For decades, Britain has traditionally punched massively above its weight when it comes to pop music: we’re so used to providing the world with huge stars that the sight of a list of global bestselling albums and singles that doesn’t contain a single UK artist comes as a jolt. The industry body IFPI has published its figures for 2024, and these charts are populated solely by American and South Korean artists.
It tells you something about a market dramatically opened up by the rise of social media and streaming, which made music from outside the old Anglo-American pop axis more accessible and appealing. Four of the 10 biggest-selling albums of 2024 come from South Korea, a country that continues to exceed expectations, with 17m fewer people than the UK. It has proved infinitely more adept at marketing manufactured pop than Britain or the US in recent years, with K-pop fans actually spending money on albums: when you remove streaming from the equation and look at pure sales, 17 of the top 20 biggest global sellers are South Korean. Sales are helped along by fan-baiting multiple editions – Seventeen’s two charting albums had 12 different versions between them – though Taylor Swift was the canniest in this regard: she released a total of 36 versions (19 of them physical editions) of The Tortured Poets Department, which duly tops the global album list.
