Tomorrow X Together have the primary new #1 album of 2023. The Okay-pop group’s five-song EP The Name Chapter: Temptation debuts atop the Billboard 200 this week with 161,500, virtually none of these by way of streaming. As New York Times factors out, 98% of the band’s complete comes from CD gross sales — an anomaly in at this time’s mainstream, besides in Okay-pop, the place curiosity in collectible CDs runs excessive. Tomorrow X Together launched 14 totally different editions of the EP; some are autographed, whereas some include thriller bonuses like photograph books and postcards.
The arrival of The Name Chapter: Temptation ends a seven-week run at #1 for SZA’s SOS, which falls to #2 this week with one other 100,000 items, largely powered by streaming. This isn’t the primary time a Korean pop group and a Black American R&B star have squared off on the prime of the charts; Summer Walker and SuperM had an analogous streaming vs. gross sales showdown in 2019.