Can Southeast Asian artists replicate K-pop’s global success with SEA-pop?

In Tokyo's Shibuya district, fans flocked to a pop-up store dedicated to Filipino boy band SB19, purchasing exclusive merchandise including limited-edition CDs, T-shirts, stickers, and phone straps. Due to overwhelming demand, the store extended its run by five additional days. SB19 performed in Yokohama, Tokyo, and Osaka during the Summer Sonic festival, while another Philippine act, the eight-member girl group BINI, debuted at the music event.

In July, SB19 made their debut at the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago, and in April, they performed a sold-out home concert in Paranaque, attracting nearly 100,000 local and international fans from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia, and Germany. BINI also made history in April with their inaugural performance at the Coachella festival in California.

Data from Soundcharts reveals a significant shift in Southeast Asian music streaming trends. Between 2021 and the first half of 2026, the share of Indonesian artists on Spotify's weekly top 10 in Indonesia surged from 39% to 97%. Similar increases were observed in the Philippines (31% to 81%) and Thailand (71% to 76%) during the same period.

An anonymous data analyst based in Japan, specializing in music streaming trends, tracked Spotify's weekly aggregations of Top 50 charts from February 2023 to May 2026 in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. The analyst noted strong intra-regional support in these countries, attributing it to linguistic and cultural similarities.

Industry players are optimistic about the potential for Southeast Asian artists to replicate the success of their K-pop counterparts like BTS and Blackpink and achieve global recognition. This phenomenon has given rise to the term SEA-pop, or Southeast Asian pop. Roslyn Pineda, Hong Kong-based president of Sony Music Publishing in Asia, noted that SEA-pop has become increasingly vibrant, with local music dominating charts in the Philippines and Thailand. Thailand has also seen a rise in Thai pop, or T-pop, since 2023.

Darynaufal Mulyaman, an assistant professor of international relations at Universitas Kristen Indonesia, highlights the diversity of SEA-pop, reflecting the region's culture, language, and religion. He likens SEA-pop to the "unity in diversity" ethos of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, where countries with different backgrounds come together through consensus diplomacy rather than a shared identity.

SEA-pop reproduces this structure in music, blending local cultures and infusing indigenous instruments to reinforce national identity, diverging from the K-pop model that initially inspired Southeast Asian music industry players.

While the growth of regional artists is largely driven by themselves, music labels, and fans, exporting SEA-pop to the world requires more than strong streaming numbers. The development of SEA-pop relies on a thinner institutional support base compared to K-pop's global powerhouse status. South Korea has integrated pop culture into its export strategy, but Southeast Asia lacks a similar approach and government agency to accelerate its global growth.

Mulyaman acknowledges that ASEAN's cohesion is institutionally shallower than the EU's by design, lacking the incentive to work together on security or economic issues. However, there is potential for Southeast Asia to unite and promote its soft power, as it would entail less sensitivity than collaborating on security or economic matters.

Pineda identifies several regional acts, such as SB19, BINI, Dolla, No Na, and 4EVE, as strong contenders for global success due to their international festival appearances, bilingual tracks, playlist dominance, and high-fashion aesthetics.