The girls who made their official Japanese debut last year have taken Japan by storm with their ‘hip dance’ and charmed their Japanese fans with their vocal talent and their cute, approachable image. And this year, fans felt closer to the girls as they made more television appearances, allowing fans to get to know them better. Jang Jinhee from KARA’s agency DSP Media stated, “KARA has refrained from holding a concert in Japan this year and have focused on making television appearances, which directly impacted the number of albums they sold.”
According to the Oricon, KARA garnered a cumulative sales total (from albums & DVDs) of roughly $63.6million USD, being the #1 K-pop artist in Japan to sell the most albums. Out of Japanese artists and foreign artists combined, KARA came in at #4 overall.
SNSD garnered a sales total of $52.2 million USD in Japan and came in at #5. SNSD’s DVD and Blu-ray discs ranked #1 on the Oricon under the music category, and their ‘Japan First Tour Girls’ Generation‘ was just released on the 14th, selling 69,000 copies in the first week as well as seizing the #1 slot on the DVD Weekly Chart under the music category. The Blu-ray disc that was released the same day also sold an impressive 37,000 copies in the first week and seized #2 on the Blu-ray Disc Weekly list overall, and came in at #1 under the music category.
It is rare for Korean artists to come in at 4th and 5th place on a list of most-sold CD’s and DVDs in Japan. Boy group 2PM and SHINee also ranked at #2 and #3 on the list of highest sales totals among rookie artist with rough sales figures of $12.7 million USD and $11.2 million USD, respectively.
The artist to sell the most albums overall was famous Japanese girl group AKB48 with a sales figure of over $208 million USD, followed by boy group Arashi who sold $196 million USD, and EXILE with $71.7 million USD.
With the increase in sales overall, the K-pop market in Japan is also increasingly expanding. KARA & SNSD ranked at #1 and #2 for best rookie artist on the Oricon by generating revenue of $16.6 million USD and $11.2 million last year, and in a year their revenue have increased by 400-500%.
The Japanese music market is the second-largest in the world, and in total is 10-20 times larger than the music market in Korea.
The overseas profits of the ‘Big 3′ agencies SM, YG, and JYP have increased by an impressive 20% over the last three years.
YG Entertainment has recently become a listed company and although their overseas profits only carried a weight of 4% of their total profits, this year it has spiked to 45%.
Promoting overseas with Japan as the main market has helped music entertainment agencies experience much growth.
CEO Hong of Cube Entertainment stated, “This year, the Japanese have expanded their consumption of all things K-pop. Not just albums, but performances, character merchandise, and more. The K-pop market in Japan has at least doubled in size compared to last year.”
According to the Korea Creative Content Agency, by the 3rd quarter of 2011, the amount of music-related exports into Japan increased by 183% ($117 million USD) compared to last year.
So how much net profit is KARA raking in from Japan? According to the music industry, 8% to 20% of their album and DVD sales are brought in as royalties and so their royalty profits alone from strictly album and DVD sales are close to $8.6 million USD. But famous artists make more money off of other things such as merchandising and performances and with everything combined, the professionals calculate KARA to bring in a net profit of around $17.3 million USD in total.
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