BTS Members' Participation Rate in Songwriting [Copyrighted Songs]

[Update: 2025/10/21] Corrected the number of songs due to the addition of Hobi's 'Killin' It Girl (feat. GloRilla)' and 'Killin' It Girl (Solo Version)'

If you are looking for specific information, please check the table of contents

Since it's the military hiatus period, my novice assumption that I could just create a database once and leave it alone for a while proved powerless against Bangtan's frequent updates...
With the addition of Hobi's new songs, the 2024 data is now complete, and Namjoon's album is coming too, so I thought this was a good opportunity to launch a new article.

Information Sources and Song Counts

Since I am investigating the 'Korea Music Copyright Association Database', songs not registered there are not included.
For example, I cannot find the songs from Jungkook's 'GOLDEN', so I suspect they might be registered in a different country. Tracking global stars is tough...! ( ;∀;)
Cover songs and different remixes are included if they are registered.

Also, collecting data for OST songs is proving difficult. For some reason, there are some that don't show up even when I search using the registered information. The Romanized Korean data is a high hurdle... (distant gaze).
I believe I have captured the songs where members are registered as participants, so I will continue searching little by little.

How to Research Data

If you want to research data yourself, go to the 'Korea Music Copyright Association'. I have posted how to search in the article below.
Since the base is the Korea Music Copyright Association, this applies to the entire K-POP scene. You can also apply this to other idol groups like SEVENTEEN or TXT.

How to Create a Database

If you want to see how I created the data or want to try creating your own, I'm not sure if it will be helpful, but please check the article below...

Want to know about each member's songs

Copyright-registered songs by member are written in a separate article.
I have linked it as a 'Series Article' at the bottom of this post, so please check it out there.

Aggregation Results @ Korea Music Copyright Association

*The following graphs and figures are updated irregularly. Please see the [Update] section below the table of contents. I will consider writing a new article once more data accumulates.

Number of members who participated in each song

BTS song data registered with the Korea Music Copyright Association.
I investigated how many of those songs have a BTS member's name among the copyright holders.
Out of the 387 songs currently found, 356 songs have at least one member listed as a copyright holder (involved in production).

The most common are songs where one member participated.
(There are songs where only one person is registered, like the a cappella version of Jungkook's 'Still With You', but in most cases, the names of co-copyright holders like Pdogg are also listed.)
Namjoon is at the top, followed by SUGA. These two account for about 70%.

The next most common are songs where 3 members participated. Basically, it's the 3 members of the rap line.
The exceptions are only these 3 songs: "Awake (Jin, Hobi, Namjoon)", "STAY (Jin, Namjoon, Jungkook)", and "MY TIME (SUGA, Namjoon, Jungkook)."

In the case of songs where 2 members participated, there is a rich variety of combinations. Here too, the Namjoon-SUGA duo is at the top.

Namjoon in particular has participated in many songs, and he is almost always the axis for these combinations. It is clear that the leader's lyric-writing ability is the cornerstone of BTS songs.
There are fewer than 10 BTS album songs (excluding solo songs) that Namjoon is not involved in.

By the way, the songs with the most participants—7 members—are these 3. Except for "IN THE SOOP", they are conversations lol

The songs with 5 to 6 participants were the same as when I wrote about them in the previous article, so please refer to that.

Songs with BTS member names as copyright holders

So, for now, let's tally up only the songs that the members were involved in producing, excluding songs provided to others.

2015 was a starting dash after debut, and the subsequent spikes in numbers in 2018, 2020, and 2022 are thought to be mainly due to solo albums.

Based on the trend so far, 2024 is a spike year.
Hobi's "HOPE ON THE STREET VOL.1" and Namjoon's "Right Place, Wrong Person" have already arrived. Even though it's a military hiatus period, what a massive spike! ( ﾟДﾟ)

Roles at the time of copyright registration

Copyright holder information is categorized by role, making it possible to see what part the copyright pertains to.
Please refer to the classification below.

Basically, participation is in lyrics and composition.
I wonder why there is only data that uses "A" and "C" together even though there is a "CA" classification, but well, I can understand it, so it's not a problem.

By the way, the songs Jimin participated in composing were "VIBE" with Taeyang and "Interlude : Showtime", and the song Jungkook participated in composing was "FILM OUT".
Which role each member participated in for which song is listed in each member's registered song article, so please check the "Series Articles" at the bottom of this article.

Copyrighted songs registered by year of release

The following is a line graph showing the "[BTS] Songs with member names as copyright holders (by release date)" broken down by member.

Because there is a significant dip in 2021, I briefly thought this might be where they entered their group activity hiatus, but the remarks at the BTS dinner were on 2022/6/14, so it was before that.

Let's expand the graph so you can see the details. Sorry, it's a bit hard to read ( ;∀;)
While I'm at it, I'll add some major song-related topics around 2021.

Looking at it this way, 2021 is really just a blank space. The first thing I thought when I saw it was, "They must have been incredibly busy..."
Looking only at this graph, one could interpret that the massive success of their English songs created a change in their activity style that disrupted their production cycle, leading to the remarks on 2022/6/14. I don't know the actual truth, though.

I thought that when I first wrote this article, but as I learned more later, my thinking changed to the idea that they might have left that space open from the beginning.
This is because Namjoon mentioned that he intended for our Chapter 1 to end with "ON". Perhaps that was the season they were planning to go to military service.

[Postscript] At 48:07, Jin touched on this time period.

Summary

Following BTS through copyright registration information.
Beyond the graph, you can catch glimpses of them: the "workaholic-leaning rap line," the "vocal line who challenged themselves to write songs with Namjoon and eventually became independent," and "BTS, who prepared with all their might before heading to military service." I love data because it shows such drama through achievements...!

I am looking forward to seeing what kind of songs will come out after they reunite as a full group.
Personally, I am curious about the path of Jungkook and V, who chose to master songs provided by others rather than their own self-composed songs during their solo activities. What will they do next?

Series articles