SHINee US iTunes & Billboard Chart History

(Please scroll to the bottom of the page to read in depth about SHINee’s Billboard history)

SHINee’s US Billboard Peaks

SHINee

World Albums Chart – This week’s top-selling world music albums

• “Sherlock” #5 (3/31/12)
• “Misconceptions of You” #2 (3/9/13)
• “Misconceptions of Me” #1 (5/11/13)
• “Everybody” #2 (11/12/13)
• “Odd” #1 (6/6/15)
• “Married to the Music” #5 (8/22/15)
• “1 of 1” #2 (10/22/16)
• “The Story of Light EP 1” #4 (6/9/18)
• “The Story of Light EP 2” #4 (6/23/18)
• “The Story of Light EP 3” #4 (7/7/18)
• “The Story of Light Epilogue” #9 (9/22/18)

Heatseekers Albums – Up and coming artists who have not yet placed in the top 100 of the Top 200 Albums chart.

• “Sherlock” #10
• “Misconceptions of You” #5
• “Misconceptions of Me” #5
• “Everybody” #20
• “Odd” #9
• “1 of 1” #14
• “The Story of Light EP 1” #2
• “The Story of Light EP 2” #5
• “The Story of Light EP 3” #11

Independent Albums – Highest selling albums not under a major US label

• “Sherlock” #48
• “Misconceptions of You” #34
• “Misconceptions of Me” #47
• “Odd” #27
• “The Story of Light EP 1” #19
• “The Story of Light EP 2” #29
• “The Story of Light EP 3” #34

World Digital Song Sales – This week’s top-downloaded songs across all genres

• “Lucifer” #3 (8/7/10) – 57 Weeks on the Chart
• “Up & Down” #18 (8/7/10)
• “Hello” #3 (10/23/10) – 17 Weeks on the Chart
• “Ring Ding Dong” #16 (1/7/12) – 9 Weeks on the Chart
• “Sherlock” #4 (4/7/12) – 10 Weeks on the Chart
• “Dream Girl” #3 (3/9/13) – 6 Weeks on the Chart
• “Spoiler” #17 (3/9/13)
• “Dynamite” #21 (3/9/13)
• “Beautiful” #22 (3/9/13)
• “Why So Serious?” #6 (5/11/13) – 5 Weeks on the Chart
• “Evil” #21 (5/11/13)
• “Everybody” #3 (11/2/13) – 7 Weeks on the Chart
• “Symptoms” #5 (11/2/13)
• “View” #2 (6/6/15) – 5 Weeks on the Chart
• “Married to the Music” #5 (8/22/15) – 4 Weeks on the Chart
• “SAVIOR” #8 (8/22/15)
• “Chocolate” #10 (8/22/15)
• “Hold You” #14 (8/22/15)
• “1 of 1” #3 (10/22/16) – 3 Weeks on the Chart
• “Tell Me What To Do” #3 (12/3/16) – 3 Weeks on the Chart
• “Rescue” #9 (12/3/16)
• “If You Love Her” #11 (12/3/16)
• “Beautiful Life” #12 (12/3/16)
• “Wish Upon A Star” #16 (12/3/16)
• “Replay (Nunan Neomu Yebbeo)” #12 (1/3/18)
• “Good Evening” #8 (6/9/18) – 3 Weeks on the Chart
• “I Want You” #10 (6/23/18) – 2 Weeks on the Chart
• “Our Page” #16 (7/7/18)
• “Countless” #4 (9/22/18)

Social 50

• #4 – 1/3/18

Jonghyun

Billboard 200 – “The most popular albums of the week (blending traditional album sales, track equivalent albums, and streaming equivalent albums)”

• “Poet | Artist” #177

World Albums – This week’s top-selling world music albums

• “Base” #1 (1/31/15) – 4 Weeks
• “Story Op. 1” #7 (10/3/15) – 2 Weeks
• “She Is” #4 (6/11/16) – 2 Weeks
• “Story Op. 2” #5 (1/3/18) – 3 Weeks
• “Poet | Artist” #1 (2/3/18) – 4 Weeks

Top Album Sales – “This week’s top-selling albums across all genres”

• “Poet | Artist” #44 (2/3/18)

Digital Albums – “This week’s top-downloaded albums across all genres”

• “Poet | Artist” #15 (2/3/18)

Independent Albums – Highest selling albums not under a major US label

• “Poet | Artist” #7 (2/3/18)

Heatseekers Albums – Up and coming artists who have not yet placed in the top 100 of the Top 200 Albums chart.

• “Base” #20 (1/24/15)
• “She Is” #20 (6/11/16)

World Digital Song Sales – This week’s top-downloaded songs across all genres

• “Breath” #8 (1/3/14)
• “Crazy (Guilty Pleasure)” #12 (1/23/15)
• “Deja-Boo” #21 (1/31/15)
• “She Is” #18 (6/18/16) – 2 Weeks on the Chart
• “Inspiration” #19 (12/31/16)
• “Lonely” #6 (1/3/18)
• “Shinin” #9 (2/3/18) – 2 Weeks on the Chart

Social 50

• #2 – (1/3/18)

iTunes Featured Artist

• “Poet | Artist” – The album was featured on the front page of US iTunes on the first days day of release – a position that cannot be paid for and is determined by iTunes curators.

Taemin

Emerging Artists – uses the same formula as the Artist 100, measures artist activity across Billboard’s most influential charts (Billboard Hot 100, Billboard 200, & the Social 50, among others) – Excludes artists that have a top 25 entry on the Hot 100 or Billboard 200; Excludes artists with two or more top 10’s on Billboard‘s “Hot” song genre charts & “Top” album genre rankings.

