NEW YORK, UNITED STATES – FEBRUARY 21, 2020: (L-R) Jimin (Park Jimin), Jungkook (Jeon Jeongguk), Rap … [+] Monster (Kim Nanjoon), J-Hope (Jung Hoseok), V (Kim Taehyung), Jin (Kim Seokjin) and SUGA (Min Yoongi) of BTS (Bangtan Boys) band visit the Today Show at Rockefeller Plaza in New York City.- PHOTOGRAPH BY Efren Landaos / Echoes Wire/ Barcroft Studios / Future Publishing (Photo credit should read Efren Landaos / Echoes Wire/Barcroft Media via Getty Images)
Barcroft Media via Getty Images
BTS stormed the Billboard 200 this chart frame with their new album Map of the Soul: 7, which easily claimed the highest rung on the ranking, giving the band their fourth leader on the all-encompassing tally. The set opened atop the list with well over 400,000 equivalent units, and many of those were pure sales, which is impressive in today’s streaming-focused world.
With just two week’s worth of sales now counted (according to some sources), Map of the Soul: 7 is reportedly already the bestselling album of the year in the U.S., and it is far ahead of every other title.
While Billboard publishes data regarding which albums sold the most and performed the best taking into account all manner of consumption (but only for the top 10 most popular titles in the country), the company does not keep a publicly-available running list of which efforts are leading the charge throughout the year. BuzzAngle, a competing firm that also tracks sales and streams, but which usually shares slightly different findings every frame based on a different methodology, does compile such a running tally, which is published by HitsDailyDouble.
According to that ranking, Map of the Soul: 7 stands as the bestselling album of the year, and it reached that mark after just its first seven days of sales. Now that the set has been out for two full tracking frames, the publication reports the album has sold just under 400,000 actual copies (399,000, rounding up).
To put that number into perspective, the second bestselling album of 2020 in the largest music market in the world, Halsey’s Manic, has only sold 235,000 copies. Only three other albums—Eminem’s Music to Be Murdered By, Justin Bieber’s Changes and and Billie Eilish’s When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?—have managed to actually sell at least 100,000 copies since the beginning of the year.
Billboard, which is powered by Nielsen data, may have slightly different figures, but there’s a very slim chance that any other release is beating Map of the Soul: 7 when looking at the bestselling albums this year. When including streaming equivalent units, the story changes slightly, but currently, the Korean septet rules in this manner, and it doesn’t appear there is anyone who will grab their crown, at least not for a while.
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