Southeast Asia's stars borrowed K-pop playbook. Will they now steal the show?

A group of dancers clad in red and black stood in the middle of a crowd in New York’s Times Square, filming a familiar “street dance” video, popularized by K-pop fans.

But the song playing in the background was not Korean. It was Thai.

In a YouTube video uploaded on Oct. 16, the Not Shy Dance Crew covered “Lock Pao” by Dicered, a subunit of Thai boy band DICE, as part of its “Thai Pop in Public NYC” series.

The street dance video format — in which dancers perform choreography in public spaces — was previously dominated by K-pop.

Lee Seol, a Korean blogger and longtime Southeast Asian music fan, thought that Not Shy Dance Crew’s video reflected a broader shift in the music industry, with pop acts from all across Asia, not just Korea, starting to share the spotlight.

“It certainly feels like Southeast Asian music is finding a global audience,” he told the Korea JoongAng Daily. “Songs from the region seem to go viral quickly once they get exposure.”

Lee’s own introduction to the region came through Thai indie music. Since 2013, he has shared his observations about the vibrant Southeast Asian music scene on his blog as he watched artists adapt K-pop’s production and promotion methods through trial and error.

And increasingly, he sees them finding success by combining those methods with music that speaks to local listeners.

“What’s working for them is understanding how K-pop attracts and keeps fans, then adapting that approach while […] still catering to local tastes,” he noted.

The rise of Southeast Asian music that Lee has observed is now unfolding on some of the world’s biggest stages.

BINI, one of the most popular girl groups in Filipino pop, or P-pop, became the first Filipino group to perform at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival this year. Fellow P-pop act SB19 also made history as the first all-Filipino group to perform at Lollapalooza.

K-pop heavily influenced both BINI and SB19 in their training and production model. The audition program “Star Hunt Academy” (2019–) brought together the members of BINI, who then underwent K-pop-style training before debuting in 2021, while a local subsidiary of Korean entertainment company ShowBT launched SB19 before the boy band left and started its own agency in 2023.

The P-pop acts are now seeking a Grammy in the newly established Best Asian Pop Music Performance category, which BTS and many other major K-pop acts have chosen to boycott, bringing global attention to a region that is slowly mastering how to adapt K-pop’s playbook to local tastes.

Their rise, therefore, poses a question for the industry that helped shape them: Will stronger homegrown acts chip away at K-pop’s position in Southeast Asia and beyond?

Local music gains ground

The growing prominence of homegrown musicians in Southeast Asia is visible in their numbers.

According to Soundcharts data cited by Al Jazeera, the share of local artists’ songs on Spotify’s weekly domestic top 10 chart rose from 39 percent in 2021 to 97 percent in the first half of this year in Indonesia. That figure rose from 31 percent to 81 percent in the Philippines and from 71 percent to 76 percent in Thailand.

Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand are three of Southeast Asia’s biggest K-pop markets by YouTube views.

Survey data from the Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange (Kofice) also showed that the proportion of respondents who had listened to Korean music within the previous year declined in these three countries, although the consumption rate varied.

In Indonesia, the share of respondents who had prior exposure to Korean cultural content and reported listening to Korean music within the previous year inched down from 83.3 percent in 2024 to 82.2 percent last year. The figure fell by 3 percentage points to 80.2 percent in Thailand and by 6.9 percentage points to 84 percent in the Philippines.

Among respondents who had listened to Korean music within the previous year, Korean music’s average share of their overall music consumption fell from 39.7 percent to 37.6 percent in Indonesia and from 32 percent to 29.1 percent in Thailand. In the Philippines, however, it rose from 36.3 percent to 40.3 percent.

In an annual analysis published by Circle Chart in February, music data analyst Kim Jin-woo noted that while Korea’s physical album exports reached a record $301.7 million in 2025, exports to several Southeast Asian markets remained stagnant or slightly declined.

“The Southeast Asian [K-pop] market has struggled to overcome a slump since 2022, and the K-pop industry appears to have reached the limits of its [marketing] strategy,” he wrote.

