Update: boo hiss to the Times and the Telegraph, who published the 300m figure. Netflix has since announced that the concert stream was watched by, ahem, 18.4 million people.
These are high times indeed for fans of music-streaming services Instagram-boasting about BTS’s new album ‘Arirang’ breaking records on their platform. They’re all at it.
“The most streamed K-Pop album in Spotify history and the most streamed album in a single day in 2026 so far,” posted Spotify.
Apple said that the album “broke the Apple Music record for the biggest K-Pop album, based on first-day streams worldwide” AND beat that platform’s record for “the biggest pop album by a group, based on first-day streams worldwide”.
Not to be left out, Amazon Music posted that ‘Arirang’ had “the biggest first-day streaming debut for a K-Pop album ever on Amazon Music globally”. When YouTube Music’s Instagram-admin wakes up later, we’re hoping for a full set.
The biggest stat of the weekend – not least because it came with an actual number attached – concerns the BTS comeback concert that Netflix streamed live on Saturday night.
According to The Times “an estimated 300 million people watched on Netflix”, with the same number reported by fellow British newspaper The Telegraph. Neither cited a source though, and Netflix doesn’t appear to have published an official figure yet.
The platform ended 2025 with 325 million paid memberships, although that’s subscriptions rather than people. Given multiple viewers within households, 300 million may not be as wildly unrealistic a figure as it may initially sound.
The only real comparison we have is to the boxing match (well, ‘match’) between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson in November 2024. Netflix said that the fight peaked at 65 million concurrent streams, which equated to an average of 108 million people watching live.
We’ll await official word from Netflix – which will surely come in the next day or two – on the claimed 300m figure for the BTS livestream. In the meantime, label Hybe has confirmed a more traditional success-metric for ‘Arirang’: more than 4m sales in the first three days after release.
