K-pop fans have fueled an unusual surge in physical album sales in 2026 according to Luminate’s midyear report. Fans of BTS, Enhypen, and Ateez notably showed out in droves at stores like Target and Walmart to buy their favorite artists’ albums. The burst
in interest was most notable with CD sales, which are up 16 percent this year; K-pop albums accounted for nearly 10 percent of that figure.
BTS’ Arirang has sold 567,000 CDs so far this year, while Enhypen’s The Sin: Vanish sold 286,400 CDs and Ateez’s Golden Hour: Part 4 sold 263,000 CDs. The report mentions that about half of Gen Z and millennial consumers who buy CDs do not own a CD player, showing that compact discs are now affordable novelties to some. Arirang topped Luminate’s both vinyl and CD sales charts.
Coupled with streaming numbers for K-pop and the Latin explosion in recent years, the dominance of English-language music is on the decline. Anglophone music now represents only 87.1 percent of streams with Spanish songs accounting for 9.4 percent and Korean music holding steady from fiscal year 2025 at 1.1 percent. Bad Bunny’s Debí Tirar Más Fotos accounts for 1.54 million album-equivalent streams this year, while BTS’ Arirang accounts for 1.49 million. Arirang alone made South Korea the world’s third largest music exporter behind the U.S. and U.K. respectively.
“Casual U.S. listenership of Latin music has hit an all-time high, with 54% — or more than one in two music listeners — now reporting that they engage with the genre,” Jaime Marconette, Luminate’s vice president of music insights and industry relations, told The Associated Press. “Latin music’s cultural footprint is rapidly widening far beyond its traditional core base into the broader American mainstream.”
Other metrics of note in the report include the global on-demand audio streams are up 9.8 percent overall. R&B and hip-hop continue to dominate U.S. audio streams overall but the genres’ stronghold on the chart is slipping as streams of dance and electronic music climb. Additionally, Latin music, fueled by Bad Bunny’s jaw-dropping Super Bowl halftime show, and country, fueled by Morgan Wallen, are both up. Wallen’s I’m the Problem is the Number One album so far this year, followed by Ella Langley’s Dandelion, and Bad Bunny’s Debí Tirar Más Fotos, then BTS’ Arirang.
Sixty percent of Gen Z listeners now listen to music from the 1990s or earlier, according to Luminate, which somewhat explains why most of the rock music streamed is 75 percent “deep catalog” (a.k.a. five years old or older.)
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