BTS' Jimin tops as K-pop soloist on US' Pandora Music

BTS' Jimin (Big Hit Music)

Jimin of the world's biggest K-pop band BTS is setting new records as a Korean solo artist on Pandora Music.

Jimin's first breakthrough on the American music streaming platform came on June 27 when he reached 500,000 monthly listeners as the first K-pop soloist to do so.

The feat came around three months after his official solo debut in March with his album "Face."

The number soared to 594,000 listeners on June 30, surpassing BTS' 571,000 and setting a new all-time high as a K-pop act. He went onto renew his own record to 610,000 on the following day and reached an accumulated streams of 10 million on the same day.

Pandora Music is considered to be the third largest music streaming service in the US following Spotify and Apple Music.

Jimin's popularity inside the American music market is unprecedented for a Korean singer.

With his solo debut album "Face," Jimin marked the highest spot as a Korean solo artist on Billboard's main albums chart, Billboard 200, at No. 2.

He also became the first Korean singer to lead the main singles Billboard Hot 100 chart with the album's title song "Like Crazy."

According to Billboard, "Like Crazy" drew a sales sum of 254,000 units -- song downloads and physical copies combined -- in its first week, tallying the highest single-week total sales since 328,000 units of Taylor Swift's "Anti-Hero" (2022) and 300,000 units of BTS' first Hot 100 lead, "Dynamite" (2020).

The song also landed atop Spotify's global daily chart, making Jimin the first K-pop solo artist to debut atop the chart.

The music platform on Tuesday announced "Like Crazy" had been the most-streamed song in the US, where it had been streamed 362,244 times since its March 24 release.

Recently, Jimin's song "Angel Pt. 1," an original soundtrack song for the US action flick "Fast X," entered the Hot 100 in its second week of release, making Jimin the first Korean solo artist to enter two songs in the song chart for multiple weeks. "Like Crazy" had spent five weeks on the Hot 100.

By Choi Ji-won(jwc@heraldcorp.com)