The truth about Britney Spears’ album sales in Europe

WESTERN EUROPE – FRANCE

Since I really aim to be as close as possible to reality, and figures available here and there are inflated more often than not, I have been reading a lot about how conservative I may be. Believe it or not, up to now, in all the countries studied, and all 8 albums covered, each time during the 3 articles, there has been only one single figure falling under the real ballpark – the Britney album in Japan. Thus, it is a surprise to see as many as 3 albums under their real sales in this list, even if the gap is at most 6%.

How can we explain these conservative figures? In one word, or four letters, IFOP. During the French best selling albums series, I heavily pointed out how the former supplier of figures to the SNEP, the IFOP, was as much as 30% under the new and more accurate supplier GFK for various albums. To cut a long story short, IFOP figures were based on big retailers from big cities thus covering rather well sales of international artists. However, sales in rural areas where some local acts are massively popular were totally deflated.

This 30% margin of error, added to the huge gap between each certification at the time (300,000 units per Platinum), downgrade the reliability of figures. The figure of In The Zone suggests the gap is still rather low meaning that all Britney’s first three albums were just over their minimum plateau.

Merging all the data together concludes on the following album sales to date:

• Baby One More Time – 720,000
• Oops!… I did It Again – 510,000
• Britney – 415,000
• In The Zone – 280,000
• Greatest Hits, My Prerogative – 255,000
• Blackout – 95,000
• Circus – 190,000
• The Singles Collection – 50,000