BTS Arirang Billboard 200 Number One Seventh Chart Topper

BTS (RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V, Jungkook) has once again topped the US ‘Billboard 200’ chart with ‘ARIRANG’!

According to a chart preview article posted on the official website of the US music media Billboard on the 30th, BTS’s 5th full-length album ‘ARIRANG’ has reached number 1 on the main album chart ‘Billboard 200’ (dated April 4th). The media reported, “‘ARIRANG’ entered the chart with 641,000 album units. This is the group’s best weekly performance since the unit tallying system was introduced in December 2014.” They continued, “Of these, 532,000 are pure album sales (physical and digital purchases). BTS also recorded the highest weekly sales for a group album in this category in over a decade. SEA units (sales converted from streaming counts) are 95,000, marking their highest weekly streaming performance ever.”

Physical album sales drove ‘ARIRANG’s first-week sales. Physical sales reached 516,000 copies. Of these, 208,000 vinyl records were sold, setting a new personal best for the team’s highest weekly sales. This is the largest weekly vinyl sales for a group since Luminate began tracking in 1991. In addition, ‘ARIRANG’ went straight to number 1 on the ‘Top Album Sales’ and ‘Top Streaming Albums’ charts.

With this achievement, BTS has achieved their seventh number 1 on the ‘Billboard 200’. They first reached number 1 as a Korean artist with ‘LOVE YOURSELF 轉 ‘Tear” in 2018, followed by ‘LOVE YOURSELF 結 ‘Answer” (2018), ‘MAP OF THE SOUL : PERSONA’ (2019), ‘MAP OF THE SOUL : 7’ (2020), ‘BE’ (2020), and ‘Proof’ (2022).

Released on the 20th, the power of ‘ARIRANG’ is spreading worldwide. On Japan’s Oricon charts, it dominated the weekly charts (dated March 30th) for ‘Combined Album Ranking’, ‘Album Ranking’, ‘Digital Album Ranking’, and ‘Western Music Album Ranking’. It also debuted at number 1 on the UK’s Official Charts ‘Official Albums Top 100’ (March 27th – April 3rd). It swept the top spot on the French National Syndicate of Phonographic Publishing (SNEP)’s ‘Top Albums’ chart (March 20th-26th), and the Australian ARIA’s ‘Top 50 Albums’ and ‘Vinyl Chart’. On the German Official Music Charts (Offizielle Deutsche Charts/March 27th), it reached number 1 on both the album and singles charts. BTS is the first group in chart history to top both categories simultaneously.

The title track ‘SWIM’ has maintained its number 1 position on Spotify’s ‘Daily Top Song Global’ chart for 9 consecutive days (March 20th-28th). It also reached number 2 on the UK’s ‘Official Singles Top 100’, breaking the team’s highest ranking. In South Korea, it swept the top spot on MBC M ‘Show! Champion’, Mnet ‘M Countdown’, KBS2 ‘Music Bank’, and SBS ‘Inkigayo’ without any broadcast appearances, achieving a quadruple crown on music shows.

Meanwhile, ‘ARIRANG’, with Bang Si-hyuk as the executive producer, is an album that contains BTS’s identity and the universal emotions they face. ‘SWIM’ sings about the attitude of continuing to swim through the waves of life without stopping. RM took charge of writing the lyrics, conveying the story they want to tell now.