BLACKPINK lands its first No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart (dated Oct. 1) as its second full-length studio album, Born Pink, starts atop the list with 102,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending Sept. 22, according to Luminate. The eight-song set is the first No. 1 on the Billboard 200 by an all-female group since 2008.
Born Pink is the second top 10 for the South Korean quartet, which previously debuted and peaked at No. 2 in October 2020 with its full-length debut, The Album. In addition, Born Pink is the third album by a South Korean act to top the Billboard 200 in 2022, following BTS’ Proof and Stray Kids’ Stray Kids Mini Album: Oddinary. (Unlike those two albums, which are mostly in the Korean language, Born Pink is mostly in English — though with a fair amount of Korean lyrics.)
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, compiled by Luminate. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album. The new Oct. 1, 2022-dated chart will be posted in full on Billboard‘s website on Sept. 27. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.
Of Born Pink’s 102,000 equivalent album units earned, album sales comprise 75,500; SEA units comprise 25,000 (equaling 37.49 million on-demand official streams of the set’s songs) and TEA units comprise 1,500.
Born Pink is the first No. 1 on the Billboard 200 by a female group since Danity Kane’s second album, Welcome to the Dollhouse, debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated April 5, 2008.
Born Pink also debuts at No. 1 on the Top Album Sales chart with the seventh-largest sales week of any album in 2022 — 75,500 copies sold. Of that sum, 85% were CD sales (64,000), while 15% were digital album sales (11,500). The set was not available in any other configuration (such as vinyl LP or cassette).
The CD configuration of the album was issued in collectible packages (17 total, including exclusive variants for Target and the group’s official webstore), each with a standard set of internal paper items and randomized elements (such as photocards, postcards and stickers). Among those were four alternative cover art editions — each corresponding to a member of the group. CD sales were bolstered by the availability of signed editions of the album (the four cover variants) in the group’s webstore and at independent record stores, where each of the four versions was signed by its corresponding member.
Lavish collectible CD packages like Born Pink’s are typically expensive — as its standard digipack and box set editions originally sold for $26 and $50, respectively, in the group’s webstore. However, the digipack’s price fell to $14.99 during release week, while the autographed edition available at indie retail also went for $14.99.
Sale pricing also kicked in on the digital version of the album, which began selling for $7.99 in the iTunes and Amazon digital stores but fell to $3.99 midway through its debut week. In addition, three alternative digital editions of the album were released on Sept. 19 exclusively in the group’s webstore for $4.99 each. All three had the same eight song tracklist, but two came with an alternative cover art, and one was a “signed digital album” (with digital replicas of the quartet’s signatures on its cover).
Born Pink’s lead single “Pink Venom” debuted and peaked at No. 22 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart dated Sept. 3. It has so far reached No. 36 on the Pop Airplay chart (through the most recently published list dated Sept. 24). The cut also spent…
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