BTS’ New Song ‘Butter’ Broke Spotify and YouTube Records in Its First 24 Hours
On May 21, BTS dropped a new single titled “Butter.” The song is the band’s second English-language single. BTS released their first English-language single, “Dynamite,” in August 2020. While “Dynamite” set a number of records, BTS’ new song “Butter” is shaping up to be even bigger and proceeded to break some of the records “Dynamite” set within its first 24 hours.
‘Butter’ broke BTS’ own YouTube record
“Dynamite” came out on Aug. 21, 2020, and according to YouTube, the song’s music video had “over 3 million” concurrent viewers when it premiered. This gave “Dynamite” a record of the biggest YouTube music video premiere of all time.
“Butter” surpassed this record, and according to a press release, it achieved 3.9 million concurrent viewers at its premiere, making the “Butter” music video the biggest music video premiere on the platform.
In 2020, BTS broke the record for the most-viewed video within its first 24 hours on YouTube with “Dynamite.” The music video achieved 101.1 million views in its first 24 hours, beating BLACKPINK’s record of 86.3 million views with their song “How You Like That.”
After releasing “Butter,” BTS beat the record they previously set with “Dynamite.” According to a press release, the “Butter” music video achieved 108.2 million views in its first 24 hours, setting a new record for the most-viewed YouTube video within its first 24 hours.
BTS set a new Spotify record with ‘Butter’
With “Dynamite,” BTS achieved 7,778,950 streams within a day and the song debuted at No. 1 on Spotify’s daily Global Top 50 chart. “Butter” debuted at No. 2 on the Spotify Global Top 50 behind Olivia Rodrigo’s single “Good 4 U.”
While “Butter” did not debut at No. 1 like its predecessor “Dynamite,” it did set a streaming record on Spotify. A press release shared that the song achieved 20.9 million global streams in its first day. This is the most first-day streams a song has ever achieved in Spotify history.
According to Variety, the 20.9 million streams represented unfiltered streams, and “Butter” reached “11.042 million filtered global streams” on the streaming platform. The unfiltered statistic is what Spotify uses to calculate rankings on the Global Top 50 chart.
‘Butter’ is the band’s second English-language single
Given the number of records Jin, Suga, J-Hope, RM, Jimin, V, and Jungkook have already broken with “Butter,” it is apparent BTS have even more achievements in their future.
The single is a dance-pop track and features fun and flirty lyrics about being “hot like summer” and “smooth like butter.” With a lighthearted feel, “Butter” has the potential to be the song of the summer in 2021.
An hour after releasing the song, BTS held a global press conference. At the press conference, the members shared their hopes for the song and the single’s concept.
“If you hear the title ‘Butter,’ you’ll know immediately that we tried to prepare a song that’s easy to listen to,” Jimin told reporters. “It’s a very cute song, sort of a confession.”
