NEW YORK, NEW YORK – DECEMBER 31: BTS performs during the Times Square New Year’s Eve 2020 … [+] Celebration on December 31, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Manny Carabel/FilmMagic)
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Billboard rocked the music industry on Monday when it announced that it will no longer count merchandise and ticket bundles on the Billboard 200, Hot 100 and other album and song charts.
The company “has decided to eliminate the practice of counting albums bundled with merchandise and concert tickets on its album and song charts altogether,” according to yesterday’s report. Under these new rules, “all albums bundled with either merchandise or concert tickets must be promoted as an add-on to those purchases in order to be counted on the charts.” Albums that are “baked in[to]” the cost of a ticket or merchandise bundle with an undisclosed standalone price will no longer count.
Additionally, Billboard will no longer allow physical albums or singles bundled with digital downloads to be reported as digital sales. The physical album or single must be shipped before it can be counted toward the charts.
In January, Billboard announced that it would require albums bundled with merchandise to be available on the same website for individual purchase, and the bundles must cost at least $3.49 more than the standalone album. Billboard now says those changes “have fallen short of the intended goal of accurately reflecting consumer intent.” The company has not yet announced a start date for its new rules.
The implications of these new ticket/merch bundle policies are vast and necessary. They will ostensibly prevent artists from racking up “album sales” by pairing their album with a ticket to a concert that realistically won’t happen for another six months to a year, at best. They should also dissuade labels from pumping out a slew of vinyl and CDs on a Thursday afternoon—the last day of the chart tracking week—that won’t ship for three months in a last-ditch effort to juice sales. Likewise, artists will no longer be able to climb the charts off the strength of branded lip balm, frying pans, bug spray, bottle openers, waist trainers, lava lamps or condoms.
Had Billboard implemented these rules at the beginning of 2020, the charts would probably look a lot different through the first half of the year. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of artists who have scored No. 1 albums or singles with major assistance from bundles in 2020 alone: Lady Gaga, Kenny Chesney, Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, 6ix9ine, Nicki Minaj and the Weeknd. The latter currently holds the biggest album debut of 2020 (at least for a few more days) with After Hours, which moved 444,000 album-equivalents in its first week, bolstered by a ticket bundle and over 80—80!—different merchandise bundles.
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You don’t have to look far to see that Billboard’s new merch and ticket bundle rules will devastate plenty of chart-topping pop stars. BTS isn’t one of them.
The Korean pop septet’s latest album, Map of the Soul: 7, topped the Billboard 200 in February with a whopping 422,000 album-equivalent units. To date, BTS claims the second-biggest debut of 2020, and they did it without any ticket or merchandise bundles. They also derived 82% of their first-week sum from traditional sales, a nearly unprecedented figure in an era when streaming is king. If Billboard’s new bundling rules had applied in January, BTS would almost certainly claim the biggest album debut of 2020 right now.
BTS made Map of the Soul: 7 available in four elaborate CD editions, each containing different concept photos of the group. These CDs accounted for 330,000 of the 347,000 traditional sales in the album’s first week. Some critics have tried to compare this marketing strategy to ticket/merchandise bundling or suggest it’s a disingenuous way to boost album sales. But since the halcyon days of vinyl, artists have incentivized people to buy their albums through elaborate packaging, selling gatefold LPs that opened up to include artwork, liner notes, song lyrics and photographs.
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That same principle drives BTS’s various collectible editions of Map of the Soul: 7 and their previous albums. They’re not hiding their music behind a pair of overpriced sweatpants out of fear that nobody would buy it otherwise. They’re rewarding fans who would have already bought their album—probably multiple times over—by making each version unique. Taylor Swift employed the same collectible CD strategy (along with merch bundles) for her last album, Lover, which debuted to a massive 867,000 album-equivalent units. BTS’s Love Yourself: Tear even received a nomination at the 2019 Grammys for Best Recording Package, which recognizes artists who put great effort into the visual appeal of their albums. (The Recording Academy did not repeat the courtesy in 2020, but that’s a conversation for a different day.)
The key distinction between BTS selling different CD versions of Map of the Soul: 7 and other artists exploiting ticket/merch bundles to sell albums is that BTS is explicitly turning their music into a collector’s item—not detracting from the value of it by packaging it with a bunch of souvenirs. Superfans of any artist will routinely buy or download multiple versions of an album or single to push it up the charts. If BTS fans purchase multiple versions of the same album, they’ll essentially be purchasing different puzzle pieces that will enhance their understanding of the album’s overarching themes—and there will be no confusion about what they’re paying for.
The principle behind BTS’s elaborate album packaging—and the thing that makes them immune to Billboard’s policy changes—is an unwavering focus on the music, rather than petty knick-knacks or tickets to far-off concerts. It’s a principle other chart-topping pop stars would be wise to make their top priority. Otherwise, they’ll be in for a rude awakening when Billboard’s new policies take effect.
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