Carnival of Soul

BTS’s new album Map of the Soul: 7 seems to make history every few hours or so, and in ways that most artists can only dream of. The set’s opening day was one for the record books, as they were able to shift more units in a number of hours than they ever have before.

As the numbers from the title’s second and third day of availability are compiled and slowly released by various organizations, Map of the Soul: 7 is clearly already one of the best-performing sets of all time in the band’s home country of South Korea.

According to Hanteo, a company that shares real-time retail data for the South Korean music industry, Map of the Soul: 7 sold just over 2.653 million copies in the country alone on its first day of availability (Friday, February 21). Amazingly, it was able to sell that many copies in just a few hours, as the studio effort wasn’t offered until later in the day (due to it having to be released at the same time globally). 

After three full days, the sum has jumped to 2.99 million.

That sum appears to be high enough to grant Map of the Soul: 7 the title of the third-bestselling album in South Korean history, and not just when it comes to the first day (or even week).

While up-to-date data on every South Korean release is not always available, it looks like Map of the Soul: 7 has passed the all-time sales of the legendary Lee Moon-sae’s Standing Under the Shade of a Roadside Tree, which had reportedly sold 2.58 million units by 2015. By then, the set, which was released in 1988, was already decades old, so it’s unlikely that sum has improved by much, if at all. That beloved release was pushed into third place on the all-time ranking last year by BTS’s Map of the Soul: Persona.

Speaking of that chart-topping short album, it currently leads the way as the bestselling album in South Korean history, and it’s still racking up sales to this day. The group’s most successful launch sold 3.718 million copies in the nation last year, and that total has expanded since. 

Currently in between BTS albums on the all-time ranking of which titles have sold the most in South Korea is Kim Gun-mo’s 1995 release Wrongful Encounter, and just how many units that has shifted is tough to pin down, but it appears to be somewhere between 2.86 million and 3.3 million. 

As Map of the Soul: 7 continues to sell thousands of copies every hour in South Korea, it will surely pass Wrongful Encounter relatively soon. At the rate it’s going, the title may soon pass three million sales in just days, and it’s impossible to predict how massive the first full tracking week may wind up being.

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