News April 17, 2019

BTS’ ‘Map of the Soul: Persona’ all set for world domination

Senior Journalist, B2B

First the U.S., then the U.K. Now the world.

BTS is looking to dominate charts around the globe with their new EP, Map of the Soul: Persona (Big Hit Entertainment), which is on track for the trans-Atlantic double and is expected to make a big splash in Australia.

The new, seven-track set is flying to the penthouse of the Billboard 200 where industry forecasters tell Billboard the EP could earn between 200,000 and 225,000 equivalent album units in the week ending April 18. If, as expected, the album opens at the top, it will be the K-pop boy band’s third No. 1 on the main chart after 2018’s Love Yourself: Answer and Love Yourself: Tear. No other act in the genre has cracked the top 10 on the Billboard 200. BTS has already managed it three times, four when the new chart is revealed this Sunday.

On the other side of the pond, Map of the Soul leads the midweek U.K. albums chart by a margin of more than 10,000 combined chart sales over the next-best effort, Chemical Brothers ninth and latest studio set No Geography (Virgin), according to the Official Charts Company, the U.K.’s charts compiler.

Watch BTS’ clip with Halsey below:

If Map of the Soul stays put when the Official U.K. Albums Chart is published this Friday, it’ll become the first No. 1 album from a Korean act in the territory. Map of the Soul is destined to blast past their previous best, a No. 8 peak for Love Yourself: Tear from 2018.

The globetrotting EP has an Australian connection. Tushar Apte, the L.A.-based, Aussie born and raised, songwriter and producer who has worked with Demi Lovato, Zayn Malik, Nicki Minaj and many others, wrote the Persona track “HOME.”

BTS already has three third top ten entries to their name on the ARIA Albums Chart with Love Yourself: Answer (No. 9, September 2018), Love Yourself: Tear (No. 6, May 2018) and Love Yourself: Her (No. 8 September, 2017). The race is on for top spot in Australia, currently occupied by Billie Eilish’s When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? (Interscope/Universal).

All will be revealed this weekend.

BTS is coming off a massive, record-busting 2018 which saw the seven-piece just miss out to Drake for the No. 1 spot on the IFPI’s Top 10 Global Recording Artists Of 2018 list. They were pipped by Imagine Dragons for Spotify’s most-streamed group honours for the year.

The year is young, but the lads are already in history-making form. The video for Map of the Soul single “Boy With Luv” featuring Halsey has just smashed YouTube’s benchmark for most views in 24 hours, with 74.6 million hits in one day.