No group has done this in over a decade. BTS just did it for the third week in a row. ARIRANG holds at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 dated April 18, earning 124,000 equivalent album units in the week ending April 9, according to Luminate. That’s down 34% from the previous week, but the number almost beside the point. The milestone is the streak itself.
ARIRANG is the first album by a Korean artist ever to spend more than one week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, and it has now added to that record by topping the chart for three weeks straight. Soompi No other K-pop act has achieved this. Not even close. In its first week, ARIRANG recorded 532,000 pure album sales, marking the highest weekly sales for a group album in over a decade since Billboard began tracking units in December 2014. allkpop
The last comparison point the industry has is Mumford & Sons’ Babel, which spent five nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 in 2012 and 2013, opening with three consecutive weeks at the top before returning twice more following its Grammy win for Album of the Year. Babel was also the last album by a group to spend its first three weeks at No. 1. Billboard That was 13 years ago.
ARIRANG is also the first album to spend its first three weeks at No. 1 since Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl racked up its first seven weeks atop the list in October through November 2025, of its 12 total weeks at No. 1. Billboard
The unit breakdown for week three tells the story of a release with staying power across multiple consumption formats. Of the 124,000 equivalent album units, album sales comprise 71,000 (down 34%), SEA units comprise 50,000 (down 24%, equaling 52.44 million on-demand official streams), and TEA units comprise 3,000 (down 65%). ARIRANG holds at No. 1 on Top Album Sales for a third consecutive week. The album has also held No. 1 for three consecutive weeks on Spotify’s Weekly Top Albums chart, reclaimed the top spot on Germany’s Official Top 100 Albums chart, and placed No. 2 on France’s SNEP albums chart and Australia’s ARIA Top 50 Albums. The Korea Herald
