Top IFPI Global Album Charts

Taylor Swift, SEVENTEEN and Morgan Wallen top IFPI Global Album Charts

IFPI releases three more Global Charts for 2023, celebrating the biggest albums of the year across different formats

28th March 2024 – IFPI, the organisation that represents the recorded music industry worldwide, has announced three additional Global Album Charts, highlighting the biggest releases of 2023 by sales and the top selling vinyl and streaming albums of the year.

The news follows last week’s launch of the IFPI Global Music Report, which announced annual growth in recorded music revenues of 10.2% globally, including acceleration in subscription streaming revenues and double-digit growth across physical formats.

Fresh from their IFPI Global Album Chart success, Korean group SEVENTEEN also took #1 in the IFPI Global Album Sales Chart, which measures unit sales across all physical formats, as well as full album downloads – a combination sometimes known as “pure sales”. Their album FML sold 6.4 million units globally in 2023, breaking the record for most pre-orders ever for an album in South Korea. 

The IFPI Global Album Sales Chart saw an unprecedented 19 of the Top 20 albums come from South Korean acts, demonstrating their global dominance of the physical album format. The only non-Korean artist present in the Top 20 was IFPI Global Recording Artist of the Year, Taylor Swift, whose album 1989 (Taylor’s Version) also topped the IFPI Global Vinyl Album Chart.

Taylor Swift held each of the top three places in the IFPI Global Vinyl Album Chart, and had an incredible seven albums reach the Top 20 of that Chart overall, with the releases of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) (#1), Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) (#2) and Midnights (#3) joined by folklore (#7), Lover (#9), evermore (#13) and Red (Taylor’s Version) (#15).

Fellow American artist Morgan Wallen scored his first ever IFPI Global Chart #1 in the IFPI Global Streaming Album Chart, which counts global streams from both ad-supported and subscription platforms and calculates a weighted global unit number taking into account differing economics across regions. Wallen’s 2023 album One Thing at a Time was the biggest streaming album of the year on this basis, with Wallen also appearing at #9 with Dangerous: The Double Album.

Lewis Morrison, Director of Global Charts & Certifications at IFPI said: “Congratulations to SEVENTEEN and Taylor Swift for their second IFPI Global Charts awards of 2023, and to Morgan Wallen for his first ever global #1. Each of these artists created (or in the case of Taylor, reimagined) incredible music which found a global audience and achieved enormous commercial success in 2023, and the charts themselves highlight the multitude of ways in which music fans are engaging with their favourite albums all over the world.

“As highlighted in IFPI’s Global Music Report, revenues from both digital and physical music formats continue to see healthy growth, and the combination of fantastic artistry, format variety and the tireless work of record labels is the foundation on which this growth is built. Well done to everyone who featured in each of the album charts, which are a great summary of a fantastic year for global recorded music.”

About the IFPI Global Charts

IFPI’s Global Charts provide the most complete picture of artist, album and track performance worldwide. The Charts capture streaming, downloads and physical formats in every country directly from the participating record labels, which is then converted using IFPI’s unique methodology to a single, global chart figure. The methodology, developed in partnership with IFPI’s member record labels, reflects global commercial success by combining the most exhaustive reporting of unit sales and streams with the country-level economics of each consumption type.

The IFPI Global Album Sales Chart includes sales from all physical formats as well as album downloads. The IFPI Global Vinyl Album Chart includes only vinyl album sales. Both charts are purely units-based. The IFPI Global Streaming Album Chart takes into account streams from ad-supported and subscription streaming platforms, weighting these streams according to the economics between formats and across regions.

The Press Release with all the respective charts is available here: Top IFPI Global Album Charts 2023