BTS’ Jimin Sells Over 1 Million Copies Of ‘Face’ Solo Album Worldwide For Record-Breaking 24 Hours In Korea

The highly anticipated solo albums from the seven BTS members have seen each individual sharing their artistic story to global acclaim and the latest release from Jimin has reached a huge new milestone.

On its first day available, Jimin’s debut solo album FACE sold 1,021,532 physical copies worldwide in its first day available on March 24, according to South Korea’s real-time album sales website Hanteo Chart. While hitting the one-million mark is substantial no matter which country’s industry, Jimin becomes the first-ever soloist from Korea to hit more than a million in 24 hours and ranks as one of the biggest day-one openings ever from the country.

Before Jimin, the highest first-day sales total from a solo Korean act came via trot singer Lim Young Woong who sold 940,624 copies of his debut solo album IM HERO last year.

Meanwhile, FACE ranks ninth in the biggest-ever first-day sales for Korean albums. Naturally, Jimin’s BTS ranks with some of the largest first-day sales ever, with 2020’s Map of the Soul: 7 still ranking as the biggest 24-hour opening with more than 2.65 million copies sold. To date, BTS is the only act from Korea to sell more than two million copies of an album on the first day, doing so with Map of the Soul: 7 and once more last year when their anthology album Proof sold nearly 2.16 million copies in its first day out. Elsewhere, top K-pop groups like TOMORROW X TOGETHER, SEVENTEEN, Stray Kids and BLACKPINK rank in the Top 10 among first-day Korean album sales, all according to Hanteo. K-pop soloists tend to sell slightly lower than the groups despite band members’ individual popularities, but Jimin is proving to be major competition.

While fans eagerly awaited the totals after FACE’s first day out, the final numbers took slightly longer to calculate based on the various release formats. Eventually, Hanteo confirmed that FACE sold 768,575 copies of Its “regular” version, plus 252,957 copies of the “Weverse Version,” sold by HYBE’s fan-communication and merchandise-selling platform Weverse. While both versions come with fun extras, including prized photo cards, the “Weverse Version” of albums are typically slimmer packages and come with a QR code to stream the music instead a physical CD. Individuals could purchase up to 20 copies of the Weverse versions of albums for Hanteo chart inclusion.

The massive first-day numbers from Jimin show the ongoing significance of physical products in South Korea, revealed as the seventh-largest music industry in the world according to the latest report from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. While Hanteo records physical album sales worldwide and the Billboard charts count streaming and physical sales only in the world’s largest music market, America, the last artist to move more album copies in the U.S. was Taylor Swift. Her Midnights album from late 2022 moved 1.578 million units in its first week, per Billboard. Of those units, 1.140 million came from album purchases.

With one million-plus units moved on Day 1, Jimin’s FACE will quickly rank as one of Korea’s best-selling albums in 2023. The global interest for a complete project from the 27-year-old was high as Jimin has not released as much solo music as some of his band mates with songs like the pre-release buzz track “Set Me Free Pt.2” and lead single “Like Crazy” showcasing a liberated vocal powerhouse tapping into unexpected soundscapes of gospel-inflected trap-pop and slinky, synth-pop. Short and sweet with its larger story focused on facing one’s inner anxieties and turmoils, FACE not only lets us see new musical stylings of Jimin but give him space to share a part of himself beyond the captivating superstar on stage.

Less than three months into the year, Korea has already seen robust album sales from Jimin, as well as groups like TOMORROW X TOMORROW and NCT 127 selling over two- and one-million copies each of their recent releases. The whole week of sales for FACE, plus Jimin’s just-released remix package of the new single “Like Crazy,” all point to the project being one of the most influential K-pop releases this year.