Bangtan Boys (BTS) Making Wave

According to the Gaon Music Chart, BTS has sold sixteen million albums domestically in physical sales and is the best-selling artist to debut in the 2010s. They hold the best-selling album in Korean history with Map of the Soul: Persona. BTS were the second best-selling artists of 2018 worldwide according to the IFPI’s Global Artist Chart, as well as the only non-English speaking artist to enter the chart.

During their Love Yourself World Tour, BTS became the first Asian artist and first non-English speaking artist ever to headline and sell out Wembley Stadium and broke the record for the single highest-grossing engagement in Rose Bowl Stadium history. As of 2019, BTS are worth more than $4.65 billion to South Korea’s economy each year, or 0.3 percent of the country’s GDP. BTS attracted one in every 13 foreign tourists that visited South Korea and were cited as one of the key acts boosting global music sales to $19 billion in 2018.

BTS, also known as the Bangtan Boys, is a seven-member South Korean boy band formed from all over South Korea. The lineup included Jin, Suga, J-Hope, RM, Jimin, V, and Jungkook.

The group was meant to debut in 2011 and featured on several tracks by artists such as 2AM and Lee Seung-gi before their debut was postponed and the group was reorganized into a more traditional idol group. Six months prior to their debut, they began to gain attention for their presence on various social media websites, as well as song covers on YouTube and SoundCloud.

In recent years, BTS has gained tremendous popularity in the United States and all around the world.

BTS began its formation in 2010 after Big Hit Entertainment CEO Bang Si-hyuk met with group leader RM and was impressed with his rapping. BTS was originally supposed to be a hip hop group similar to YG Entertainment’s 1TYM, but between their initial formation and their debut, Bang Si-hyuk decided that the contemporary youth needed instead “a hero who can lend them a shoulder to lean on, even without speaking a single word”.

The group has won Top Social Artist three years in a row and Top Duo/Group at the 26th Billboard Music Awards. Featured on Time’s international cover as “Next Generation Leaders”, BTS has appeared in the magazine’s 25 most influential people on the internet (2017–2019) and Time’s 100 most influential people in the world (2019). Forbes Korea named BTS the most influential celebrities of Korea in 2018, and BTS ranked 43rd in the Forbes Celebrity 100 (2019) as one of the world’s top-earning celebrities.