You would never catch me buying an album by an artist like Taylor Swift or Beyonce, but I will download their songs on Apple Music and Spotify. I do however, spend hours at Barnes and Noble, Target and Walmart scouring the music section to find one particular version of one of my favorite K-pop albums. It does not matter if I only like one song or the entire album; I will buy K-Pop albums.
Purchasing K-pop albums like BTS’, whether you’re a dedicated fan or just a casual listener, feels like an immersive experience. From the anticipation of which photo card(s) you might receive to the additional elements beyond just the CD (such as elaborate packaging and exclusive merchandise), there’s a stark contrast in the buying experience for fans of western artists compared to Korean artists.
A question I asked myself during my research for this article was When was the last time I bought a Beyonce, Taylor Swift, or Olivia Rodriogo album? and I could not remember. But the last K-pop album that I bought was BTS’ 2 COOL 4 SKOOL album at Barnes and Noble. When I was scouring the album section, I noticed that a lot of the western artist albums were still on the walls collecting dust, but when I went to the K-pop section, there were not many copies of each album; at most: one or two. If I wanted one of my ult-groups albums, I had to get it right then and there because I don’t know when the next restock would be.
At that moment, I realized that while the K-pop industry might put equal amounts of focus on both streams and physical album sales, western artists have shifted their focus more to digital streams. This is evident in the act of purchasing a K-pop album: it is more than just a CD, which makes it 100 times more worth it just to see the differences in what might be included.
We can see now that some of the bigger western artists have caught onto that trend (Taylor Swift). With the new releases of her older albums, she has done something quite similar to what K-pop labels do, which is release the same album but in different colors. This is similar to K-pop because most groups have anywhere from two different versions to three different versions of the same album but with a different color scheme or feel. For example, my favorite group BOYNEXTDOOR released their second mini album called Why with a Dazed version, Moody version, and Letter versions for each individual member. Yes, I did buy both Moody and Dazed versions as well as two different Letter versions. Most of the inclusions are the same but hinge on different themes, and hopefully you are lucky enough to get a different photo card with no duplicates.
I only bring that up because when Taylor Swift released 1989 (Taylor’s Version), each vinyl record was a different color and a lot of Swifties were trying to get the one color that they liked; I saw them struggling. They know the feeling some of us K-pop fans go through when we want a hard-to-find exclusive version.
I wonder if western artists will now move the way K-pop artists are going so that they also can break back into the physical album sales rather than just relying on digital album sales? Maybe. Once they do that, we might see another shift in the music industry.