K-Pop Album Sales Reached A Record High In The First Half Of 2022

According to Kim Jin-woo, the head researcher of Circle Chart, the first half of 2022 saw a record number of K-Pop album sales by a long shot.

Based on data collected by Circle Chart, which reports on accumulated album and song streams and sales, the total sales of the top 400 best-selling physical K-Pop albums have risen 34.6% from last year, with a total of 34.9 million albums sold worldwide.

The numbers of albums sold in the first half of each year has increased noticeably since 2018, which saw 10.48 million album sales. The first half of 2019 showed 12.93 million sales, the first half of 2020 was 18.36 million sales, and the first half of 2021 was calculated to be 25.96 million sales.

As for the best-selling artists for the year so far, Circle Chart shared the six K-Pop artists who have contributed most to these album sales. First is BTS, who has sold around 4.52 million albums so far this year.

Next up is NCT DREAM with 3.98 million sales, followed by SEVENTEEN with 2.72 million.

TXT takes fourth place with 2.10 million sales, Stray Kids comes in close after with 2.07 million sales, and soloist Lim Youngwoong shows his popularity as a solo artist with 1.14 million sales.

At this rate, K-Pop album sales are bound to just continue to go up over the years!