BTS stays at No.1

BTS kept “SWIM” at No. 1 on Spotify’s global weekly songs chart for a fourth straight week, extending the song’s run atop the platform’s biggest worldwide ranking. (sports.khan.co.kr) Spotify’s latest weekly chart, covering April 10 through April 16, also kept BTS’s album “ARIRANG” at No. 1 on the global weekly albums chart. All 14 tracks from the album stayed on Spotify’s Weekly Top Songs Global chart for four consecutive weeks, according to Korean media reports citing Spotify data. (sports.khan.co.kr) (www.newsdirectory3.com) The group’s chart run has extended beyond Spotify. Billboard reported on April 20 that “SWIM” led both the Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. charts for a fourth week. (www.billboard.com) In the United States, “SWIM” was in its fourth week on the Billboard Hot 100 as of April 21, after debuting at No. 1 and then sliding to No. 10. Korea JoongAng Daily reported the song had already spent seven total weeks at No. 1 on the Digital Song Sales chart by that point. (koreajoongangdaily.joins.com) The Spotify milestone lands the same day Spotify published its first all-time streaming rankings for the platform’s 20th anniversary. Those lists named Taylor Swift, not BTS, as Spotify’s most-streamed artist of all time. (newsroom.spotify.com) (www.washingtonpost.com) BTS still holds a Spotify-related record as the most-streamed male group on the service, Guinness World Records said, with 48.54 billion total streams as of April 1. Guinness listed “Dynamite,” “Boy With Luv,” and “My Universe” among the group’s biggest Spotify hits. (www.guinnessworldrecords.com) The current run adds to a comeback cycle that has spread across multiple platforms at once. The “SWIM” music video passed 100 million YouTube views last week, according to The Korea Herald. (www.koreaherald.com) Spotify’s own anniversary data shows how steep the competition is on the service: Taylor Swift topped the all-time artist list, Bad Bunny ranked second, and Drake ranked third, while The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” led the all-time songs list. BTS’s four-week hold on the weekly chart puts them in direct contention with the platform’s biggest repeat streamers even as the all-time crown sits elsewhere. (newsroom.spotify.com) (www.billboard.com) For now, the clearest measure is the weekly one: four weeks after release, “SWIM” is still the song Spotify listeners around the world are playing most. (sports.khan.co.kr)