aespa achieves its fifth top 10-charting effort on Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart as the female K-pop quartet’s new Armageddon – The 1st Album debuts at No. 2 on the chart dated July 20. All five of the act’s entries on the chart have debuted in the top 10.
Also in the top 10 of the latest Top Album Sales chart, Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department nets a sixth week at No. 1 (and with a 154% sales increase), the 30th anniversary reissue and first vinyl pressing of Selena’s Amor Prohibido pushes it back onto the chart at No. 4 and Agust D (aka BTS’ SUGA) sees his D-Day album re-enter at No. 8 after its release on vinyl.
Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart ranks the top-selling albums of the week based only on traditional album sales. The chart’s history dates back to May 25, 1991, the first week Billboard began tabulating charts with electronically monitored piece count information from SoundScan, now Luminate. Pure album sales were the sole measurement utilized by the Billboard 200 albums chart through the list dated Dec. 6, 2014, after which that chart switched to a methodology that blends album sales with track equivalent album units and streaming equivalent album units. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.
Armageddon arrives with 18,000 copies sold in the U.S. in the week ending July 11, according to Luminate. The album was released widely on CD on July 5 after previously being available as a digital download and via streaming services. CD sales power nearly all of the 18,000 sales in the week ending July 11, and the set was issued in eight collectible CD variants, all containing paper merchandise.
Meanwhile, Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department holds at No. 1 on Top Album Sales with 90,000 copies sold – up 154% for the week. CD sales comprise 67,000 (up 127%), digital album download sales comprise 19,000 (up 1,266%) and vinyl sales comprise 4,000 (down 10%).
The Tortured Poets Department’s overall weekly increase was bolstered in part by sales generated from Swift’s official webstore, which restocked seven earlier-released CD variants of the album (including a signed edition). The restocked items were available to purchase for a few hours on Sunday, June 7 and shipped shortly afterwards. In addition, Swift released three new digital album download variants of the album on Thursday, July 11, sold exclusively in her webstore for $4.99 each, and were only available to purchase that day. Each contained the original standard 16-song album tracklist, along with one bonus live acoustic track, recorded during her The Eras Tour stop in Stockholm (“Guilty as Sin?,” “How Did It End?” or “Peter”).
ATEEZ’s former No. 1 Golden Hour: Part.1 rises 7-3 with nearly 13,000 copies sold (up 3%).
Following its 30th anniversary reissue, Selena’s Amor Prohibido re-enters Top Album Sales at No. 4 with 11,000 sold – its best sales week since 1995. The set, which was initially released in 1994 and spent 20 weeks at No. 1 on Top Latin Albums in 1994-95, was reissued on July 4 across digital and physical configurations, including its first pressing on vinyl.
Amor debuts at No. 1 on the Vinyl Albums chart with 10,000 sold on wax – Selena’s best sales week ever on vinyl. It’s her second leader on the 13-year-old Vinyl Albums ranking. The album was available in four vinyl variants – a standard clear color edition, a Target-exclusive pink color (containing a poster), a Spotify-exclusive coke bottle clear edition and a picture-disc variant sold via Selena’s webstore.
Amor was also reissued on CD and as a cassette tape, with the latter exclusively sold in Selena’s webstore.
Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft rises 9-5 on Top Album Sales with 10,000 (down 12%), Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess steps 8-6 with 9,000 (down 26%) and Zach Bryan’s The Great American Bar Scene shoots 21-7 after its first full tracking week, with 8,500 sold (up 66%). The set was released on July 4, the final day of the tracking week for the July 13-dated chart, and sold 5,000 copies that day (enabling it debut at No. 21). The album is only available to purchase as a digital download; its CD and vinyl are due out on Oct. 11.
Agust D’s chart-topping D-Day re-enters Top Album Sales at No. 8 with nearly 8,000 sold following the set’s vinyl release on July 5. Rounding out the top 10 are a pair of former No. 1s from Swift, as Lover jumps 19-9 with just over 5,000 sold (though down 3%) and 1989 (Taylor’s Version) vaults 20-10 with nearly 5,000 (down 5%).
