K-pop album sales stay robust despite pandemic

The K-pop industry boasts record album sales this year in spite of canceled tours and phase performances.

According to Gaon Chart, the country’s top 400 albums offered 18.08 million copies in the first half of this year– a 40 percent jump from in 2015’s 12.33 million and the greatest figure given that the chart started tallying album sales in 2010.

Of the 400 albums tracked, the top 100– all from K-pop bands or musicians– sold 16.89 million copies, making up more than 90 percent of the total.

The top 10 albums alone exceeded a combined 10 million copies. They consisted of albums from BTS, Seventeen, Baekhyun, NCT 127, NCT Dream, TWICE, IZ ONE and GOT7.

” Album sales have actually been driven greatly by K-pop acts with a strong abroad presence and big worldwide fandoms, as the domestic market has reached near saturation,” Kim Jin-woo, primary researcher at Gaon, told The Korea Herald

That success defies the trend in the international music market. Nielsen Music Data reported that United States album sales decreased 20 percent in the first half of this year compared with a year earlier.

” Ironically, the cancellation of performances and fan meetups due to the pandemic seems to have actually helped K-pop album sales due to the fact that the fans didn’t have any other option. Buying albums was the only method to show assistance for a while,” stated Kim.

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According to Gaon, the bestselling album in the very first half of this year was BTS’ Map of the Soul: 7, which taped over 4 million copies (4,265,617). Topping the US’ Signboard, the UK’s Authorities Chart and Japan’s Oricon, it increased higher and faster than the band’s Map of the Soul: Personality( 3,718,230 copies) from last year.

It was also the bestselling album in the US with 552,000 copies, ranking initially on the top-selling album chart at the midpoint of 2020, according to Nielsen Music Data.

Though the septet’s album sales increased by about 100,000 copies compared to the very same duration last year, the band’s albums made up a lower percentage of the top 100– 29.3 percent this year, from 41.9 percent in 2015.

This is because of the total boost in sales of K-pop albums this year as Seventeen, Baekhyun, NCT 127 and IZ ONE ended up being million-sellers on the strength of broader worldwide fan bases.

Seventeen– whose seventh mini-album, Heng: garae, ranked No. 2 in album sales– just recently witnessed explosive development in Japan. Only 2 or three years ago, the band’s album sales stayed in the series of 500,000 copies, but its 3rd full-length album– An Ode, released in September in 2015– sold over 800,000

” Based on the band’s site traffic, YouTube customers and concert ticket sales over the previous year, there has been a significant increase in Japanese users in the previous couple of years,” stated Kim. Japan remains among the significant markets for K-pop, accounting for about 60 percent of its exports.

Delight, the second solo album from EXO singer Baekhyun, placed third with 971,876 copies, making the vocalist an outlier on the group-dominated top 10 list. The sales figure is a record for a solo artist in Gaon’s history.

Leading 10 most offered albums in the very first half of 2020

1. BTS’ Map of the Soul: 7( 4,265,617 copies)

2. Seventeen’s Heng: garae( 1,207,513 copies)

3. Baekhyun’s Delight(971,876 copies)

4. NCT 127’s NCT #127 Neo Zone(784,260 copies)

5. NCT DREAM’s Reload(604,480 copies)

6. TWICE’s MORE & MORE(563,580 copies)

7. IZ ONE’s Oneiric Journal ( 幻想日記) (511,427 copies)

8. NCT 127’s NCT #127 Neo Zone The Final Round – The 2nd Album Repackage(469,074 copies)

9. IZ ONE’s BLOSSOM IZ(459,125 copies)

10 GOT7’s DYE(444,563 copies)

( Source: Gaon Chart)