Each week, Billboard’s album chart tells a story in two forms.
In most cases, the titles that reach No. 1 are the most popular titles on the streaming service. So far in 2022, it includes Disney’s “Encanto” soundtrack, various rap records (by Drake, Lil Durk, Future), and the biggest hit of the year, Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti.” and held the top spot for 13 weeks. .
At the rest of the time, popular records in physical versions dominate the top spot, including vinyl LPs, CDs, and collectible box sets packed with posters, t-shirts and other goodies. Some of Physical Media’s most accomplished marketers these days are his K-pop groups such as BTS and Blackpink.
This week, the eight-member Korean-born Stray Kids topped the charts for the second time this year with “Maxident,” which has sold 117,000 copies in the US, according to tracking service Luminate. Like their last release, “Oddinary”, which topped the charts in March, most of the sales of “Maxident” were on CD, and the band released the album in as many as ten different packages. Target and Barnes & Noble.
Of that total, 107,000 was for CDs. ‘Maxident’, like ‘Oddinary’ before it, is officially a ‘mini-album’, with the standard version running just under 27 minutes. His eight tracks for “Maxident” (“Un Verano” has 23, by comparison) have garnered him just under 10 million streams in the United States. That’s about 6% of total consumption in the first week of release.