• #47 (2/23/19)

Heatseekers Albums – Up and coming artists who have not yet placed in the top 100 of the Top 200 Albums chart.

• “Ace” #20 (9/6/14)
• “Press It” #7 (3/12/16)
• “WANT” #5 (2/23/19)

World Albums – This week’s top-selling world music albums

• “Ace” #2 (9/6/14) — 2 Weeks
• “Press It” #2 (3/12/16) — 3 Weeks
• “MOVE” #3 (11/4/17) — 2 Weeks
• “MOVE-ing” #11 (12/30/17)
• “WANT” #4 (2/23/19) — 3 Weeks

Independent Albums – Highest selling albums not under a major US label

• “Press It” #31 (3/12/16)
• “WANT” #17 (2/23/19)

Top Current Albums – The same chart as Top Album Sales, with catalog titles removed

• “WANT” #90 (2/23/19)

World Digital Song Sales – This week’s top-downloaded songs across all genres

• “Danger” #4 (9/6/14) – 4 Weeks on Chart
• “Pretty Boy” #15 (9/6/14)
• “Ace” #25 (9/6/14)
• “Press Your Number” #3 (3/12/16) – 3 Weeks on Chart
• “Drip Drop” #4 (3/12/16) – 3 Weeks on Chart
• “Goodbye” #14 (8/27/16)
• “MOVE” #4 (11/4/17) – 4 Weeks on Chart
• “Thirsty” #23 (12/2/17)
• “WANT” #5 (2/23/19) – 4 Weeks on Chart

Key

World Albums – This week’s top-selling world music albums

• “FACE” #9 (12/8/18)

World Digital Song Sales – This week’s top-downloaded songs across all genres

• “Forever Yours” #14 (11/17/18)
• “One of Those Nights” #20 (12/8/18)
• “I Wanna Be” #13 (3/16/19)

Onew

Heatseekers Albums – Up and coming artists who have not yet placed in the top 100 of the Top 200 Albums chart.

• “VOICE” #21 (12/15/18)

World Albums – This week’s top-selling world music albums

• “VOICE” #8 (12/15/18)

Minho

World Digital Song Sales – This week’s top-downloaded songs across all genres

• “I’m Home” #12 (4/6/19) – 2 Weeks on Chart

A History of SHINee & K-Pop on US iTunes

Today we are accustomed to a digital world… When albums are released, you can digitally buy the album in an instant and download the songs to your various devices. However, when SHINee first debuted in 2008, K-Pop had not yet entered into the US digital music market. Some of the very first K-Pop albums to land on US iTunes were in 2009-2010. Excluding BoA, who released an English album in the US in 2009, SM’s artists didn’t begin to enter the US digital music market with their Korean music until 2010. SHINee’s first album to be released on US iTunes was “Lucifer” (a little after the time period of its Korean release). However, there wasn’t a strong push at the time to purchase K-pop music digitally. Most fans were still buying their albums physically or in store. To the frustration of fans, it was also very difficult to search for SHINee’s name on iTunes for many years because the iTunes search engine pulled up songs and artists related to the word “Shine” when typing “SHINee”. Instead, fans had to search for SHINee’s group name in Hangul (샤이니) in order to find their music. A lot of fans also said there were fake versions of SHINee’s songs on iTunes back then because iTunes wasn’t as regulated as it is now. SHINee’s older Korean albums (“Replay”, “The SHINee World”, “Romeo”, & “2009 Year of Us”) were later added in 2011. 2011 was also the year SHINee entered the Japanese market (including iTunes JP) with their first Japanese singles. This time period is what we refer to as the growth of the “Hallyu Wave” and is why we don’t see SHINee charting on the US’s Billboard charts until 2012 with their first simultaneous worldwide release of “Sherlock”. After this point, fans could participate in real time with supporting their favorite K-Pop releases and you start seeing K-Pop more and more on Billboard charts. Fast forward to today, where US fans are just starting to get physical US album releases of Korean albums – but this is not yet true for SHINee… Hopefully soon?

iTunes Hiccups

In early 2014, there was a distribution change on US iTunes for all of SM’s music. Prior to this, SM artists’ music was being released through Soribada. In 2014, all of SM’s music was re-released through SM’s own distribution label. This is important for fans to know because any SM music purchased on iTunes before 2014 cannot be downloaded again and will not show up as “purchased” on iTunes – it is as if you never purchased the album at all. All of the prior Soribada album releases were removed from iTunes and are no longer accessible. SM re-uploaded these albums under their label as if they were brand new albums. This change does not affect SHINee’s early Japanese releases that were available on iTunes (“Kimi wa Boku no Everything”) since they were released under their Japanese label. This change affected many other things including the thousands of iTunes album reviews which are no longer available.

An Appeal for iTunes

As an American fan, I will always ask fans to buy both on US iTunes and physically for Korean charts. If you can’t afford both, the benefit breakdown is: physical purchases give SHINee Korean year end sales awards and US iTunes contributes to Billboard’s charts (in hopes of getting a Billboard award or a US music award – which is hard to do without a physical US release). However, something else important that US iTunes tracks, is it tells SM how many fans in the US are interested in SHINee. 4,000 US iTunes album sales = 4,000 fans that might be interested in attending a US local concert. Buying Korean digital & physical gives SHINee the ability to make more music in Korea, but buying US digital (iTunes) gives fans more events & concerts in the US! Both are important so I always encourage supporting both types of release if you can~!