France Best Selling Albums Ever
INTRODUCTION
Both steps are completed – updating all previously posted million selling albums with their 2016 sales plus adding all new albums over that mark. The only thing left is to compile everything together to build the France best selling albums ever list.
This ranking comes right now. With 168 albums listed last year plus 7 new ones, we are up to 175 LPs over the cult milestone. Various statistics and sub-lists are available in this article as well as links to all original albums breakdowns. Please be aware most of those breakdowns have been posted last year, so their totals in said articles differ from this article since 2016 were not included at the time.
For clarification purpose, all figures relate to album sales in LPs, Cassette, CD or Download format but exclude streaming. The include 2 and 3 boxes containing the related album in full but exclude 4+ boxes as it isn’t clear anymore than the purchaser explicity wanted to buy the said record. All figures aimed to be net shipment as of the end of 2016.
Let’s go!
Wow. I thought Madonna was freaking huge in France. I guess she was very consistent, but she never had one great album that is like super monster big in France. I also thought she was bigger than Michael Jackson or at least as big, but clearly here Michael Jackson beat her by a long shot.
MJ, are you planning to do Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston and Janet Jackson this year?
I’m starving for those articles!
Love your site 😉
im sure whitney will be coming out pretty soon for her death anniversary
What? No Piaf, Brassens, Barbara, Vian, Gainsbourg, Trenet, Montand and so little Brel? These are the French artists I would hope to see on the charts.
https://www.youtube.com/user/VNRose3
Wow! Also on http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/france-top-175-best-selling-albums-of-all-time.648025/
Thank you again MJD
Hi MJD! Great job as usual! I have a question for you, do you have a list of the best selling non-French/French-Canadian female artists in France (in terms of total album sales)? Madonna might be #1, but I’m not sure about the rest. I’d love to see how international acts like Madonna, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Adele, Britney Spears, Barbra Streisand, etc. rank! Thank you for your time!
Hi Trish!
Well 4 of those have already been covered by France Album Sales articles. No doubt I’ll continue posting several of them in the near future with Whitney Houston coming out soon 🙂
Michael Jackson is such a legend.
Hi Luca & Colin!
Thanks a lot both, I knew I could count on you to fix typos 😉
I think most are fixed now! I’ll keep checking to make sure everything is ok!
Guillaume, just a spot: Norah Jones in Female rank is at 1.590.000 and not at 1.595.000
And also Elton John.
Anyway: great!!!
Hello Guillaume,
Although ‘ABBA Gold’ should be No.3 in your ‘Hits’ Albums List, you have accidentally
given it a joint No.2 place – with ‘Legend’.
You also have no No.8 Album in the List – and that should be the Francis Cabrel Album.
That becomes No.8, when you give ABBA the No.3 Position & move the next 5 Albums
down a place.
Very Best Wishes
Colin