Group BTS's Arirang, presented as a full group for the first time after members' military discharge, has reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
Billboard said in a chart preview article on the 30th that the group's fifth full-length album Arirang (ARIRANG) rose to No. 1 on the main album chart Billboard 200, beating Luke Combs' The Way I Am and Morgan Wallen's I'm The Problem. With this, BTS has now topped the U.S. album chart after topping the U.K. chart.
The Billboard 200 chart ranks albums by album units, combining physical album sales with streaming equivalent albums (SEA) and track equivalent albums (TEA).
The album recorded the equivalent of 641,000 units in sales in its first week, the largest first-week figure for a group album since the chart moved to a "units" basis in December 2014. Of that total, 532,000 were counted as pure album sales (physical and digital album purchases), the highest figure for a group album in about a decade.
Of the 641,000 units Arirang recorded in the latest tracking week, pure album sales were 532,000, BTS's highest sales ever, and it also gave them their seventh No. 1 on the top album sales chart.
Streaming equivalent albums (SEA) accounted for 95,000 units, corresponding to 99.1 million on-demand official streams of the album's songs. This is also the highest streaming figure for a BTS album, and it debuted at No. 1 on the top streaming albums chart.
Billboard explained, "BTS recorded the most album units since Taylor Swift debuted with about 4 million album units for The Life of a Showgirl."
Arirang is BTS's seventh No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
BTS first reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in 2018 with Love Yourself 轉 Tear, the first time a K-pop act topped the chart. Since then, Love Yourself 結 Answer (2018), Map of the Soul: Persona (2019), Map of the Soul: 7 (2020), Be (2020) and Proof (2022) have all reached the top of the chart.
The fifth album Arirang topped the U.K. Official Albums Chart top 100 and has now also reached No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard 200.
[Photo] Provided by BigHit Music
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