NAGOYA, JAPAN – DECEMBER 13: K-pop group Stray Kids attends the 2022 Asia Artist Awards In Japan at … [+]
Boy band Stray Kids have hit new heights with their comeback album 5 Star, which has quickly become one of the bestselling titles in South Korea this year. The set’s immediate commercial success has helped the group manage a feat that only two other bands in the nation’s history have accomplished.
On the day of its release (Friday, June 2), 5 Star sold a staggering 2,392,666 copies in South Korea, according to the Hanteo chart—one of the two main music charts in the country.
Amazingly, 5 Star is only the third album in history to sell over two million copies on the first day of release in South Korea. With this quick win, they join both BTS and Seventeen with a massive first-day seller.
BTS joined this club with their album Map of the Soul: 7, released back in early 2020. At the time, no other musical act in South Korea had managed such a feat, and it would be several years before they were matched. The album shattered records by selling over 2.65 million copies within its first six hours of availability and an unprecedented 3.37 million copies during its debut week.
BTS managed the showing again with Proof in 2022, which narrowly passed two million sales on day one.
Fellow K-pop boy band Seventeen became the second act to sell two million copies of a new release in a single day earlier this year. The group’s FML EP achieved an unprecedented milestone by selling an astounding 3.99 million copies on its very first day. This historic feat not only shattered previous records for first-day sales but also set a new benchmark for first-week sales, leaving an indelible mark on the charts.
In addition to breaking their own first-day sales record, Stray Kids also surpassed their previous best first-week sales record with remarkable speed—just one day, in fact. The previous record of approximately 2.1 million copies sold in the first week was held by their recent EP Maxident. That set moved 1.3 million copies in its debut day.
As if these wins weren’t enough, Stray Kids reached yet another significant milestone. They have now sold over 9 million copies across all their albums on the Hanteo charts, making them the fifth artist to achieve this remarkable feat in South Korea.
With more than two million sales on the first day alone, 5 Star is undoubtedly heading to the top of the South Korean charts. The sheer magnitude of its success suggests that it will remain unrivaled for at least a short while. In fact, there is a possibility that the album may even climb to the summit of the prestigious Billboard 200 chart.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2023/06/03/stray-kids-sell-2-million-copies-of-new-ep-5-star-in-one-day/