BTS has already sold over 750,000 copies of 'Love Yourself: Her' in the first week according to reports and is expected to break in Billboard 200's album charts in the next few days.
The seven-member group's new album, 'Love Yourself: Her', debuted at No. 7 with 31,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending Sept. 21, according to Nielsen Music. Of that sum, 18,000 were traditional album sales.
Meanwhile, the Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). The new Oct. 7-dated chart (where Foo Fighters' 'Concrete and Gold' debuts at No. 1) will be posted in full on Billboard's websites on Tuesday (Sept. 26). The rest of 'Love Yourself: Her''s starting unit sum comprised of just less than 4,000 TEA units, and a little under 10,000 SEA units.
As of now, the pre-orders for the album is still on-going. Their pre-order record reached to over 1,112,000 copies, as the group continues to impress the music scene as they reach another feat of selling 759,263 copies in just the first week since it was released. They have nearly doubled their old record with 'Wings: You Never Walk Alone', which recorded first-week sales around 373,705 copies.
To add to that, the new album is distributed by Sony's independent distribution arm, The Orchard. It is the first time an album by BTS has been under American distribution as the group's previous releases were issued through U.S. digital retailers independently by the group's South Korean label, Big Hit Entertainment. While 'Love Yourself: Her' is currently available as a digital album in the U.S., a physical CD release is forthcoming.
The success of BTS can be attributed to its fanbase, the BTS Army. The group mobilized in high volume during street week in order to get the word out about the album. The passionate fandom were very focused on achieving high chart placement, as fan-run social media accounts helped fellow BTS fans understand how the Billboard's charts are compiled, and how sales and streams impact the Billboard 200 during an album's first week, and so forth.
Some fans even went so far as to gift the album to friends via Apple's iTunes Store in order to spread the word. However, sales of any specific album purchased on iTunes and gifted to another are not reported to Nielsen Music by Apple, and thus, do not count on Billboard's charts.
