Last Year’s Content Industry Revenue Hits 161 Trillion Won... Strong Growth in Music and Comics

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Last year, the total revenue of the domestic content industry reached 161.4839 trillion won, marking a 2.6% increase compared to the previous year.

The Korea Creative Content Agency released the “2025 Q4 and Annual Content Industry Trend Analysis Report” on April 30. The report presents a comprehensive analysis based on business surveys, management data from listed companies, and basic industry statistics across eleven content industry genres.

By genre, music (15.8%), knowledge information (7.8%), comics (7.4%), and animation (6.8%) recorded the highest growth rates. In the music sector, revenue growth from major entertainment agencies and a recovery in the live performance market were key factors. For comics, the expansion of webtoon-driven demand and improved performance of major companies contributed to growth. The animation sector showed an upward trend, supported by box-office success and improved business performance.

In contrast, some sectors such as advertising (-1.7%), broadcasting (-1.3%), and publishing (-1.2%) saw slight declines in revenue due to factors including an economic slowdown and fluctuations in the advertising market.

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Last year, content industry exports totaled 14.9582 billion US dollars, up 5.9% from the previous year. Music (32.4%), film (19.9%), and character (12.8%) sectors led this export growth. The music sector achieved a high growth rate thanks to the expansion of overseas performances and the global success of K-Pop artists. In film, strong performance from anticipated titles contributed, while in the character sector, increased overseas demand had a positive impact.

On the other hand, content solutions (-10.3%), animation (-7.6%), and publishing (-3.1%) experienced declines, mainly due to a slowdown in certain overseas markets.

In the fourth quarter of last year, the adoption rate of generative AI among content businesses was 32.1%. Among the 810 companies utilizing generative AI, 66.2% used it in some departments, while 33.8% adopted it company-wide.

By industry, the adoption rates were highest in games (70.0%), animation (51.6%), advertising (40.9%), knowledge information (33.7%), and broadcasting and video (31.9%). The main area of implementation was content production (62.7%), followed by business planning (43.7%) and content creation (32.8%).

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