BTS Becomes First Korean Act to Have Platinum Album in the U.S.
The BTS album Love Yourself: Answer has been officially certified as a platinum album, making the band the first Korean act to have a platinum-selling record in the U.S., while the BTS song "IDOL" has also gone platinum, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) confirmed.
The song "IDOL," the lead single from Love Yourself: Answer, has joined the group's other songs "Mic Drop" and "Boy With Luv," which features singer-songwriter Halsey, as platinum sellers, Billboard reports.
The album, which was released in August 2018, has sold more than a million copies and was already certified gold by the RIAA in 2018, while the group's Map of the Soul: Persona album was also certified gold last August, having sold at least 500,000 copies.
An album is awarded platinum status when it sells 1,000,000 units. A unit is defined as one album sale, 10 tracks sold from an album or 1,500 on-demand audio and/or video streams, according to the latest award certification guidelines set by the RIAA. Certified gold status is awarded for music sales of 500,000 units.
"RIAA will include on-demand audio and video streams and a track sale equivalent in Gold & Platinum (G&P's) Album Award," the RIAA said.
"Collectively, this now means that the program's iconic benchmarks—500,000 (Gold), 1,000,000 (Platinum) and 2,000,000 plus (multi-Platinum) – will count both sales and streams for single and album certifications," it explained.
The seven-piece band has gone from strength to strength since their debut in 2013, garnering international fame following various performances across several major festivals as well as television and radio programs in the U.S.
The latest achievement joins a host of other records smashed by the group in recent months. Last November Love Yourself: Answer became the first K-pop album to spend a year on the Billboard 200 album chart, while in the same month the album's "Euphoria" track, sung by BTS member Jungkook, garnered more than a 100 million streams on Spotify, reportedly making it the first song by a male K-pop singer to have surpassed that mark on the music platform.
Last April BTS became the first K-pop group and Asian act overall to reach more than five billion streams on Spotify, Billboard reported.
The latest certification comes ahead of the release the new BTS album—Map of the Soul: 7—which is slated for release on February 21. The band unveiled a track from the new album—titled "Black Swan"—earlier this month, which was released with a new "art film" featuring a dramatic modern dance performance.
The group are scheduled to perform at the 2020 Grammy Awards this Sunday, their first ever performance at the historic awards show taking place in Los Angeles on January 26.
BTS will also be touring later this year. The dates for their upcoming Map of the Soul concert tour were released earlier this week. The tour includes 15 dates in the U.S. and Canada as well as in Seoul, the South Korean capital, Japan and Europe (London, Barcelona and Berlin) on selected dates from April to September this year. Tickets will be on sale from February 5.
