Top K-pop acts in July: BTS, MSG Wannabe and Astro dominate Gaon’s monthly and weekly charts
As one of the most reputable music charts in K-pop, the Gaon Music Chart collects data and reveals the statistics of how well recent releases have been doing in South Korea, as well as globally, by looking at the criteria like physical album sales and digital streaming. They had already announced in July that NCT Dream earned a double million and Ateez and Stray Kids received double-platinum badges thanks to the sales of their latest albums.
Gaon released on August 12 that for the month of July, the Monthly Album Chart saw BTS’ ‘Butter’ CD at the top with more than 2.4M sales followed by D.O.’s solo debut, NCT Dream’s first repackaged album and SF9’s ‘Turn Over’ as they saw a new rise in popularity due to their stint on ‘Kingdom’. NCT Dream’s ‘Hello Future’ also earned a triple-platinum badge for getting more than 100k sales.
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The Gaon charts
For the Weekly Album Chart, Astro’s ‘Switch On’ and Golden Child’s ‘Game Changer’ led in the first week of August, followed by BTS, Weeekly and Dreamcatcher. Fans were happy that the project group MSG Wannabe topped the Monthly Digital Chart, Monthly Streaming Chart and Weekly Streaming Chart with the unit song ‘Foolish Love’ as it had 164M digital sales and came in #2 on the Weekly Digital Chart. Two of their tracks were also in the top 5 of the Monthly Download Chart.
AKMU’s collaborative album ‘Next Episode’ topped the Weekly Digital Chart while BTS’ ‘Permission to Dance was at #1 on the Monthly Download Chart. Astro’s ‘After Midnight’ topped the Weekly Download Chart while it was #4 on Weekly Digital Chart. Other recurring artists on the charts were Aespa and Lee Mujin. It should also be noted that Block B went up to #5 on the Weekly Social Chart which could be because of the sudden popularity of their 2012 song ‘Nillili Mambo’.
Sales certification
Other than these major charts, fans also combed through the statistics released by Gaon to see where else their faves had topped. IU and TWICE had the most songs over 100M streams with 12 and 10 songs respectively. GOT7 became the 6th K-pop group to have 4M sales total even though they have just released one single in 2021. TXT’s ‘The Chaos Chapter: FREEZE’ received triple platinum and is the first fourth-gen group to do so. They also made 1M sales in 2021 while SF9 has 1M sales total.
Meanwhile Treasure’s ‘The First Step: Chapter Two’ is certified platinum. BTS has a total of 5M album sales in 2021 and is the first to have a total of 30M album sales according to Gaon ever. Seventeen received a million badge for their latest release ‘Your Choice’ while TWICE’s ‘Taste of Love’ got double platinum. Astro is the 4th boy group to debut on Gaon Digital’s Top 5 in 2021. EXO’s ‘Don’t Fight The Feeling’ got a million badge while Monsta X’s ‘One Of A Kind' got platinum along with IU’s 2019 EP ‘Love Poem’ and Stray Kids’ ‘CLÉ 1 MIROH’.
As for the best-selling K-pop singles of the month, Blackpink’s ‘Lovesick Girls’ and IU’s ‘Celebrity’ each got a platinum badge. TWICE currently leads as the K-pop group with the most certified albums with seven albums. They’re followed by BTS and Seventeen with six certified albums each. TXT, IZ*ONE, NCT Dream and GOT7 come in third with 5 certified albums each. And K-pop Twitter ended up trending Gaon to celebrate these achievements and vowing to do even better for their groups' upcoming releases.