Is BTS’s ‘ARIRANG’ the biggest comeback ever in K-pop? An analysis utilizing Spotify’s listening data from 2022 to date

Copyright: BIGHIT MUSIC

The wait is over.

The fifth full-length album from K-pop sensation Bangtan Sonyeondan (BTS), ARIRANG, was officially released on March 20, after a nearly four-year group hiatus due to mandatory military service of all seven members.

ARIRANG became an instant phenomenon, with all 14 songs shooting to the top spots of Spotify’s Global Top50 chart a day after its debut.

On YouTube, the MV of ARIRANG’s title track, “SWIM”, amassed 40 million views in its first 36 hours, on its way to be the first K-pop MV to surpass the century mark this year.

The astounding success of ARIRANG is well expected, given BTS’s loyal global fanbase and the massive pent-up demand. But how does ARIRANG’s performance stack against the comebacks of other renowned K-pop groups by the streaming metrics? Let’s find out!

First, let’s zero in on the K-pop “Big 3” groups: BTS, BLACKPINK and TWICE. Debuting at least a decade ago, they remain the most sought-after names in the industry.

Here are some explanations before we dig in. In this analysis, Spotify is the chief source of data. Only when an artist breaks into Top500 globally in terms of monthly listening count, visible on their dedicated pages, will the number be recorded and appear in the chart. Besides BTS, the streaming statistics for BLACKPINK and TWICE spanned from August 2022 to December 2025, due to limits on data collection.

During the aforementioned period, BLACKPINK had one major group comeback: Album BORN PINK, out in September 2022, with two lead singles, “Pink Venom” and “JUMP”, released in August 2022 and July 2025, respectively.

Meanwhile, TWICE maintained a far higher group output during the same timeframe, including albums/EP BETWEEN 1&2 (August 2022), READY TO BE (March 2023), With YOU-th (February 2024), STRATEGY (December 2024), THIS IS FOR (July 2025) and TEN: The Story Goes On (October 2025), with Japanese-tailored DIVE (July 2024) and ENEMY (August 2025) along the way. TWICE also participated in some collaborative singles, most notably “TAKEDOWN” from the soundtrack of Netflix’s award-winning animation, *KPop Demon Hunters*, among others.

According to Spotify, BLACKPINK reached the streaming peak on August 9, 2025 with over 35.3 million monthly listeners (№131 in the world), while its highest ranking was №64 logged between September 27 to October 14, 2022, with monthly listening count breaking above 34.1 million during this period. These two climaxes coincided with the releases of “JUMP” and BORN PINK, respectively.

For TWICE, the streaming peak happened on September 3, 2025 with 27.0 million monthly listeners, with a top ranking of №222 around the same time, pushed up by the new album THIS IS FOR, together with the hugely popular singles “Strategy” (first included in prior year’s album STRATEGY, then featured on KPop Demon Hunters) and “TAKEDOWN”.

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The chart above illustrates the first 60 days of Spotify monthly listening counts for both BLACKPINK and TWICE in their most recent peak releases pre-2025, in comparison with BTS’s ARIRANG. It’s worth noting that BLACKPINK’s single “JUMP” and TWICE’s album THIS IS FOR were released on the same day: July 11, 2025.

As clearly shown, BLACKPINK reached its peak of 35.3 million on Day 30 before slowly trending downward, while TWICE steadily climbed to 27.0 million on Day 54 due to the slow-burn effects of KPop Demon Hunters’ soundtrack.

Though it’s still in early stage of ARIRANG’s streaming lifecycle (only week 2 since its release as of writing), BTS has already seen its monthly listening count rising to 38.0 million on March 31, topping the peak levels of both BLACKPINK and TWICE, thus claiming the title of biggest comeback among the K-pop “Big 3” groups.

Now, let’s broaden our comparison a bit. Beyond the “Big 3”, there have been numerous K-pop groups that also broke into Top500 globally and left their marks during August 2022 to December 2025.

Per Spotify, another five K-pop groups have made the same feat: NewJeans, FIFTY FIFTY, LE SSERAFIM, ILLIT and KATSEYE. What’s somehow striking though, despite their soaring popularity in recent years, powerhouse boy groups like Stray Kids, TOMORROW X TOGETHER, and ENHYPEN have never launched into Top500 on Spotify during this period, neither have other notable girl groups like aespa, i-dle or IVE. This remains a very exclusive club as of now.

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So, it’s time to put all qualified groups into perspective. Though all technically “Rookie” compared to the “Big 3” , these five new-generation groups have achieved tremendous success in their own terms. The first one to break out of its peers is NewJeans, who first burst into Top500 in January 2023, only five months after their official debut with Mini-album New Jeans out in August 2022, the fastest to do so at the time. With consecutive hits like “Ditto”, “OMG” and “Super Shy”, NewJeans stayed in Top500 throughout the year as the hottest K-pop group, with a peak of 26.7 million monthly listeners (№161 in the world) reached in August 2023.

Soon after, a new challenger emerged. FIFTY FIFTY, debuted in November 2022, stormed the world with mega hit “Cupid”, which led them into Top500 in early April 2023, less than five months after they dropped their first Mini-album THE FIFTY, thus breaking NewJeans’ still-fresh record. “Cupid” had such strong carrying power that it once lifted FIFTY FIFTY’s monthly listeners to over 37.6 million (№71 in the world), the largest count among all K-pop groups between August 2022 to December 2025.

