2015 K-Pop Idol Cumulative Physical Album Sales ranking (with solos and sub-units) [Gaon Charts]

[bloodtaki2.livejournal.com]

News outlet Top Star News has revealed the 2015 album sales rankings according to Gaon Chart. They combined group, solo, and unit group albums sales. Then they compiled a list of the 26 top selling artists.








In first place comes EXO with a staggering 1,205,657 albums sold at the time this list was created. The large number of sales reflects the great size of their fandom.

BIGBANG comes in second with 423,341 albums sold. Third place goes to BTS who sold 343,928 albums. This number is an amazing feat considering that this group is newer than many others on the list. Looks like their popularity is rapidly increasing!

Meanwhile, SHINee combined with Jonghyun’s solo debut album sold 334,586 albums and reached fourth place. Rounding out the top five is Super Junior combined with Donghae and Eunhyuk’s unit group album. They sold 333,091 albums.

Check out the full list of the top 26 album sales rankings for 2015 below:

1. EXO (1,205,657)

2. BIGBANG (423,341)

3. BTS ( 343,928)

4. SHINee + Jonghyun (334,586)

5. Super Junior + Donghae & Eunhyuk (333,091)


6. Girls’ Generation + Taeyeon (327,624)

7. VIXX + VIXX LR (271,823)

8. INFINITE + Sunggyu (267,862)

9. CNBLUE + Jung Yong Hwa (199,263)

10. GOT7 (176,447)

11. SEVENTEEN (166,434)

12. TVXQ (151,707)

13. JYJ’s Junsu (127,829)

14. Red Velvet (93,044)

15. BTOB (92,749)

16. BEAST (87,224)

17. iKON (85,671)

18. A Pink (83,109)

19. B.A.P (80,953)

20. f(x) (73,753)

21. B1A4 (66,472)

22. 2PM (62,514)

23. Teen Top (58,424)

24. Shinhwa (57,767)

25. MONSTA X (50,319)

26. FTISLAND (47,659)



Please keep in mind this list only includes album sales. Rankings concerning digital sales will likely yield somewhat different results. As 2015 is not technically over yet, these numbers are likely to change in certain increments (especially for artists who are currently promoting).



Sources: topstarnews, soompie.

The ranking is inaccurate because they forgot Infinite H's subunit in Infinite's total sells. Overall, it doesn't change much the ranking, except for Infinite who would be 7th, and Vixx 8th.

Comments

[byeolbyeol.livejournal.com]

do you mean the overall digital top five or just for idol artists? because, if it's just idol artists, i've seen some accumulative lists of what fans have been keeping track of throughout the year and it'd be something like:

overall idol artists, the top twelve would be something like: big bang → iu → exo → ikon → exid → snsd → red velvet → aoa → a pink → mamamoo → shinee → sistar. so, big bang for the best selling male group digitally, exid for female, iu for soloist. jjong did break a million in downloads for all of his songs and he's the second best selling male idol of the year digitally after zico, and "deja-boo" is the third or fourth from a male idol artist not including osts / if you don't count kyu's "at gwanghwamun" b/c it was released in 2014. he actually sold more digitally than beast did with "yey", and also more than infinite's "bad", and a few others which surprised me, especially with beast because they normally do great digitally but.

[bloodtaki2.livejournal.com]

More year end charts will pop out soon, but I was wondering if despite doing less good than Jonghyun's solo, YeY still did decently on digital charts? What about Infinite, since you're mentioning them too?

[byeolbyeol.livejournal.com]

it did pretty good, yeah! it's actually pretty hard to compare their past sales to their sales this year because end of the year download numbers have dropped drassssstically over the last few years. like back in 2011 the top download song of the year on gaon (tara's "roly poly") had over 4mil downloads but the top download over the last two years barely broke 1mil. there's a kind of update to date (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1joh-UAeXVdVEr7h5J_aHUHBRa4k3Haze-7MAEmNeEpc/edit#gid=267155615) doc spreadsheet that has "yey" at 329k. "gotta go to work" did better which doesn't surprise me. only seven boy groups broke 400k in digital sales (six if you count out bastarz) so it's nothing to complain about really. "bad" was 289k.

basically:

1mil+: big bang (x5), gd / taeyang / kwanghee, mino
900k: ikon, big bang
800k: big bang
700k: big bang, exo
600k: kyung, zico
500k: shinee, mino, exo, kyuhyun, gd x taeyang
400k: bastarz, ikon, bts, jay park, jonghyun, jay park, beast
300k: zico, ikon, beast, kyuhyun, btob, yonghwa

[bloodtaki2.livejournal.com]

It's interesting to see that despite having less physical sells than Exo (although BB hasn't released a full album yet), they dominated the digital charts for idol groups.

