Hi everyone, it’s been a while since I last published.
I decided to do those stats following the discussions around some of the huge debut of this years like Cortis or AHOf for example.
I decided to see which are the groups with the best albums sales ever.
But first a few disclaimers :
1/ This is something I do to satisfy my curiosity and I don’t pretend this is exhaustive nor perfect.
2/ In no way is this a attack or criticism against any groups
For the numbers you’ll see, I used the site koreansales as well as the Hanteo site and the Circle site.
As usual, before my conclusion here is the link to the details of the stats : https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WruBa2sW_hAh04iw9KIhTRrQYDJaAtzusZmTmnA5ITg/edit?usp=sharing
These stats regroups the 33 best selling debut albums in KPOP (over 100k in the first month of sales).
Top 10 best selling debut albums
| Group | Debut Date | Album | First week sales | First month sales |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zerobaseone | 10 July 2023 | Youth in the Shade | 1M311 | 1M822 |
| Riize | 18 August 2023 | Get a Guitar | 1M016 | 1M039 |
| Wanna One | 7 August 2017 | 1X1=1 | 411k | 704k |
| CORTIS | 18 August 2025 | Color Outside the lines | 436k | 649k |
| X1 | 27 August 2019 | Quantum Leap | 524k | 640k |
| New Jeans | 8 August 2022 | New Jeans | 311k | 522K |
| Aespa | 5 October 2021 | Savage | 276k | 520k |
| IDID | 15 September 2025 | I did it | 395k | 506k |
| Babymonster | 1 April 2024 | Babymons7er | 401k | 471k |
| Hearts2hearts | 24 February 2025 | The Chase | 412k | 423k |
Some conclusions :
- The Agency with the most groups is HYBE with 8 (Cortis, New Jeans, Illit, Le Sserafim, Enhypen, TWS, TXT and BoyNextDoor), followed by SME (Riize, Aespa, Hearts2hearts, SuperM) and Starship (IDID, Kiiiikii, Ive and Cravity) with both having 4.
- Most of the albums on this list are less than 5 years old, the newer groups seem to have bigger debut album sales than previous generations. Only 2 groups are from the 3rd Gen (Blackpink and Wanna One) and there is no 2nD Gen groups. The more recent groups benefit from the popularisation and the expansion of Kpop.
- 6 groups out of the top 10 and 20 groups out of the 33 list of the stats are boy groups. It is consistent with the general tendency of Boy groups selling more albums than girl groups (mostly due to solidified fan base)
- The numbers also show the sale power of survival shows with Zerobaseone (Boys Planet) being 1st, Wanna One (Produce 101) 3rd, X1 (Produce X101) being 5th and IDID (Debut Plan) being 8th . Those shows allow the creation of a solid and loyal fan base even before debut. In the 33 groups of the list 15 of then were formed following a Survival show.
- Survival shows popularity also boost the sales of groups formed with former participants even if they didn’t debut in the final groups. It’s the case of groups like Evnne (Boys Planet), Cravity (Produce X101) and Xikers (Under Nineteen).
- Another similarity that we can observe in some of those groups and that can explain the high number of sales is groups formed with members from other groups (often temporary groups from survival shows). Those groups benefit from those members existing popularity. It’s the case of Riize (former NCT members), Le Sserafim (Former Iz*one members) and Ive (former Iz*one members) for example.
- Another factor that seems to influence high debut sales is when the group is from one of the Big 4 Agencies (HYBE, JYPE, SME, YGE). in the top 10 we have 6 groups from the Big 4 : Riize (SME), CORTIS (HYBE), New Jeans (HYBE), Aespa (SME), Babymonster (YGE) and Hearts2hearts (SME). It epresent 18 out the 33 groups.
- All of the 33 groups in the stats fall under one or multiples of the previously mentioned criteria : Survival Show group or participants, members form other groups or groups under a Big 4 agencies.
- It also seems like debuting in august is the best month to be successful as 5 of the 6 best selling debut albums ar from groups who debuted in august ^.^
In comparison, the most popular group of today had smaller debut, needing sometimes years to build a solid fanbase and be able to sell more than 100k.
Here is a quick chart with the debut album sales of the most popular Kpop groups so you can see the difference :
| Group | Debut Date | Album | First week of sales | First month of sales |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BTS | 13 July 2013 | 2 COOL 4 SKOOL | 772 | 5k |
| Seventeen | 26 May 2015 | 17 Carat | 1.6k | 19k |
| Stray Kids | 25 March 2018 | I am Not | 15k | 45k |
| Twice | 20 October 2015 | The Story Begins | 8k | 17k |
| Ateez | 24 October 2018 | Treasure EP1 | 5k | 7k |
| NCT 127 | 7 July 2016 | NCT # 127 | 26k | 60k |
| Red Velvet | 1 August 2014 | Ice Cream Cake | 17k | 29k |
| I-dle | 2 May 2018 | I am | 2k | 15k |
| Itzy | 12 February 2019 | IT’z ICY | 32k | 77k |
| Monsta X | 14 May 2015 | Tresspass | 1.1k | 8k |
I hope you’ll find all this as interesting as I did.
If you have any question or if you see an error, leave a comment, I’ll try to respond quickly.
DoC ^.^
PS: I’m reworking and updating my stats about song production and will soon post it of you’re interested.
submitted by /u/Daughter_of_Calliope
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