It’s worth noting that “Cupid”, which sits at over 980 million streams as of writing, is poised to be the first K-pop group song to join the elite “Billion streams club” NOT from BTS or BLACKPINK, followed closely by NewJeans’ “OMG” (923 million) and “Ditto” (897 million).

However, the industry-shattering success at a lightning speed seems to be a curse for both groups. After a shocking implosion between the artists and their agency, the four-piece FIFTY FIFTY went into hiatus and undertook an overhaul that led to a new quintet lineup with only one original member retained after they re-emerged in summer 2024, severely hurting their standing among fans. They have never returned to their “Cupid” height since.

The episode of FIFTY FIFTY pales in comparison with the dramatic downfall of NewJeans. After Min Hee-jin, then CEO of their label ADOR, had a bitter fight with parent company HYBE, NewJeans was sucked into the controversy and staged a public breakup with HYBE, K-pop’s most powerful agency that’s also behind BTS, TOMORROW X TOGETHER etc., ultimately leading to (unsurprisingly) a halting of NewJeans’ official activity altogether since mid-2024. The lawsuits between the two parties are still ongoing, but it’s no doubt that NewJeans might not return in their original form regardless of the outcome, let alone maintaining their fan-favorite status.

Now, let’s move on to other not-so-sad stories. LE SSERAFIM, hailed from SOURCE MUSIC, another subsidiary of HYBE, entered Top500 in March 2024 for the first time, 22 months after their debut EP FEARLESS. Riding on new EP EASY out in February, LE SSERAFIM stayed in Top500 for 50 days with a peak of 16.1 million monthly listeners before dropping out.

Another monster group arrived at their tail. ILLIT, launched by HYBE-owned BELIFT LAB, leaped into Top500 in April 2024, buoyed by the infectious single “Magnetic” included in their debut EP SUPER REAL ME out just a month ago, thus reducing FIFTY FIFTY’s previous record to the shortest possible: 32 days. But ILLIT stayed in Top500 for merely one and a half month, reaching a peak of 17.9 million monthly listeners. In fact, ILLIT was one of the sour points in the back-and-forth between Min Hee-jin and HYBE, but the group survived and continued their normal activity without disruption.

Last but not least, KATSEYE, an international-facing group jointly-formed by Geffen and (again) HYBE, rocketed into Top500 in June 2025, a year after they dropped their first single “Debut”. Driven by hit single “Gabriela” that was later included in EP BEAUTIFUL CHAOS, new-comer KATSEYE managed to stay in Top500 till the end of 2025 (the cut-off date of our data), touching a peak of 34.1 million monthly listeners in the process.

A sidenote: The reason why BTS only have data available after 2026 is simply that the workload would have been too large to manually lodge all their monthly listening counts as BTS is the only K-pop group to appear in Top500 uninterruptedly from August 2022 to December 2025, even if they had very limited group activity during this period.

After reviewing all the standout performances of the biggest K-pop groups, we can now confidently draw our conclusions. Based on streaming data sourced from Spotify, BTS is now trending towards 40 million monthly listeners only into week 2 since the release of ARIRANG, easily eclipsing previous peak achieved by FIFTY FIFTY (37.6 million) between August 2022 to December 2025.

Though our data only covers the post-2022 period, it’s safe to say that the monthly listening count is getting larger and larger year after year for every big-ticket artist, as clearly shown in the available data above, mostly due to the fast-growing user base of Spotify and higher penetration of K-pop in the global musical landscape. It’s hard to imagine any K-pop group before August 2022 to have broken above FIFTY FIFTY’s pre-2025 peak, though we’re open to change course if anyone from within Spotify can provide evidence that proves otherwise. If this assumption holds, we can conclude that BTS’ ARIRANG is indeed the biggest K-pop group comeback ever on Spotify.

Before we close, we’d like to also touch a bit on other streaming platform than Spotify. In fact, YouTube tells a slightly different story, especially in terms of initial reaction when it comes to MV viewership. In May 2021, BTS’ single “Butter” launched to astronomical success, garnering over 108 milllion views on YouTube in its first 24 hours (a Guiness World Record), surpassing own peak set by 2020’s “Dynamite” (101 million views). In August 2022, BLACKPINK’s “Pink Venom” shot to 90 million views in its first full day after the group’s two-year hiatus, breaking own record held by 2020’s “How You Like That” (86 million views), as reported by Variety. Earlier in 2019, TWICE’s “Fancy” reached 42 million views in one day per Forbes, the group’s best showing so far. These numbers are apparently larger than what BTS’s “SWIM” or recent songs by BLACKPINK and TWICE achieved, not to mention other younger groups, indicating that the era of consecutively setting K-pop premiere records on YouTube was already behind us.

Furthermore, the viewership on YouTube tends to be quite front-loaded, as an MV’s popularity could explode in its first few days or even hours then fade away quickly, while a song might enjoy significant longevity after it was released on Spotify. After examination, the monthly listening count is undoubtedly a better gauge reflecting daily fluctuation of any artist’s musical activity than the accumulative viewership on YouTube, thus remaining the most preferable metric in this analysis.

Now that BTS has rekindled their previous glory with ARIRANG, which sets them up as the biggest comeback of any K-pop group on Spotify, one question remains: Will they push their worldwide ranking above what BLACKPINK achieved during the BORN PINK era (№64), the highest place since August 2022? We’ll closely watch the numbers. With the forthcoming world tour starting this April, it seems sky is the limit for BTS.