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This is a slightly unrelated question - how do BTS' sales in South Korea compare to the overall size of the country's album market? I know that revenue-wise the market has exploded in the 2010s after collapsing in the 2000s, but I assumed streaming was the main driver of that. Are BTS' numbers a complete anomaly there, or are idol groups in general boosting physical sales as well?
Actually, South Korea is the only major market in the world where physical sales have grown the past years, and not just by a small margin either. In 2015 the physical market was worth 89.5 million dollars making it the 9th largest market globally. In 2017 however, it ranked 6th and had grew to a staggering 181.4 million. That's almost half of the UK physical market the same year.
Back in 2011 only the biggest groups like Super Junior and Girls' Generation could sell over 200k, now groups like BTS, EXO and Wanna One are selling from 500k to over a million for each release and smaller groups can easily sell over 100k!
Even though the album market is very strong now doesn't mean their sales there aren't impressive, No one have sold over 2 million copies of an album there since 2000! They definitely are the biggest group at the time in their home country.
Thank you Al!
That's a really interesting development. I do remember reading years back that just a few hundred thousand units would qualify as top-tier sales in South Korea, so seeing the sales of BTS really floored me. Given the different market it's more understandable, though still extremely impressive like you said!
Hi can you do BIGBANG next? Since there is a very large confusion between their sales... considering there was a claim they surpassed Backstreet Boys sales of 180M+ totally. I would really like to know how many physical, single album, streaming and YT equivalent streams worldwide, along with info coming from Gaon and Chinese and Korean streaming apps that may contribute to the sales. Thank you if ever you see this =)
their fans claim that they "surpassed" backstreet boys but most of bigbang's massive sales are from singles not albums. they had a couple of mega hits in china and korea but none of their albums could even cross 500k sales. there's no way they could surpass the legendary backstreet boys who had albums selling millions and millions.
There's actually a lot of debate about the validity of most of the claimed sales numbers for BigBang since accurate, reliable sources are hard to find and the vast difference between the information released by YG as opposed to what some charts (like Oricon for eg) have recorded. The numbers have too many discrepancies to support the claim that they outsold the Backstreet Boys. At one point ringtone clip downloads were being included in their sales figures and that obviously caused a problem. I honestly think for BigBang it would be harder to find the required information, at least for older figures anyways. For newer releases the info is more easily available, but it's safe to say they didn't outsell them considering BSB were global superstars (and had the global sales to match) whereas BB were mostly only famous in parts of Asia where the majority of their sales came from.
Hello Sir! I'm aware there's been an update for map of soul. Will this article be updated by any chance?
The fact that their digitals are insanely high is not hard to prove since Gaon have been quite transparent with DL sales in the past. They very likely sold more singles + albums than the Backstreet Boys in terms of volume but that really doesn't paint an accurate picture of success since a track download or a ringtone sale is not close to being worth as much as an album sale, especially not in South Korea. For me these claims that some 2000's artist outsold an older act due to digital downloads are just as relevant as Ed Sheeran having more total streams than Rihanna's digital downloads.
Hi, MJD
I think you double counted their streams and track downloads. In Korea, since 2013, the download platform and the streaming platiform is the same thing. For example, if you subscribed Melon for a month, I mean pay some money to be something like VIP or subscriber for a month, you are able to stream whatever and download all tracks. YOU DON'T HAVE TO PAY FOR ONE SINGLE TRACK. This is the same as subscribing Premium Spotify, the difference is the download figures are also counted. Both download and streaming figures are counted into Gaon, separately. But, the download figures actually worth the same as streams. This is totally double counting.
Hi djdj!
I know both are from same subscriptions, that's why we used to count downloads from SK and why I commented that we will discontinue them for recent years. Pure downloads are now down to $9 million for the year there, they are basically dead. I still have to set a end date for them yet. BTW, Gaon ranking since the start of 2018 merges both streams and DLs, we have set calculations to separate them. Their total coming from SK is still a bit inflated, although they are climbing so fast that they will no doubt make up for it in the future.
I check this site almost daily because I want to see the number of sales for Switzerland, since we don't actually get to know them..
With 10'000 units, BTS would get a gold certification in our country so I am anticipating to know the number of physical Persona album sales.
Hoping for an update soon! 🙏
I hope this is updated soon since we know Map of the Soul: Persona and Love Yourself: Answer did 500k+ in the US each but it doesn’t say as such in the graphs. Thank you for doing this tho!
They still have no albums over 500k pure in the US. The two albums mentioned are certified gold there for 500k units, but that includes streaming and track equivalent sales.
