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Stray Kids’ ’5-Star’ becomes most-sold K-pop album in debut week
Boy group Stray Kids set a record for the biggest first-week sales in K-pop history, their agency said Friday.
The group’s third full-length album “5-Star” sold about 4.62 million copies in the first week after its release last Friday, JYP Entertainment said, citing data from Hanteo Chart, a local tracker of album sales.
It marks the biggest first-week sales of a K-pop album, with the number considered an important standard for measuring an artist’s popularity and the size of its fandom.
The previous record was set by K-pop boy group Seventeen on May 1, when its latest album “FML” sold slightly over 4.55 million copies in the debut week.
“5-Star” had been highly anticipated to become a big hit when over 4.93 million copies of the album were bought on preorders May 30, three days before its release. It went on to surpass 5.13 million units of preorders, the most in K-pop history, last Thursday and to sell over 2.39 million copies on the day of its release.
Led by “S-Class,” the 12-track album is the first release from the band in eight months.
Stray Kids made their debut as an eight-piece group in 2018 and have released such hits as “God’s Menu,” “Back Door,” “Miroh,” “My Pace,” “Thunderous” and “Maniac.”
Last year, the band secured two No. 1s on the Billboard 200 main albums chart of the United States with EPs “Oddinary” and “Maxident.”