News March 2, 2020

BTS bolts to No. 1 around the globe, sets new YouTube record

Senior Journalist, B2B

BTS has done it again.

The K-pop megastars’ new album blasts to the top of sales charts around the globe, smashing records along the way.

In the U.S., where the boy band completed an exhaustive lap of TV shows including a takeover of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and a Carpool Karaoke sting with James Corden, the singers bag a fourth No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart.

Map of the Soul: 7 flies in a No. 1 with 422,000 chart sales, Billboard reports, for the biggest week of the year to-date, by any artist. Of that total, 347,000 are in album sales, or 82 per cent.

It’s their fourth U.S. No. 1 album in less than four years.

Over in the U.K. it’s a similar tale with Map of the Soul: 7 nabbing top spot on the Official Albums Chart with the fastest selling album of 2020.

Map of the Soul: 7 blasts off with 38,000 U.K. chart sales, eclipsing Eminem’s late January surprise release Music to Be Murdered By, which previously held the year-best title with just over 36,000 units.

Album sales are a big business for BTS on the other side of the pond. According to the OCC, BTS’ total includes 32,000 physical and download sales, or 84 per cent.

BTS

With 2019’s Map of The Soul: Persona, the boy band phenomenon became the first Korean act to score a U.K. No. 1. With Map of the Soul: 7, they become the first to do it twice.

In Australia, the seven-member outfit land a second No. 1 on the ARIA Albums Chart, their second leader after Map Of The Soul: Persona hit the summit in April 2019.

BTS has impacted the survey with five of their seven titles. To-date, no other Korean musical act has led the national albums survey.

Around the globe, the new album enjoyed a sugar hit with the viral video for the single “ON,” now a record-smasher on YouTube.

The cinematic clip, which “symbolically depicts BTS’ vow to accept their predestined path as fate and to keep going on, no matter the obstacles,” according to the blurb from YT, is recognised as the all-time biggest YouTube Premiere with more than 1.54 million viewers immediately logging on for a first-look.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1zkaWao22E

BTS hasn’t had it all their way in recent days. The group last week scrapped several homecoming concerts next month due to the global Coronavirus outbreak.
“It is unavoidable that the concert must be canceled without further delay,” reads a message, which was originally written in Korean and translated by Variety. “Please understand that this decision was made after extensive and careful consideration.”

With those four dates scratched at Seoul’s Olympic Stadium, BTS’ Map Of The Soul World Tour should kick off April 25 at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California.

Australian dates have yet to be announced.

BTS, an acronym of Bangtan Sonyeondan or Beyond the Scene, was formed in 2010 by Big Hit Entertainment. They last toured these shores for a sold-out run in 2017.