HYBE Labels Proves They're At The Top Of The K-Pop Industry With Ridiculous First-Week Album Sales Numbers

Several years ago, it seemed that every K-Pop company was trying to become the next label in the “Big Three” — the top three most successful companies in the K-Pop industry, which consisted of SM Entertainment, JYP Entertainment, and YG Entertainment. These three were at the peak of the industry with the success of their artists and their sales numbers, and it seemed unreachable for other labels to get to their level.

Now, however, the “Big Four” is the term more often used to talk about the biggest K-Pop companies, due to the success of HYBE Labels. What started as an unknown label, BIGHIT MUSIC, became the huge success story that it is today thanks to BTS, especially after acquiring subsidiaries like Source Music and Pledis Entertainment.

Now, it seems that HYBE Labels not only is on the same level as the other biggest companies in K-Pop, but that they have actually been surpassed by HYBE.

Recently, a post was made on an online Korean forum that discussed which companies had the most albums that had the highest number of first-week sales. Out of the top 20 albums, 13 of them belonged to HYBE Labels, seven of which were in the top 10!

Top 20 K-Pop albums with the highest first-week sales numbers

Of the 13 HYBE Labels albums that made the list, BTS and SEVENTEEN are tied with the most, each with five albums in the top 20. BTS takes the first, second, third, sixth, and eighth spots with Map of the Soul: 7, PROOF, BE, Map of the Soul: Persona, and Butter / Permission to Dance respectively, while SEVENTEEN takes seventh, thirteenth, fourteenth, seventeenth, and twentieth with Face the Sun, Your Choice, Attacca, Sector 17, and Heng:garae.

Two of the remaining three HYBE Labels albums on the chart go to TXT — The Name Chapter: TEMPTATION and Minisode 2: Thursday’s Child at the fourth and fifteenth spots — while the final one, Manifesto: Day 1 in sixteenth place, belongs to ENHYPEN.

SM Entertainment has the second-most albums on the list: Candy and Glitch Mode by NCT DREAM, 2 Baddies by NCT 127, and Girls by aespa. JYP Entertainment and YG Entertainment each have one: MAXIDENT by Stray Kids and BORN PINK by BLACKPINK respectively.