Southeast Asia’s homegrown artists are knocking K-pop off its pedestal

Published 1 July 2026 · world

Drawing lessons from the global success of K-Pop, the region is finding its own voice in a new generation of artists. Filipino call centre worker

Drawing lessons from the global success of K-Pop, the region is finding its own voice in a new generation of artists. Filipino call centre worker Jaycer Bajo’s Spotify playlist has changed a lot over the past few years. Bajo used to mostly listen to chart-topping hits from the United States, but these days, he has a steady stream of Pinoy Pop, or P-pop, artists on rotation: from boybands ALAMAT and BGYO, to the girl group BINI, which in April became the first all-Filipino girl group to perform at the Coachella music festival. “Over the past five years, I think I’ve switched from 70 percent Western music to, right now, around 70 percent Philippines and then 30 percent elsewhere,” Bajo, who lives north of Metro Manila, told Al Jazeera. “There were bands and groups in the Philippines that were making quality music before 2020, but it just boomed after that here,” Bajo said. ALAMAT, BGYO, and BINI, all of whom released their debut singles in 2021, draw heavily on influences from K-pop, J-pop, and Western pop, R&B and hip-hop, while incorporating Filipino themes and languages into their music. “They borrowed structure from K-Pop, but the talent elements are homegrown,” Bajo said. Across Southeast Asia, homegrown acts are increasingly displacing their Korean, Japanese and American counterparts on pop-lovers’ playlists. In Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand, the share of local artists in Spotify’s weekly top 10 rose from 39 percent to 97 percent, 31 percent to 81 percent, and 71 percent to 76 percent, respectively, between 2021 and the first half of 2026, according to data compiled by Soundcharts, a French music analytics platform. Local artists also gained traction on the radio weekly top 10, rising from 29 percent to 55 percent in Indonesia, zero to 5 percent in the Philippines, and from 38 percent to 65 percent in Thailand over the same period, according to Soundcharts data. Cod Satrusayang, a Thai film producer who works with local musicians on soundtracks, said he has noticed a major shift towards homegrown influences on the commercial side of the music scene in recent years.

“For the longest time, T-Pop and Thai music were just an emulation of Korean and American style, and only recently, the last five years or even less, we see Thai artists forging their own identity,” Satrusayang told Al Jazeera. Satrusayang’s favourite Thai acts, such as YOUNGOHM, MILLI, and Joey Phuwasit, differ stylistically from the classic K-Pop formula, but he still credits South Korea’s hit-making cultural juggernaut with showing other Asian countries that there is a global audience for their music. Since the release of Psy’s Gangnam Style in 2012, K-Pop has reached a level of mainstream success far beyond that achieved by earlier waves of Asian pop music. While artists from Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan achieved regional fame in the 1980s and 1990s, few came close to matching the crossover appeal of Blackpink’s 2023 performance at Coachella or BTS’s collaborations with American rapper Lil Nas X and British rock band Coldplay. In 2023 alone, the K-pop industry earned $893m overseas, including through album sales, online streaming revenue, and K-Pop performances, according to the South Korean government’s Korea Culture and Tourism Institute. K-pop proved once and for all that Asian music can be commercially lucrative, Satrusayang said. “Industry, the studios and independent artists see that it’s possible to make really good money going international, and it’s fuelling a whole renaissance in the Thai creative space,” Satrusayang said. While Southeast Asia’s music industry is still dwarfed by its peers in South Korea, Japan and China, it is growing rapidly. In the Philippines, digital music revenue – a figure that includes podcast, music streaming, music downloads, and music streaming – doubled from $93m to $180m between 2021 and 2025, according to data shared with Al Jazeera by Julia Stoll, an analyst at the global data platform Statista. In Thailand, digital music revenue rose from $132m to $204m over the same period, according to the data, while revenue in Indonesia increased from $164m to $264m. Innovating for a new market Much of this success would not have been possible without social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, which have enabled artists to reach out to their fans directly in short-form videos.