INGLEWOOD, CALIFORNIA – DECEMBER 06: (EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NO COMMERCIAL USE.) Jimin of BTS performs … [+] onstage during 102.7 KIIS FM’s Jingle Ball 2019 Presented by Capital One at the Forum on December 6, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Rich Fury/Getty Images for iHeartMedia)
Getty Images for iHeartMedia
Even before they released an album last year, it was safe to predict that BTS would end up landing the biggest project of 2019 in South Korea. They are always working on new music, and they release singles and albums fairly regularly, and at this stage in their career, nobody in their field can beat them when they have a new product to deliver.
BTS did end up claiming the No. 1 title on the list of the bestselling albums of 2019 in their home country, but they didn’t just win the race, they outpaced everyone else running it by miles.
The septet’s Map of the Soul: Persona ended 2019 as the bestselling release, having sold 3.69 million copies. That’s not just enough to win the year, it’s enough to put the title in the history books as the bestselling album of all time, a feat it accomplished in just one month.
Coming in behind BTS on the list of the five bestselling albums in South Korea this past year are several other boy bands…as well as another release from the biggest name in the genre.
Seventeen ended up in second place with their album An Ode, which sold 849,282 copies in 2019. After that outfit on the list of the bestselling albums in South Korea in 2019 was EXO with their latest effort, Obsession: The 6th Album, which managed to shift 730,945 units. That is truly an impressive feat considering the fact it didn’t arrive until late November. X1’s Quantum Leap sits in fourth with 578,035 copies sold.
BTS closes out the top five with their even-more-recent album BTS World, a soundtrack that accompanied their mobile game of the same name. That set sold 553,376 copies in 2019, and it was released only a few months after Map of the Soul: Persona.
The No. 1 title in South Korea in 2019 didn’t just rule, it dominated. Map of the Soul: Persona outsold the next four titles, combined…and it still had almost one million units to spare. Combined, the Nos. 2 through 5 bestselling albums sold 2.712 million copies in the country, which is a healthy sum for 2019, when some fans have migrated to streaming and pirating music (though sales still rule in the Asian nation).
Any way the numbers are presented, it’s clear that Map of the Soul: Persona was the bestselling album by a long shot in 2019 in the place where it all started for BTS.
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