Spotify announced on December 1 KST, through this year's "Spotify Wrapped" 2021's No.1 most-streamed female group worldwide. The K-pop supergroup BLACKPINK won the honor, even without any new music releases this year.
The feat implies that the listeners still have the most iconic songs of the K-pop girls' group on their Spotify playlists. With this year's top-most spot, the K-pop idols have become the most-heard girl group globally for three years in a row.
Two other K-pop girls' groups who joined the esteemed ranks on Spotify include JYP Entertainment's TWICE and ITZY and SM Entertainment's Red Velvet and aespa, the latter two got the fourth and eighth rank respectively.
Incidentally, another K-pop mega group to make waves on Spotify this year are BTS. They also scored an impressive feat by becoming the 3rd most streamed artist worldwide in 2021.
That is quite a rise for the Bangtan Boys in comparison to their 2018 and 2019 Spotify rankings when they got the No. 18 and No. 6 position respectively on the most-streamed artist globally.
Furthermore, BTS's chart-topping song "Butter" was 16th on the most-streamed song globally on Spotify, while "Dynamite" had the 22nd ranking on the list.
The presence of so many K-pop artists on the list is a testament to the worldwide popularity of the idols. Their influence is not just limited to South Korea and Asia but reaches far beyond internationally.
2021 has been a good year for BLACKPINK, though the superstars did not release any new material, and some concentrated on their solo careers.
This year, the band's management company YG Entertainment focused on promoting the individual debut of Lisa and Rosé. However, the group established itself as YouTube's most-followed artist with over 70 million subscribers.
The girls achieved this feat within only five years of opening the YouTube account. They have surpassed singers such as Taylor Swift, Eminem, EEd Sheeran, Ariana Grande, and Justin Bieber with their massive follower list on YouTube. Additionally, there are 32 videos on BLACKPINK's YouTube channel that have got more than 100 million views.
The band also has the most viewed video for a K-Pop artist. The music video for the song "DDU-DU DDU-DU" was the first K-Pop video to get over 1.7 billion views. The track, which was dropped in 2018, went on to become one of the group's most hit songs.