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ASEAN-KOREA

Cultural & Creative Sectors Research

BTS, the Grammys' New "Asian Pop" Category, and What It Means for Southeast Asian Music

  • 2 days ago
  • 9 min read

When all seven members of BTS posted the same message to their Instagram accounts in late July 2026, the headlines focused on one thing: the world's biggest pop group had, in effect, walked away from the Grammys. But underneath the celebrity story sits a bigger question — one that matters far beyond Korea, and directly concerns Southeast Asia's fast-rising music scenes. It is a question about how the global music industry sorts, labels, and values music by region and language.

Here is what happened, why it sparked such a strong reaction, and why anyone who cares about the future of Southeast Asian pop should be paying attention.


What BTS actually decided

BTS did not "boycott" the Grammy ceremony in the sense of refusing to show up. They declined to submit their music for consideration at the 69th Grammy Awards, scheduled for February 2027. In their statement, the group said they hoped music could be heard and loved for what it is, "rather than being divided by region or language."

That last phrase was the tell. Their decision came about a month after the Recording Academy announced a new award: Best Asian Pop Music Performance, one of five new categories introduced for the 2027 ceremony. According to the Academy's rules, the category honours pop music "including, but not limited to" K-pop, J-pop and C-pop, and — crucially — requires meaningful use of an Asian language. Recordings sung mostly in English by Asian artists remain eligible in the general categories, but not in this one.

There is an irony worth noting: BTS's 2026 album Arirang is performed largely in English, which means it might not have qualified for the new category anyway. In other words, BTS was not protecting its own eligibility. It was making a point of principle.


Recognition, or a consolation prize?

Reaction to the new category has been sharply divided. Supporters frame it as overdue recognition of Asian music's global reach, and a stable on-ramp for artists who have long struggled to break through at the Grammys. Critics — including a large share of the online K-pop community — see something else: a way to acknowledge Asian pop's popularity while keeping it out of the marquee categories like Record, Song and Album of the Year.

The timing sharpened the criticism. Just months earlier, at the February 2026 ceremony, Asian pop had arguably its biggest Grammy night ever: "Golden," from the animated hit KPop Demon Hunters, became the first song from the K-pop scene to win a Grammy; BLACKPINK's ROSÉ became the first K-pop soloist nominated in the general field; and the global group KATSEYE earned a Best New Artist nod. To many observers, that proved the existing categories were perfectly capable of recognising this music on its own terms — which made a separate, region-defined box look less like inclusion and more like a detour around it.

Academic observers have sharpened that reading. Grace Kao, the IBM Professor of Sociology at Yale University and one of the most prominent scholars of K-pop and the sociology of music, unpacked the controversy on DW News shortly after the announcement — and did not soften it. She framed BTS's move as a real sacrifice: a Grammy is one of the very few honours the group has never won, so declining to compete means giving up a genuine shot at it. Kao also questioned the category on its own terms, noting how unclear its definition is — whether it rewards a single song or an artist's broader body of work — and how sweeping it is to file the music of an entire continent under one "Asian" heading, which she described as closer to a catch-all miscellany than a coherent genre. And because BTS's biggest recent singles are in English, she pointed out, it is genuinely unclear how they would fit a regional, Asian-language classification at all — which makes the award feel less like inclusion than a consolation prize designed around them.

Her sharpest point was about what a separate box signals. By carving out a distinct "Asian" category instead of integrating these artists into the main fields, Kao argued, the Recording Academy risks reminding non-Western artists that they are still seen as foreign — "not really one of us." She also named the bind at the centre of it: K-pop acts were long pushed to record in English to win US radio play, only to be sorted, now, by region instead — a situation in which, as she put it, they "can't win."



The deeper problem: one "Asian" bucket for very different musics

Step back from the awards politics, and the category raises a question that should resonate strongly across Southeast Asia: what does it even mean to group music by the label "Asian"?

K-pop, J-pop and C-pop are three enormous, distinct industries that share a continent but relatively little else, musically. Bundling them — plus, by implication, everything from Thai and Filipino to Indonesian and Vietnamese pop — under a single "Asian Pop" heading treats a vast, diverse musical region as one flavour. The category's own wording leaves it unclear where the boundaries lie, spotlighting East Asian genres while saying little about the rest of the continent.

For Southeast Asia, that ambiguity is not academic. The region is in the middle of building its own distinct musical identities — and it is doing so right now.


Southeast Asia's own "return to local"

The most important music-industry story in Southeast Asia over the past few years isn't about the Grammys at all. It's that home-grown artists are displacing K-pop, J-pop and Western acts on the region's own charts — the audio equivalent of the "local content golden era" now reshaping Southeast Asian film and animation.

The data is striking. According to figures compiled by the analytics platform Soundcharts, the share of local artists in the Spotify weekly Top 10 across three major markets rose dramatically between 2021 and the first half of 2026:

Market

Local share of Spotify weekly Top 10 (2021)

Local share (H1 2026)

Indonesia

39%

97%

Philippines

31%

81%

Thailand

71%

76%

This "return to local" is showing up in revenue, too. Digital music revenue in the Philippines roughly doubled from about US$93 million to US$180 million between 2021 and 2025; Thailand rose from around US$132 million to US$204 million; and Indonesia grew from about US$164 million to US$264 million over the same period.

