For those who don't know, physical record index reflects the price of each album sold. While sales amount is only counting how many copies the album & it’s versions sold, physical record index would add the value of album price into the consideration as well.
According to the chart, BTS topped the 2022 album sales chart with a whopping 7.3 million physical record index and 3 million copies sold. This is a large margin from the runner-up, as Stray Kids came in second place with a 2.8 million physical record index with 2.6 million copies sold. There's only a small gap in album sales between BTS and Stray Kids, yet the huge gap in record index is glaring.
The only good thing that Hanteo did last yr is to add a physical record index. In this way, we can see the actual consumption without the companies inflating their groups' sales with the unnecessary multiple versions/digipacks or variations of 1 album only.
If we're only considering copies sold then the list would be different, but since some albums are more expensive than others, this became the final ranking.
If we based it on Top 10, then this is the ranking for album sales in corresponding to their value in average.
1. PROOF- 2.4x in average
2. Born Pink - 1.2x
3. Sector 17 - 1.1x
4. Maxident - 1.06x
5. Manifesto: Day 1 - 1.05x
6. 2 Baddies - 1.047x
7. Candy - 1.045x
8. Glitch Mode - 1.0389x
9. Face The Sun - 1.0388x
10. Minisode 2: Thursday's Child - 0.96x
Meaning, we can see here the average value in each album. For example, Born Pink and Sector 17 almost had the same revenue generated regarless of the copies sold of both albums. Or we can see how Proof outgrossed Born Pink & Maxident by 2x.
Hope it all makes sense.