According to a chart preview released by Billboard on the 30th, BTS’s fifth full-length album ARIRANG debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, surpassing Luke Combs’ The Way I Am and Morgan Wallen’s I’m The Problem. With this, BTS has now topped both the U.K. and U.S. album charts.
The Billboard 200 ranks albums based on a combination of physical album sales, streaming equivalent albums (SEA), and track equivalent albums (TEA).
In its first week, ARIRANG recorded 641,000 album units, marking the highest first-week total for a group album since the chart adopted the “unit” system in December 2014. Of these, 532,000 units came from pure album sales (physical and digital purchases), the highest figure for a group album in over a decade.
Out of the total 641,000 units, the 532,000 pure sales also represent BTS’s all-time highest sales record, earning them their seventh No. 1 on the Top Album Sales chart.
Streaming equivalent units (SEA) reached 95,000, which corresponds to 99.1 million on-demand streams of the album’s tracks. This is also the highest streaming record for a BTS album, with ARIRANG debuting at No. 1 on the Top Streaming Albums chart as well.
Billboard noted, “BTS recorded the highest album units since Taylor Swift’s ‘The Life of a Showgirl,’ which debuted with approximately 4 million units last year.”
Following its success on the U.K. Official Albums Chart Top 100, ARIRANG has now also secured the top spot on the Billboard 200, reaffirming BTS’s global dominance.
