ARASHI awarded Global Album of 2019 by IFPI for their 20th Anniversary Compilation 5×20 All the BEST!! 1999-2019. ARASHI (Satoshi Ohno, Sho Sakurai, Masaki Aiba, Kazunari Ninomiya, and Jun Matsumoto) was formed in 1999 and released their first single A-RA-SHI in November that year. They went on to release multiple million-seller albums over the next two decades. In June 2019, they released their 20th anniversary compilation 5×20 All the BEST!! 1999-2019 and staged the ARASHI Anniversary Tour 5×20 across Japan last year. The band, who are national icons in Japan, announced in January 2019 that they would be going on hiatus from 2021.
Frances Moore, chief executive of IFPI, said, “ARASHI are an iconic Japanese band that have built a huge and very dedicated fanbase across Asia throughout their twenty-year music career. We would like to congratulate the artists on winning this award which is testament to their incredibly strong catalogue and career longevity.”
Taylor Swift’s seventh studio album Lover was the second biggest global album of 2019 with MAP OF THE SOUL : PERSONA, the sixth EP from South Korean band BTS, taking third place. Not only is it the best-selling album ever in South Korea, but it also reached number one in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK and the US, marking the first time a Korean act has topped the charts in each of those countries.
The IFPI Global Top Ten Album Chart combines global sales of physical and digital album downloads to rank the top albums of the year. The chart includes physical and digital album unit sales only.
The IFPI Global Album of 2019 is the third award from IFPI’s annual global charts following the announcement that Taylor Swift was the Global Recording Artist of the Year 2019 and bad guy by Billie Eilish was the biggest digital single of 2019.
Top 10 Global Albums 2019
| Rank | Artist | Album Name | Global units (millions) |
| 1 | ARASHI | 5×20 All the BEST!! 1999-2019 | 3.3 |
| 2 | Taylor Swift | Lover | 3.2 |
| 3 | BTS | MAP OF THE SOUL : PERSONA | 2.5 |
| 4 | Lady Gaga | A Star is Born OST | 1.2 |
| 5 | Billie Eilish | WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? | 1.2 |
| 6 | Queen | Bohemian Rhapsody | 1.2 |
| 7 | Ed Sheeran | No.6 Collaborations Project | 1.1 |
| 8 | Ariana Grande | thank u, next | 1.0 |
| 9 | Rammstein | Rammstein | 0.9 |
| 10 | The Beatles | Abbey Road | 0.8 |
(source: IFPI. Units are rounded to one decimal place.)