Closer to home

Southeast Asia has long been a reliable consumer base for K-pop. Although average spending on K-pop content in the region trails behind the global average, at least according to the Kofice survey for 2025, its young demographic, high daily internet use and growing population drive online K-pop-related engagement and strong demand for K-pop events.

Then what does the rise of local music — especially those influenced by K-pop yet evolving into its own distinctive style — mean for the genre?

While K-pop’s polished production remains its competitive edge in global markets, mainstream local artists in the region offer something that K-pop cannot: cultural familiarity.

“I think that K-pop in Southeast Asia has become something like Western pop in Korea,” blogger Lee said, distinguishing between local music’s dominance and individual fans’ listening choices. 

However, he noted that songs from the region’s own culture and language are bound to resonate more.

“If local idols provide the satisfaction that K-pop idols once did, they can take their place,” he said.

In a 2024 column on Philippine outlet PhilSTAR Life, columnist Angel Martinez similarly identified cultural relatability as a distinguishing quality of local stars such as BINI and SB19.

“Contrary to the unattainable pedestal that K-pop idols occupy — exacerbated by the distance, language barrier and cultural differences — these [P-pop] idols are certainly people, too, with the magnetism of the popular kid from school [whom] you never quite forget,” Martinez wrote, referring to BINI’s members.

Selling the business

The stronger presence of local acts could mean more competition for Korean entertainment companies, especially in regional markets, but it could also offer opportunities for shared growth or new business partnerships.

Eo Si-yong, a representative of F&F Entertainment, which manages boy band AHOF, sees room for both. He suggested that the rise of local artists does not necessarily translate into an equivalent loss for K-pop.

“I don’t think that a straightforward substitution effect will take place, with the emergence of local groups in Southeast Asia necessarily reducing K-pop consumption by the same amount,” he said. “Filipino fans, for example, tend to support SB19 or BINI while also supporting AHOF.”

Southeast Asian K-pop group members — such as AHOF’s JL from the Philippines and Hearts2Hearts’ Carmen from Indonesia — also give fans a huge reason to connect with the genre and its idols, Eo noted.

“Some local fans support K-pop with a sense of pride similar to what Koreans feel watching Son Heung-min or Kim Yuna,” he said, referring to Korean sports legends.

Shin Min-geum, a researcher specializing in Southeast Asia and the Philippines at the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP), also said that local groups such as BINI and SB19 do not yet appear to be broadly displacing demand for K-pop concerts or other forms of consumption in the Philippines.

“In the Philippines’ consumption-driven economy, people tend to spend on things that they value, even when budget is tight, helping sustain demand,” she said.

The opportunities extend beyond bringing Korean artists to local audiences, as growing Southeast Asian fandoms are also creating business for Korean companies that provide the existing K-pop platforms and services.

“K-pop is turning its know-how into global solutions that it can sell,” music critic Cha Woo-jin wrote in his column on June 30, titled “‘Southeastern Wave,’ or K-pop’s new competitors.”

“That is why the competitive landscape cannot be understood simply as ‘K-pop vs. Southeast Asia,’” he wrote.

SB19 and BINI, for example, joined HYBE’s fandom community platform Weverse earlier this year. In August, Korean company b.stage partnered with Vietnamese entertainment company MMusic to launch mfan, a fandom platform for the Vietnamese market. SM Entertainment also plans to launch an idol group in Thailand in partnership with its local subsidiary SM True.

Such partnerships give Korean companies a role in the growth of local artists, even as those artists compete with Korean groups for listeners’ attention.

KIEP researcher Shin, however, pointed out that building a lasting relationship also requires greater cultural exchange in both directions.

“Cultural exchange should be a two-way process,” she said. “We tend to approach the relationship primarily in terms of exporting Korean content, and that imbalance creates problems. To sustain mutually beneficial cooperation over the long term, cultural cooperation needs to go in both directions.”

BY SHIN HA-NEE [[email protected]]