BTS ARIRANG Hits 5 Billion Spotify Streams, Santiago Opens
On Oct. 14, Big Hit Music said BTS's ARIRANG had passed 5 billion streams on Spotify. The label put the album about 2 billion streams ahead of the next-biggest 2026 release, Olivia Rodrigo's you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, which makes ARIRANG the most-streamed album of the year on the platform.
The same day, BTS opened the first of three nights at Estadio Nacional in Santiago, Chile.
All 14 tracks on the album have cleared 200 million streams each, Big Hit said. The lead single "SWIM" is closing in on 1 billion. The album came out March 20 and opened with 110,005,265 Spotify streams in a day, according to Guinness World Records, with all 14 tracks taking the top 14 spots on the platform's Daily Top Songs Global chart. "SWIM" alone logged 14,644,352 of those. Harry Styles's Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally, the other big release of the year, opened with 63 million, Complex reported.
Where those streams come from explains the tour routing. Luminate data covering March 20 through May 14, reported by Variety India, counted 3.8 billion ARIRANG streams across Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube Music, and 5.3 billion for the group's full catalog in that window. Latin America produced 27 percent of the streams, ahead of Northeast Asia at 17 percent, North America at 14 percent, Southeast Asia at 13 percent and Europe at 12 percent.
The Latin American leg is where that audience gets a stadium. BTS played Bogotá on Oct. 2 and 3 and Lima on Oct. 7, 9 and 10, where Big Hit counted about 151,500 fans across three shows. Santiago was the stop that nearly did not happen. Chile's National Sports Institute refused the use of Estadio Nacional in early July, citing a 360-degree stage that would put roughly 600 tons on the pitch. Fans marched in Santiago on July 5 under signs reading "BTS to the National Stadium." Edaily reported on July 23 that the government had reversed course and approved the shows after the promoter changed its plans. Each night is expected to draw more than 48,000 people, and the dates are the group's first in Chile since the Wings Tour in March 2017.
Santiago continues Oct. 16 and 17. Buenos Aires follows on Oct. 21, 23 and 24, then São Paulo on Oct. 28, 30 and 31. The next number to watch is the one Big Hit has already flagged: "SWIM" and its approach to 1 billion.
