GMR
ISRC
19th March 2020
IFPI, the organisation that represents the recorded music industry worldwide, has announced that Japanese band ARASHI had the biggest global album of 2019, with their compilation *5×20 All the BEST!! 1999-2019.
Photo: ARASHI receiving the IFPI award for Top Global Album of 2019. Photo courtesy of J Storm.
IFPI, the organisation that represents the recorded music industry worldwide, has announced that Japanese band ARASHI had the biggest global album of 2019, with their compilation 5×20 All the BEST!! 1999-2019.
ARASHI – Satoshi Ohno, Sho Sakurai, Masaki Aiba, Kazunari Ninomiya, and Jun Matsumoto – formed in 1999 and released their first single A-RA-SHI in November that year. They went on to release multiple million-seller albums over the next two decades. In June 2019, they released their 20th anniversary compilation 5×20 All the BEST!! 1999-2019 and staged the ARASHI Anniversary Tour 5×20 across Japan last year. The band, who are national icons in Japan, announced in January 2019 that they would be going on hiatus from 2021.
Frances Moore, chief executive of IFPI, said: “ARASHI are an iconic Japanese band that have built a huge and very dedicated fanbase across Asia throughout their twenty-year music career. We would like to congratulate the artists on winning this award which is testament to their incredibly strong catalogue and career longevity.”
Taylor Swift’s seventh studio album Lover was the second biggest global album of 2019. Released in August 2019, it debuted at number one in Australia, Canada, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, the UK, and the US amongst others, and reached three million album-equivalent units worldwide by the end of its first week of release.
MAP OF THE SOUL : PERSONA, the sixth EP from South Korean band BTS, takes third place in the 2019 chart. Not only is it the best-selling album ever in South Korea, but it also reached number one in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK and the US, marking the first time a Korean act has topped the charts in each of those countries.
The IFPI Global Top Ten Album Chart combines global sales of physical and digital album downloads to rank the top albums of the year. The chart includes physical and digital album unit sales only.
Rank | Artist | Album Name | Global units (millions)
(source: IFPI. Units are rounded to one decimal place.)
The IFPI Global Album of 2019 is the third award from IFPI’s annual global charts following the announcement that Taylor Swift was the Global Recording Artist of the Year 2019 and bad guy by Billie Eilish was the biggest digital single of 2019.
Further information on ARASHI
ARASHI were awarded ‘Artist of the Year 2019’ at the 34th Recording Industry Association of Japan’s Gold Disc Awards. They have won this award a record breaking six times. In November 2019 they were selected to give a dedicated performance to the new Emperor of Japan at the national festival for celebration of the accession of the Emperor. They were also named ‘special navigator’ for nationwide broadcasting of the upcoming Tokyo Olympic/Paralympic Games.
For further information please contact:
press.office@ifpi.org / +44 (0)20 7878 7979
@IFPI_ORG