The 20 bestselling K-pop albums of all time: BTS, Blackpink, NCT, Exo, Wanna One included
- BTS naturally took the number one spot, but which of their many albums was it?
- Blackpink, Exo, NCT and others also made the list of million-plus sellers
The bestselling K-pop album of all time is, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, from BTS. But do you know the other top selling albums from K-pop groups?
These days we often hear about K-pop albums selling more than a million copies, so it may come as a surprise to learn that K-pop album sales were hard to quantify for a long time, and it’s still hard to verify sales figures reported before accessible digital reporting.
In 2010, the Korea Music Content Association (KMCA) introduced the Gaon Music Chart, and since then it has been tracking sales, and in recent years began certifying records, much like the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) do for those markets.
But even though Gaon figures are now considered accurate, there were multiple attempts in the past to track album sales in South Korea - including by the Recording Industry of Korea - but it remains difficult to verify early K-pop album sales for a variety of reasons, even for albums that were reported by chart trackers at the time of their immense sales.
In its early days, South Korea’s pop music industry witnessed widespread misreporting of sales, sometimes by accident but sometimes intentionally to reduce reported income.