It's a pleasant surprise to see that Sunggyu all by himself has rather decent digital numbers. He's really not far from Infinite's own sells.

Thanks a lot for the infos, it was enlightening!

[byeolbyeol.livejournal.com]

they really did. there's an obvious pattern with what boy groups are doing consistently well digitally: big bang is doing the best obviously, followed by exo and then shinee and then ikon. everyone else after that varies. but ia on sunggyu. it's nice to see and np!

[wintersjuly.livejournal.com]

wasn't the sales drop in some part to do with raising the cost of downloading? streaming's gone up pretty drastically while downloads have gone down and physical sales have remained pretty steady -- so it would make sense that people go for the cheaper streaming option over downloading if downloading's gotten more expensive (but the numbers have been sliding gradually regardless -- no one's going to hit 2 mil this year and the closest song to doing so is at least 400-500 thousand away from that number)

[byeolbyeol.livejournal.com]

that's def what it is. i'm not totally well versed in how everything works, but i saw someone who is pretty much say that same thing. people didn't really feel like paying the extra money to download the songs so they moved on over to streaming. it's really telling when, back in 2011, pretty much every song in the digital 100 had 950k+ to 4mil and, this year, there's going to be songs that make the chart that have barely 500k.

[gray-fairy.livejournal.com]

I saw the top 5 of Gaon's (provisional I guess) digital list a few days ago and it was 3 BB songs (Bangx3, Loser and Bae Bae), Naul and Zion T. EXO will be too, probably in top 20-30? And SHINee should be in the top 40-50 I guess? Since Gaon combine both streams and downloads. Jonghyun did pretty well for a solo male idol but I don't think he'd make Gaon's top 100 because it seems only artists with +500k downloads are gonna make it and his downloads were at 414k last time I checked.

[kevinmchale.livejournal.com]

will exo reach 1.5M when sing for you numbers come out :O

100K for red velvet please! bow to bts and seventeen too

[belintuchiha.livejournal.com]

didn't sing for you already make around +300,000? XD so I'm sure it'll be more than 1.5

[kevinmchale.livejournal.com]

my last count was around 1.3M (but that included outdated numbers for the albums that last charted in july) so seeing it down to 1.2 now i'm not sure how much more will be returned adjusted

[vanhangels.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, congrats to BTS for making the list. Although, I wonder if they're only including the The Most Beautiful Moment In Life pt. 1 or maybe just part 2? The total for both should be close to 500,000+

[vanhangels.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see it now. It's because they haven't included December sales. Seriously though, I would have thought they sold more in the Gaon chart since those numbers are almost similar to their Hanteo numbers. I thought Gaon numbers would be more since it includes all the inventory.

[bloodtaki2.livejournal.com]

On Gaon, part. 2 sold 144+k. It depends which chart you're looking at. I can't remember which music chart it was (melon, Olleh, Bugs, Melon, Soribada, Genie), but there's one that counts all albums, included the stocks, but haven't actually been bought by people. So that's why it looks like BTS sold like 500k, when that's not the case. It's just merchants expected a lot of sells so they ordered a lot of stocks.

[vanhangels.livejournal.com]

yeah..

[missingmisnomer.livejournal.com]

Album sales don't impress me much these days but I'm still happy to see EXO doing so well and Seventeen in the top 20 despite being rookies and from a financially-strapped company at that.

[lily-of-west.livejournal.com]

Look at my boys 3 months into debut and for half an album....amazing....



Edit: also OP iKON tag would be appreciated...thx

[byeolbyeol.livejournal.com]

i feel like. most of these lists are just... estimates because gaon doesn't actually release their list until mid-january lmao. but there's like nine digital charts, hanteo and gaon.

