Seventeen performing live. Photo Credit: Korea.net
Hybe-signed Seventeen has reportedly become the first act to sell over four million albums in a single week as measured by South Korea’s Hanteo Chart.
The 13-piece boy band’s sales milestone, reached specifically with a six-track mini-album entitled FML, just recently began making headlines. Earlier this week, however, Digital Music News reported that the project had moved 3.99 million units in a single day upon becoming available to fans on April 24th.
This figure, Hybe emphasized, broke the existing “world record” – with Seventeen super-supporters buying another 1.27 million copies of the act’s already-released albums across Q1 for good measure. (For further reference, Seventeen’s now-former bestselling album, May of 2022’s Face the Sun, sold a comparatively modest 2.07 million copies during its first week, per the aforementioned Hanteo Chart stats.)
And according once again to Hanteo data, about which Forbes put out a piece, north of 500,000 more fans then went ahead and bought FML during the first week that it was available. All told, between the noted pre-orders and these week-of-release purchases, the effort sold 4,550,214 units, the Hanteo platform shows.
Besides breaking the Hanteo week-long sales record, FML likewise became the chart’s first album to move more than three million units on release day and emerged as the chart’s bestselling overall album, supplanting BTS’ Map of the Soul: 7 (2020), according to Forbes.
Additionally, evidence suggests that the sales total is poised to keep on climbing, for Hybe has teed up a “deluxe version” of FML. According to its WeVerse listing, the product is expected to drop this coming Monday and, at about $35 a pop, will include a 264-page photobook, a 12-page lyric book, a poster (for the “first press only”), 10 photocards, the actual CD, and one of 13 “paper tags” (first press only).
Though significant in their own right, the Seventeen FML sales benchmarks are also important in that they demonstrate the commercial viability and fan support behind Hybe acts aside from BTS, which is on hiatus as certain of its members fulfill their military-service obligations as required under South Korean law.
Notwithstanding this temporary split, BTS’ Jimin sold almost 1.5 million copies of his Face solo project on the first day it was available, Hybe indicated in its Q1 2023 earnings report, whereas Suga’s D-Day is said to have sold 1.1 million units during the same stretch. The latter artist is currently on the road and has tour stops booked through late June, while Seventeen is preparing to embark on a world tour beginning in 2023’s second half.
When the market closed today, Hybe stock (KRX: 352820) was worth ₩292,500/$221.93 per share – reflecting an almost 73 percent valuation increase from 2023’s beginning and a 22 percent improvement from early May of 2022.