The flip side of that rise is a measurable retreat of K-pop. A separate analysis of Spotify's daily Top 50 across five Southeast Asian markets from 2023 to 2026, by the independent data analyst Tsurezure Lab, found K-pop's share shrinking as local music surged: in Thailand, K-pop fell from around 27% to 11% while Thai-language pop climbed from 65% to 78%; in Indonesia, K-pop dropped from about 5% to just 1% as local music rose from 60% to 78%. A Jakpat survey in Indonesia captured the same mood — some 74% of listeners now say they prefer home-grown artists, while interest in K-pop has cooled to about 40%, down sharply from its peak. In Jakarta's Spotify city chart, the eight-plus K-pop tracks that ranked in May 2022 had all but disappeared by May 2026, replaced by local names.

And the local wave is strikingly diverse rather than a single manufactured sound. In Indonesia alone it spans mainstream stars like Bernadya, Mahalini and Tiara Andini, alternative acts such as Hindia and Nadin Amizah, and regional, non-metropolitan artists like Ndarboy Genk and Raim Laode who bring local dialects and accents into the mainstream — a decentralising scene that looks nothing like the uniform export machine it is displacing.



…and breaking into the global charts

Even as audiences turn inward at home, Southeast Asian artists are breaking outward — into the same US-centric chart system that K-pop spent a decade cracking. Filipino P-pop is leading the way. BINI became the first-ever Filipino act to enter Spotify's Global Top Artists chart and, in April 2026, the first all-Filipino group to perform at Coachella, on the back of sold-out world tours through the US, UK, Canada and the Gulf. SB19 became the first Southeast Asian act to reach the Top 10 of Billboard's Year-End Social 50, the first Filipino and Southeast Asian act nominated at the Billboard Music Awards, and are set to be the first Filipino act to play Lollapalooza in Chicago in July 2026; their singles "DAM" and "Burn The Flame" have both charted on Billboard's World Digital Song Sales. The Filipino band Cup of Joe even reached the main US Billboard Global 200, peaking at No. 80. Behind the scenes, the industry is formalising: the IFPI launched Official Southeast Asia Charts covering six regional markets for the first time in 2025, and global majors such as Universal Music have begun signing Filipino artists directly.

Yet the summit still belongs to K-pop. Atop the 2026 Billboard Global 200, BTS spent eight weeks at No. 1, while Huntr/x — the fictional group from the hit film KPop Demon Hunters — logged record-breaking runs of its own. Southeast Asia, for now, is entering the system's mid and social rungs while K-pop holds the peak. That is precisely why the terms on which the industry sorts "Asian" music are not an abstract concern for the region, but a question about its own route to the top.


Why this matters for Southeast Asian identity

Put the two stories side by side and the stakes come into focus.

On one hand, the Grammys have created a single category that flattens the whole of Asian pop into one region-defined box. On the other, Southeast Asia is doing the opposite — pulling apart from a K-pop-dominated model to assert distinct, local identities: OPM and P-pop in the Philippines, Thai pop, Indonesian and Malaysian scenes, each with its own language, sound and sensibility.

A pan-"Asian" label risks erasing exactly the diversity that Southeast Asian artists are working so hard to build. If a Filipino group and a Korean group and a Japanese group all end up competing in the same "Asian Pop" slot, the differences that make each scene meaningful — the languages, the local references, the distinct musical roots — get quietly compressed into a marketing category. BTS's objection to being "divided by region or language" is, from a Southeast Asian vantage point, the same worry seen from the other direction: the fear of being defined by a region rather than heard as oneself.

None of this means the new category is doomed, or that recognition is unwelcome. It means the terms of that recognition matter. As Southeast Asia's music economy matures — with real charts, real revenue, and real global fanbases — the region has a growing stake in how the world's biggest awards decide what counts as "local," what counts as "global," and who gets to sit in the main room.

For now, the most interesting music story in the region is not who wins a trophy in Los Angeles. It's that, increasingly, Southeast Asian listeners are choosing their own.



Frequently asked questions

Why did BTS refuse to submit to the 2027 Grammys? BTS announced in late July 2026 that they would not submit their music for the 69th Grammy Awards, in apparent protest of the Recording Academy's new Best Asian Pop Music Performance category. They said they wanted music to be judged "for what it is, rather than being divided by region or language."

What is the Grammys' new Best Asian Pop Music Performance category? Announced in June 2026 and debuting at the 2027 ceremony, it recognises Asian pop performances — including K-pop, J-pop and C-pop — and requires meaningful use of an Asian language. Songs by Asian artists performed mostly in English remain eligible in the general categories instead.

Is the new category good or bad for Asian artists? Opinion is split. Some see it as long-overdue recognition and an entry point for Asian music at the Grammys; others argue it risks "pigeonholing" artists into a niche award and keeping them out of the top general-field categories.

How does this affect Southeast Asian music? Southeast Asia's scenes — especially P-pop in the Philippines, plus Thai, Indonesian and Malaysian pop — are booming and increasingly distinct from K-pop. A single "Asian Pop" label risks flattening that diversity, even as local artists dominate their own national charts more than ever.

What is P-pop? P-pop, or Pinoy pop, is contemporary Filipino pop music. Acts like SB19 and BINI have brought it international attention through global tours, streaming growth, and festival bookings including Coachella.

Sources
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