[classicfire.livejournal.com]

Rise vixx rise.

[yohan94.livejournal.com]

so proud to see seventeen up there with the seniors. no matter how ppl try to put down their success they can only go up from here (if pledis keeps it up)

[missshallelujah.livejournal.com]

Slay Seventeen and BTS, I'm so happy for them!

EXO is just in a whole different level, WOW.

[nrafx.livejournal.com]

I really can't make sense of TVXQ's sales at all lol.

So happy to see Seventeen and Red Velvet doing well!

[setsuna16.livejournal.com]

Man, BoA can't even push 50k buys anymore?

SAD.

[adlyeith.livejournal.com]

MTE. She's such a queen, what's wrong with people.

[setsuna16.livejournal.com]

There's no accounting for taste...

[unicornios.livejournal.com]

Surprised at how little (considering they're a big act) SNSD sold but hey, I know nothing of these things...

[atenais-pala.livejournal.com]

Yes, I am surprised too. I'm from the time when the girl groups used to sell more than the boy groups.

[unicornios.livejournal.com]

The power of fangirls' thirst!!

[bmo.livejournal.com]

gaon is so.. strange? i dont know why what they count is what is shipped to stores instead of what has actually been sold because for example on Hanteo BTS has sold ~170k for part 2 yet on Gaon they're at ~250k for part 2? that's a huge difference. i just think gaon is mad shady?? idk how else to describe it and counting whats been shipped out instead of sold doesn't make any sense.

[gray-fairy.livejournal.com]

The other day I read a comment saying that Gaon counts the albums sold on Hanteo, Hottracks and Synnara but idk how accurated is that.

[bloodtaki2.livejournal.com]

Where are you looking for the december sells on the website? I can oly find the sales until November.

[scheisse.livejournal.com]

technically shipped albums are still sold albums as the stores have to buy the stock in order to sell them.

[gray-fairy.livejournal.com]

wow @ BTS hitting that top 3. They maybe "flop" digitally but their physical sales are no damn joke and it's only a matter of time before they hit big with the mainstream public.
Also, so proud of SHINee for still doing so well despite being almost 8 y/o and not that well promoted by SM. Why are they not tagged tho?
It always surprises me when people say that BB doesn't sell well physically but they sold 400k releasing only singles. No doubt that them and EXO are huge walls amongst male idols and I'd say idols in general.

[scheisse.livejournal.com]

bts killing it.

seventeen killing it and they debuted this year.

b.a.p coming back strong.

got7 top ten but remain ignored by award shows and are extremely underrated.

[hongaerin.livejournal.com]

Never expected CNBLUE to be in the top10, since their album didn't do that well. I guess Yonghwa sold much more solo albums than I thought and it compensated ?

[gray-fairy.livejournal.com]

Iirc Yonghwa did better than his own group both physically and digitally which makes me wonder if most of CNB's fans are basically Yonghwa's fans lol.

[hongaerin.livejournal.com]

It might have to do with the fact that Yonghwa's title song was a ballad and the general public LOVES ballads ? It might have gotten more recognition, even with non-fans

[byeolbyeol.livejournal.com]

lmao yeah. you're right, it was mostly yonghwa. i checked gaon and the last time cnblue's album charted was in october and it had 82k? and yonghwa had broken 110k a few months ago, iirc.

[cast-no-shadow0.livejournal.com]

Surprised Beast did that well physically and digitally when I feel like they've barely promoted the past couple years. I really don't remember their promotions...

[smyers92.livejournal.com]

I'm just happy that bap is on this list for only releasing just one album a month ago

[fifi-moon.livejournal.com]

Junsu on the list with little to no TV/promo.

Maybe if everyone did 6000 versions of every album then everyone else would have Exo's level of sales.

[schizofragile.livejournal.com]

BANGTAN SLAY!

[kwonsoonyoung.livejournal.com]

exo <33

[tsuyoi-hikari.livejournal.com]

I just want to say VIXX LR is basically the best sub-unit for this year. Their song Beautiful Liar is one of my very fave songs of the year. The MV, the lyrics and everything was just really outstanding. I was really impressed despite not being a Starlight.