I loved it! So may reserach and work went into this article. I have only one question - 'At 1,800,000 album sales, it’s only a matter of time until Map of the Soul: Persona takes the number one spot as the best selling album of the millennium in South Korea.' Can you please elaborate on this? SK media already confimred that BTS has broken this record. Or it's the method used in calculating it that makes the difference?

Definitely not. Bieber managed to be a global superstar. BTS did amazingly well for an asian group/singer. I dont think there is any Asian singers that was as big as them. But still to be honest their popularity are restricted mostly in the Asian region. While Bieber when he debut he was smashing all over the place.

Funny you mention the "insane and very freaky intensity" of Madonna's fans while flooding totally unrelated topics with your usual Frank Sinatra nonsense. This is an entry on BTS, not Madonna or Frank Sinatra. Please learn to respect other people's tastes and let everyone like what they like. I don't mind Frank and have some of his albums but I'm honestly tired of seeing his name everywhere on this site.

This breakdown sales is mindblowing! Never thought that we really are this dedicated. Thank you for this incredible and intensive research music sales of BTS. I still cant believe that we can achieve these million sales without being mainstream in radios.

Counting the entirety of China’s streams as visual streams with a 11,750 = 1 unit ratio completely undermines the market.

Also using Xiami of all services to extrapolate China’s stats can be absolutely misleading. That app is so tiny compared to others that it makes the overall numbers completely off and inaccurate. There’s nothing you can do to have a more accurate picture of China’s streaming stats? Also, what about China’s digital sales? Will you eventually count them? Map Of The Soul: Persona sold particularly well in China, especially on NetEase. The only international artist that can easily outdo the album sales of their latest album on that platform is Taylor Swift. Are those copies at all integrated in your calculations?

Thank you very much and a great job, gave me a lot of accurate information to shut the mouths of the hater and antis of BTS💀🚶

Hi, thank you for the analysis. However, you seem to have left out digital sales from china where BTS is huge. Hoping to see those added!

@MJD I’m also interested in knowing about whether china’s digital sales are going to be included soon too. It’s the biggest form of consumption in China I think because songs never chart high on QQ’s trending list unless they are up for sale.

Also i’m not sure if this has already been addressed but why is the YT:Spotify ratio so far apart? Quite a substantial number of users of Spotify are free as well. The verge article says 117/217 million of Spotify’s users are free so the majority.

Even BB has free streams worth more than half as much as paid streams on the hot 100 and on par with free Spotify streams.

good numbers for map of the soul persona, does this include the digital copies sold in China?

great article. I dont understand why you used Soribada to count streams though. Its not a very popular service and many K-ARMY boycotted the service for various reasons. Melon would have been the best option for collecting data, dont let the hanteo gaon gap scare you. Basically Hanteo counts sales by the receipt. Every album that is sold in-store gets counted. Gaon is sales by distribution, it counts how many albums are retrieved from the distributor. The problem with Hanteo is that its a prvate company that stores need to register themselves with in order to have their sales counted. Hanteo stats go towards various music shows like mcountdown and music core too. Majority of stores outside Korea dont use / dont know about Hanteo, and thats where the gap comes from.

sorry, I dont think it was clear. What im trying to say is the Hanteo-Gaon gap doesnt matter when youre collecting stats from a korean streaming service or studying sales in only Korea. Its only a factor when youre considering foreign markets too.

For everyone asking about the Chinese downloads, they are all included and explained in the compilation section.

We would have preferred to use Melon to estimate their South Korean streams but they don't provide any streaming numbers.

Those who are claiming this are referring to the Gaon figure for the album which stands at over 3 million. But a huge percentage that figure is shipments to other countries. That being said, the best selling album off the millennium is "Let Me Love" by Jo Sung-mo from 2000 stands at about 2.1 million copies which is definitely not out of reach.

So basically, despite IFPI fully counting them now, you will still undermine the total numbers by dividing the total revenue by 50? Based on what exactly? Why 50? Why not just follow IFPI? This is completely subjective