the U.S.
Korea’s climb comes against a broader shift. Luminate reports that global on-demand audio streams reached 2.80 trillion in H1 2026, up 9.8% year on year, with markets outside the U.S. growing 11.8% — more than twice the U.S. rate of 4.8% (732.7 billion streams). In other words, listening to non-American music is expanding faster than listening overall.
Even inside the U.S., the language mix is moving. English-language tracks accounted for 87.1% of U.S. audio and video streams, the lowest share on record, with Spanish at 9.4% and other languages at 3.5% (other = 100 − 87.1 − 9.4, calculated).
Physical formats were lively too. U.S. CD sales reached 16.3 million units, up 16% year on year, and vinyl rose 2.4%. Luminate credits K-pop limited editions as a big part of the CD gain, but notes that CDs would still have risen 6.7% without K-pop. The format revival is wider than one genre — K-pop is riding on top of it.
How to read these numbers
The bigger a number is, the easier it is to misread. Three things to keep in mind:
- It is not a sales ranking. The third-place figure is a streaming-based score. ‘Korea is the world’s third-biggest music exporter by revenue’ is not a claim this dataset supports.
- One act matters a lot. Because Luminate itself names BTS as the cause, it remains to be seen whether the third-place slot holds in the next half-year and full-year readings. The 2024 and 2025 full-year rankings were both 4th.
- Only part of the ranking is public. For H1 2026, the written post names ranks 1–4 and 8 (Brazil). Ranks 5–7 and 9–10 are not used in this article.
Summary
South Korea reached third place on Luminate’s Export Power ranking for the first time in the first half of 2026. The score measures listening reach, not sales, and much of the lift came from a single act, BTS. The U.S. market itself is becoming a bit less English-dominated. Non-English music is being heard more widely — and Korea sits at the front of that shift — holds for H1 2026. Whether 3rd place sticks through the next half-year and full-year reports is for the next numbers to decide.
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Sources
- Luminate — Luminate 2026 Midyear Report: Trends in Music, Television & Film (2026-07-15)
- Luminate — Music Trade Update: Q1 2025’s Top Countries in Export Power (2025-05-13)
- Luminate — Introducing: The Luminate Export Power Score (2025-01-28)
- Sports Kyunghyang — BTS power! South Korea becomes world’s No. 3 music exporter (Korean) (2026-07-17)
- The Korea Times — Korea ranks 4th globally in music exports, highest among non-English-speaking countries: Luminate (2025-02-03)
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