A South Korean solo singer little known to the American mainstream has crossed a milestone that would have been difficult to imagine before K pop became a global streaming business.
YENA’s “Catch Catch” surpassed 100 million streams on Spotify on Sept. 30. YENA, who first gained attention as a member of the Korean Japanese project girl group IZ*ONE before beginning her solo career in 2022, is now building an audience under her own name.
The significance goes beyond one singer or one Korean hit. Spotify and YouTube Music have given Korean artists a direct route to listeners around the world, allowing songs to travel well beyond their home market even when the artist has not reached the name recognition of K pop’s biggest acts. That gives global music companies and streaming platforms a broader pool of Korean artists and catalogs capable of generating international listening rather than concentrating demand among a few superstar groups.
“Catch Catch,” the title track from YENA’s fifth EP “LOVE CATCHER,” has become the clearest example of that shift in her solo career. In addition to crossing 100 million Spotify streams, the song ranked among the top three fourth generation solo artist tracks in streaming growth on the service and among the top four for female solo artists, according to figures cited in the original Korean report.
The song has also lasted at home. “Catch Catch” climbed as high as No. 4 on Melon’s Top 100, one of South Korea’s major music charts, and remained at No. 18 roughly six months after its release. That combination of domestic staying power and overseas streaming is particularly important in K pop, an industry built around frequent releases and intense competition for listener attention.
YENA’s broader streaming numbers point in the same direction. The Korean report cited 149 million monthly listeners on YouTube Music and 207 million cumulative streams on the platform. Her earlier song “SMILEY” and “Catch Catch” have both reached the top 10 of Melon’s Top 100, making her one of two solo artists cited as having at least two songs achieve that mark.
The next question is whether those listeners stay with YENA beyond a single hit. She is scheduled to release a new digital single on Oct. 2 that reinterprets “Unordinary Girl,” a 2014 song originally released by South Korean boy band Block B. The release gives YENA an immediate opportunity to test whether the audience accumulated around “Catch Catch” can follow her into the next stage of her solo career.
