Jimin continues to prove how deserving he is of the “King of iTunes” title as he continues to set new ‘first in the world’ records on the platform, which happens to be the world’s largest and most popular music-buying platform, currently available in 119 countries and regions around the world.
The new records came with the release of his latest single, ‘Closer Than This’ released on December 22, a song dedicated to fans. On December 23, just before the 24hr mark had lapsed since the song was made available to the public for purchase on iTunes, the song attained #1 in 100 countries on iTunes. It is worth noting that the track did not have any pre-orders prior to the release, and so all the buying only commenced after its official release on iTunes.
With this milestone, Jimin now holds the first 4 positions for the fastest songs to reach #1 on iTunes in 100 countries, only considering songs that were bought in real-time upon release (without a preorder period). These first 4 positions include ‘With You’, ‘Set Me Free Pt.2’, ‘Like Crazy’ and ‘Closer Than This’ in that order.
Consequently, Jimin also holds the first 4 positions for the songs that attained the most #1s on iTunes in their first 24 hours of release, and these include ‘Like Crazy’ (112), ‘Set Me Free Pt.2’ (111), ‘With You’ (107) and ‘Closer Than This’ (100).
In effect, Jimin became a new record holder as the first and only solo artist in the world to have 7 songs attaining #1 on iTunes in at least 100 countries, two of which have an iTunes all-kill (#1 in all the 119 countries with the iTunes service), the first and only songs in history to ever record this feat [refer here]. The 7 songs include ‘Filter’, ‘With You’, ‘VIBE’, ‘Set Me Free Pt.2’, ‘Like Crazy’ and ‘Closer Than This’.
‘Filter’ is his solo performance song listed under BTS’ discography as this was before he officially debuted as a solo artist, while the rest of the songs were all released after he had made his official solo debut and are thus under his solo profile.
Days later, on Jan 8, ‘Closer Than This’ reached #1 on iTunes in its 110th country, presenting another magnificent record for Jimin. He became the first and only individual artist in the history of the music industry to have 5 songs achieve #1 on iTunes charts in at least 110 countries around the world. These include ‘Filter’, ‘With You’, ‘Set Me Free Pt.2’, ‘Like Crazy’ and ‘Closer Than This’.
As previously reported, Jimin is also the only artist in the world to ever have 3 songs reach #1 on iTunes in at least 118 countries, these including ‘Filter’, ‘With You’ and ‘Like Crazy’.