RM’s ‘mono.’ debuts at 26th on Billboard 200, highest for K-pop solo artist

SEOUL, Oct. 30 (Yonhap) — RM, leader of the massively popular boy group BTS, has become the highest-ranking K-pop solo artist on the Billboard 200 main albums chart for his latest solo project titled “mono.”

The mixtape, which was released for free downloads Tuesday last week, landed at No. 26 on the Nov. 3-dated Billboard 200 chart, according to the data released Tuesday.

The previous record was set by “Hope World,” a mixtape from another BTS member, J-Hope, which peaked at 38th in March.

This comes as a surprise as the record was achieved with only three days of chart activity and without any physical album.

This file photo shows RM of boy band BTS. (Yonhap)

The tracks are available on Soundcloud, Google and Dropbox free of charge, and can be purchased on Spotify and iTunes. The album topped iTunes’ albums charts of 88 regions, including the United States, France, Germany, Britain, Russia, Japan and Vietnam, upon its release. It is RM’s second mixtape after “Rap Monster” released in March 2015.

According to Nielsen Music, “mono.” sold 21,000 equivalent album units in the Oct. 19-25 week and 16,000 of them were traditional album sales.

The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units. Units are comprised of traditional album sales, track equivalent albums and streaming equivalent albums, according to the chart operator.