Latin American fans are powering a surge in global streams of K-pop supergroup BTS’ latest album, with Brazil and Mexico surpassing Korea in the album’s first-week streaming figures, U.S. music industry data showed. BTS’ fifth studio album, “Arirang,” released March 20, recorded 739.1 million streams worldwide in its first week, according to the data released Wednesday (U.S. time) by entertainment data tracker Luminate. The figure marks the highest first-week total for any album released this year, and the biggest since Taylor Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl” logged 1.3 billion streams in October last year, Luminate said. The United States led first-week streams with 115 million, followed by Brazil with 78.6 million and Mexico with 75.9 million. Korea ranked fourth with 58.3 million, underscoring the growing weight of Latin American audiences in the global K-pop market. Japan came in fifth with 48.2 million streams. YouTube data reflected a similar trend. Between April 6 and May 3, Brazil and Mexico ranked third and fourth, respectively, in viewership of BTS-related videos, joined by Arg
May 14, 2026
