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K-pop idols
This Week in AsiaLifestyle & Culture
Can Southeast Asian artists replicate K-pop’s global success with SEA-pop?
Even as more regional artists are performing overseas, they should not blindly copy the K-pop playbook, industry observers say
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Sam Beltran
Published: 3:00pm, 30 Aug 2026
At Tower Records in Tokyo’s Shibuya district earlier this month, fans flocked to a pop-up store set up for Filipino boy band SB19, buying exclusive merchandise including limited-edition CDs, T-shirts, stickers and phone straps
Due to overwhelming demand, the store ran for an additional five days. During the band’s tour in Japan, SB19 met fans in Yokohama and performed in Tokyo and Osaka during the Summer Sonic festival. Another Philippine act, the eight-member girl group BINI, made their debut at the music event.
In July, SB19 performed at the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago for the first time, while in April, they played a sold-out home concert in the city of Paranaque, drawing almost 100,000 local and international fans, including from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia and Germany. BINI also made history in April during their inaugural performance at the Coachella festival in California
Their successes appear to reflect a wider trend in Southeast Asia’s entertainment scene, with more regional acts outperforming Western artists and K-pop bands on streaming charts.
Data compiled by French music analytics platform Soundcharts found that the share of Indonesian artists on Spotify’s weekly top 10 soared from 39 per cent to 97 per cent in Indonesia between 2021 and the first half of 2026
The streaming data for the Philippines and Thailand were similar, rising from 31 per cent to 81 per cent and 71 per cent to 76 per cent, respectively, over the same period
An independent data analyst based in Japan, who goes by the moniker Tsurezure Lab and studies music streaming trends across global markets, tracked weekly aggregations of Spotify daily Top 50 charts in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore from February 2023 to May 2026 and noticed strong intra-regional support in these countries based on linguistic and cultural similarities
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