K-pop’s U.S. physical market is getting bigger — and older fans are helping drive it

K-pop’s physical-album economy in the United States is expanding beyond both its traditional markets and some of the assumptions about who is buying.

Korean album exports to the United States reached $74.12 million in the first half of 2026, according to Korea Customs Service figures reported by Yonhap. That placed the U.S. ahead of China, at $61.18 million, and Japan, at $45.61 million, making it Korea’s largest overseas market for K-pop albums during the period.

The shift comes alongside unusually strong CD demand in the broader U.S. music business. Luminate’s 2026 Midyear Report found that American CD sales rose 16% year over year to 16.3 million units during the first six months of the year. Without K-pop releases, Luminate said that increase would have been 6.7%.

A Korea Times analysis published September 5 points to another part of that growth: older consumers.

Citing Billboard research based on a survey of 1,304 U.S. K-pop fans, the report found that 55% of respondents between the ages of 45 and 54 had purchased higher-priced box sets combining albums with merchandise — the highest proportion among the age groups cited.

The same survey found that 52% of respondents had purchased multiple versions of the same album, often to collect edition-specific inclusions such as photocards, while 41% said they spend more than $100 a year on K-pop CDs.

That helps explain why the format continues to behave differently inside K-pop than it does across much of the streaming-first music market. Albums increasingly function as collectibles and fandom products as much as playback formats.

It also complicates the longstanding picture of K-pop fandom as overwhelmingly teenage or twenty-something. As the genre’s North American audience matures — and some fans enter the market with greater disposable income for albums, merchandise and touring — that demographic shift may become increasingly important to how labels build physical campaigns.