This year, the 10 million challenge is SEVENTEEN‘s ‘unique mission’
This year, the ‘10 million challenge’ is SEVENTEEN’s exclusive mission. SEVENTEEN‘s 4th local single, recently released in Japan and ranked first on the Oricon weekly single rankings, photo cover provided by Pledis Entertainment
This year as well, the ‘10 Million Singers’ title is once again being challenged by SEVENTEEN as a ‘one-man show’.
With only 3 physical albums including unit albums, the estimated sales up to recently is a whopping 8.3 million copies. On top of that, their 4th single released in Japan set a ‘new annual record’, coming very close to ‘exceeding 10 million cumulative copies sold’.
According to Oricon, Japan‘s representative pop music ranking chart, SEVENTEEN’s 4th single ‘Shohikigen’ (消費期限·consumption period), released locally, topped the weekly single ranking on the 9th.
With the ‘first week’, which refers to sales trend for the first week after release, being the standard for assessing rankings, SEVENTEEN recorded approximately 418,000 copies. This figure corresponds to the ‘highest sales’ for all overseas artists who released singles in Japan this year.
They also set a ‘new record for consecutive no. 1s on the chart. SEVENTEEN has released a total of four singles in Japan from 2020 to recently. In direct proportion, they have also succeeded in taking the top spot on the weekly single ranking ‘for four consecutive times’. Oricon explained that this is also “the’the most consecutive no. 1s for an overseas artist”.
With the explosive sales of singles in Japan at the end of the year, SEVENTEEN is now on track to ‘exceeding 10 million copies’ this year, following last year. The best album released in the first half of the year sold over 3.6 million copies despite the physical price limitations of a 2CD format, and the 12th mini-album released in the second half of the year sold over 3.7 million copies, and the first single of the unit ‘Jeonghan x Wonwoo’, formed by members Jeonghan and Wonwoo, is approaching the ‘Million-seller’.
Meanwhile, SEVENTEEN is focusing on year-end activities in North America and further solidifying their position as a ‘global top tier’.
They appeared on Disney‘s year-end special show ‘The Wonderful World of Disney’, which aired on American terrestrial network ABC on the 1st, and on the 12th, they will perform solo on the ‘Billboard Music Awards’ as the ‘main performer’.
Reporter Heo Min-nyeong mignon@donga.com
