A ranking list of the top ten Korean entertainment companies with the most album sales in 2015 has been released, showing the industry's top players.
Coming in the No. 1 position with 3.3 million albums sold is SM Entertainment, leading in terms of both sales and market share.
However, the No. 2 position was snagged by Big Hit Entertainment, home of popular male idol group BTS. Big Hit sold a total of 563,000 albums in 2015, only 20,000 more than the No. 3 company, YG Entertainment.
Although Big Hit's only main moneymaker is BTS, YG Entertainment has a wide roster of established idol groups, which makes the sales results even more surprising.
The No. 4 and 5 spots were held by JYP Entertainment and FNC Entertainment, respectively. The difference between the two was extremely small, with only 8,000 albums separating them.
The other spots on the list were held by SM C&C (a subsidiary of SM Entertainment), Jellyfish Entertainment, Cube Entertainment, and Pledis Entertainment.
The combined total of those nine companies constitute 84 percent of the total amount of albums sold. The other 16 percent is made of smaller companies.
In total, 7.2 million albums were sold in 2015.
According to the chart, the company with the most market share is SM, with a whopping 45 percent of the entire K-pop album industry. SM's most popular boy group EXO sold as many copies as the entire "other" category on the list.
