Bloomberg names Blackpink 'biggest band in the world'

Girl group Blackpink [YG ENTERTAINMENT]

Girl group Blackpink was chosen as "the biggest band in the world" by Bloomberg on Tuesday, a first for any Korean act.

"Blackpink has been the most popular act on YouTube for the past couple of months, generating more than 1 billion views in October alone," reported Bloomberg.

"All told, Blackpink is the biggest music act in the world, according to Bloomberg’s Pop Star Power Rankings."

Bloomberg praised Blackpink's feat of achieving "a level of global popularity unprecedented in the history of music" alongside boy band BTS, considering the fact that Asian countries had only recently started to get recognition from the international audience, unlike English speaking musicians.

Bloomberg's list of the 25 biggest bands in the world, released on Tuesday, U.S. time. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Blackpink was followed by some of music's biggest names, including Pop Smoke, Cardi B, Justin Bieber and Juice WRLD.

Bloomberg's list of biggest stars in the world is tallied every month. The factors taken into account were: 3-month live gross ticket sales, for which no singer could excel due to Covid-19; 30-day ticket sales; album sales; Spotify streams; YouTube views; and Instagram interactions.

"While their album failed to debut at No. 1 in the U.S., it was still one of the 10 best-sellers in the country for the month," said Bloomberg.

Blackpink dropped its first full-length album titled "The Album" on Oct. 2, landing at No. 2 on both Billboard's 200 albums chart and the British Official Albums Chart. It has remained on the chart for five consecutive weeks.

BY YOON SO-YEON [yoon.soyeon@joongang.co.kr]