Agencies Behind K-Pop’s Biggest Stars

K-Pop is upbeat, captivating, and distinctly fun. And the world agrees. The genre has boosted South Korea’s music scene into a $5 billion industry. Jay Yeo analyzes the K-Pop groups that influenced this success, using a Sankey diagram to show the relationship between agencies and artists as of 2017. Jeehwan (Jay) digs into the different agencies to see their full stack of talent, using disc-like donut charts to show the proportion of male to female artists. He also shares details around music sales and overall profit to highlight the frontrunners in the K-Pop scene.

Explore the visualization

• Music videos are a critical piece of a K-Pop band’s image and global popularity. Explore the red bars to see which artist has the most video views on YouTube.
• One agency in this list only represents male artists. Click on the “boy” filter to see how this proportion compares to other agencies.
• Click on the name of your favorite K-Pop artist on the right to highlight details like their agency and music video play count.